Pennsylvania power company never inspected plant equipment that failed, data show
The Pennsylvania plant's 1,500-foot-long basin was to let the fly ash - a byproduct of burning coal - settle to the bottom while clear water from the top flowed out a discharge pipe. But a leaking barrier allowed the ash to mix with the discharge water, officials said. About 100 million gallons of coal ash slurry spilled into the river.
The discharge structure had concrete walls on three sides and wooden stop logs on the fourth. The stop logs, which look like railroad ties, were the part that failed.
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Smaller, cheaper, safer: Next-gen nuclear power, explained
WASHINGTON - Inside the Transient Reactor Test Facility, a towering, windowless gray block surrounded by barbed wire, researchers are about to embark on a mission to solve one of humanity’s greatest problems with a tiny device.
Next year, they will begin construction on the MARVEL reactor. MARVEL stands for Microreactor Applications Research Validation and EvaLuation. It’s a first-of-a-kind nuclear power generator, cooled with liquid metal and producing 100 kilowatts of energy. By 2024, researchers expect MARVEL to be the zero-emissions engine of the world’s first nuclear microgrid at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
“Micro” and “tiny,” of course, are relative. MARVEL stands 15…
