a.m. Fires had begun to break out all along the destroyed pier area as gas lines exploded. A cold, damp mist covered Puget Sound on what would have been a normal day for February. The high temperature for the day would be 41 degrees.
Columbia Generating Station
Hanford Nuclear Reservation
Richland, Washington; 6:20 PST
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Columbia Generating Station was 1 in 47,619, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.
The odds of winning a $10,000 prize on a multi-state Powerball are 723,144-to-1.
Every week people win Powerball prizes.
NRC File Photo—Columbia Generating Station
Hanford Site Map—US Fish and Wildlife Service, public domain
At 6:20 PST Power Control Assistant Specialist, Andy Everett, two steps below white whale shit on Northwest Energy’s totem pole of success, nearly unloaded a toxic dump into his jeans. The panels in front of him, which were straight out of a 1960s b-movie, complete with big toggle switches and push-pull knobs, blurred in his vision as everything in his universe began to dance; coffee, newspapers, books, laptop computers, regulatory documents, and clunky analog telephones, the kind mom used to have.
“Shit! Shit!” Andy shouted as the control panel instruments began to freak. The emergency phones rang in virtual unison, adding semi-comical chorography, a different layer of background music. Andy heard the phones, but now in his new position of being flat on his ass, he looked at them helplessly.
Andy, the youngest control specialist at age 29, a 2004 graduate of Kennewick High School (go lions!) didn’t want to think about the power of what was behind his predicament; after all, he was in a room surrounded by a lead-shielded wall of five-foot thick concrete, and being shaken, not stirred. It was as if the #4 to Yankee Stadium and the L to Wrigley were both in the same room. Andy struggled and grabbed the arm of a grey standard roller chair. As he tried to get up, the chair scooted out across the carpeted floor.
Power Control Center, Columbia Generating Plant, NRC stock photo
The Columbia Generating Station was severely shaken by a rapid series of earthquakes with force coming at opposite directions. For a full two minutes the ground shook in different directions, like holding tuning forks with different pitches, one in each ear. From the east came the powerful Yellowstone quake, from the west the less powerful but damaging Puget Sound earthquake. Located close to the mid-way point between Bainbridge Island, Washington and Old Faithful Village, Wyoming, the force of the dual earthquakes was devastating to anything in a direct path.
The NP-2 plant was the only one of the five planned nuclear facilities at Hanford that had made it to completion, then to actually generate electricity. Part of the nuclear boom in the 1960s-1970s (it’s alright, it’s alright, etc.) the nuclear plants of the Washington Public Power Supply System were designed to supply cheap electricity to the US and beyond.
Over the years, failures in building design, (the whole 60s Chernobyl design), delays in construction and a series of screw-ups (low-bid contractors) let the public to view WPPSS by it’s acronym “whoops” as in what a screw-up . Added to the project’s problems, as if they needed more problems, was that they were like hitting the clown target with a baseball; Idiots on Patrol. Technology had passed them by; environmentalists both local and national had them by the short hairs. They did vent poison gasses, whoops, which poisoned the grasses to the east of the plant with high levels of radiation, which the milk cows ate, which was passed forward to the unsuspecting public. (whoops)
In the end, the NP-2 plant was purchased by a group of power
Columbia Generating Station
Hanford Nuclear Reservation
Richland, Washington; 6:20 PST
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Columbia Generating Station was 1 in 47,619, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.
The odds of winning a $10,000 prize on a multi-state Powerball are 723,144-to-1.
Every week people win Powerball prizes.
NRC File Photo—Columbia Generating Station
Hanford Site Map—US Fish and Wildlife Service, public domain
At 6:20 PST Power Control Assistant Specialist, Andy Everett, two steps below white whale shit on Northwest Energy’s totem pole of success, nearly unloaded a toxic dump into his jeans. The panels in front of him, which were straight out of a 1960s b-movie, complete with big toggle switches and push-pull knobs, blurred in his vision as everything in his universe began to dance; coffee, newspapers, books, laptop computers, regulatory documents, and clunky analog telephones, the kind mom used to have.
“Shit! Shit!” Andy shouted as the control panel instruments began to freak. The emergency phones rang in virtual unison, adding semi-comical chorography, a different layer of background music. Andy heard the phones, but now in his new position of being flat on his ass, he looked at them helplessly.
Andy, the youngest control specialist at age 29, a 2004 graduate of Kennewick High School (go lions!) didn’t want to think about the power of what was behind his predicament; after all, he was in a room surrounded by a lead-shielded wall of five-foot thick concrete, and being shaken, not stirred. It was as if the #4 to Yankee Stadium and the L to Wrigley were both in the same room. Andy struggled and grabbed the arm of a grey standard roller chair. As he tried to get up, the chair scooted out across the carpeted floor.
Power Control Center, Columbia Generating Plant, NRC stock photo
The Columbia Generating Station was severely shaken by a rapid series of earthquakes with force coming at opposite directions. For a full two minutes the ground shook in different directions, like holding tuning forks with different pitches, one in each ear. From the east came the powerful Yellowstone quake, from the west the less powerful but damaging Puget Sound earthquake. Located close to the mid-way point between Bainbridge Island, Washington and Old Faithful Village, Wyoming, the force of the dual earthquakes was devastating to anything in a direct path.
The NP-2 plant was the only one of the five planned nuclear facilities at Hanford that had made it to completion, then to actually generate electricity. Part of the nuclear boom in the 1960s-1970s (it’s alright, it’s alright, etc.) the nuclear plants of the Washington Public Power Supply System were designed to supply cheap electricity to the US and beyond.
Over the years, failures in building design, (the whole 60s Chernobyl design), delays in construction and a series of screw-ups (low-bid contractors) let the public to view WPPSS by it’s acronym “whoops” as in what a screw-up . Added to the project’s problems, as if they needed more problems, was that they were like hitting the clown target with a baseball; Idiots on Patrol. Technology had passed them by; environmentalists both local and national had them by the short hairs. They did vent poison gasses, whoops, which poisoned the grasses to the east of the plant with high levels of radiation, which the milk cows ate, which was passed forward to the unsuspecting public. (whoops)
In the end, the NP-2 plant was purchased by a group of power
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