Friday, October 10, 2014

The Abandoned Communist Nuclear Reactor That Could Have Killed Us All

The Abandoned Communist Nuclear Reactor That Could Have Killed Us All
Ashley Feinberg

Just 90 miles off the tip of Florida lies a half-baked, abandoned relic
of the Cold War-era arms race—what was once going to be a joint
Cuban-Soviet nuclear reactor. And thank god it never panned out. Because
not only do we now have these incredible shots from photographer Darmon
Richter, but every last aspect of this thing would have been a total and
utter disaster.

It all started back in 1976, when comrades in communism, Cuba and the
Soviet Union, agreed to build two nuclear reactors near Juragua, Cuba.
And if it had ever been finished, just one of these 440-megawatt
reactors could have satisfied over 15 percent of Cuba's energy needs. As
The New York Times explained when construction officially ceased, this
wasn't your everyday commie reactor:

The V.V.E.R. design, which was the most advanced at the time, was the
first to be exported by Moscow for use in a tropical climate. It differs
from the Chernobyl-style design in that the radioactive core and fuel
elements are contained within a pressurized steel vessel.
Construction didn't start until 1983, which gave Cuba 10 years to build
their potential-livelihood, all thanks to the the steady flow of Soviet
funds. Of course, when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the essential
funds ceased, over 300 former Soviet technicians returned to the
motherland, and all construction came to a standstill—despite the fact
that 40 percent of the heavy machinery had already been installed.

Still, it wasn't over quite yet. The whole project spent nearly a decade
in limbo, until finally, in 2000, Fidel Castro told Vladamir Putin that
he was done with the two countries' former joint-dream. Now, the power
plant at Juragua was officially little more than a testament to what
could have been—which is a very good thing. Because as it turns out,
"what could have been" basically entailed wildly dangerous conditions
and potentially a whole mess of destruction.

According to a 2000 report from Manuel Cereijo at the College of
Engineering at Florida International University:

The possibility of an accident occurring at Juragua, upon its operation,
according to experts, is 15 times greater than the probabilities in a
United States plant. According to air weather patterns around
Cienfuegos, it would take only 24 hours for radioactive materials to
reach Florida.
It wouldn't just be Cuba and the US facing a fallout threat, though. All
of Central America and the Caribbean could have been directly at risk of
radiation in the (relatively likely) event of an accident. And even if
everything had gone according to plan, Cuba still would have been faced
with the problem of dealing with the inevitable nuclear waste—because as
it stands, the itty bitty island of Cuba would have had no suitable
place to dispose of it. In which case, off to the ocean it'd go.

During constructions, Cuba's "solution" was to dump the waste in a
sea-level patch of ocean near the plant itself. And as Cereijo's report
explains, "this would contaminate flora, fauna and the Cuban
population." So, less than ideal.

What's more, just because the design itself may have been advanced for
its day doesn't mean the Soviets would have necessarily been able to
implement it properly or, more importantly, safely. Pretty much every
protection and diagnostics system in place was behind Western standards:

The reactors have poor leak-tightness of confinement. There is also an
unknown quality of plant equipment and construction, due to lack of
documentation on design, manufacturing and construction, and reported
instances of poor quality materials being re-worked at plant sites.
There are also major variations in operating and emergency procedures,
operator training, and operational safety among plants using VVER-440.

In addition to being poorly built, even if there was a problem on the
horizon, workers would have absolutely no idea until it was too late;
Cuba had no preventative method of monitoring radioactivity levels. So
if/when disaster did strike, South Florida would have less than a day
before toxic materials reached its shore. And everyone within an 18-mile
radius of the accident would effectively find themselves in a so-called
"dead zone"—an area in which nothing could possibly survive.

Even the project's own engineers had grave concerns about what it was
they were being asked to build. In 1994, an
engineer-turned-Soviet-defector essentially called the reactor a tragedy
waiting to happen. According to a 1994 paper published in The
Nonproliferation Review, a journal covering weapons and their
environmental effects:

Defector Vladimir Cervera, a senior engineer responsible for overseeing
quality control at the reactor, stated that x-ray analysis showed that
the welding pipes for the cooling system were weakened by air pockets,
bad soldering, and heat damage. Of the pipes that were originally
approved, 15 percent were later found to be flawed.

Another defector, Jose Oro, a senior nuclear engineer at the site,
stated that the support structure of the plant contains numerous faulty
seals and structural defects, and that the steam supply system has been
left outdoors and uncovered since December 1990. This would have exposed
the equipment to highly corrosive tropical salt air, risking critical
damage.
If the Cold War hadn't ended when it did, these frightening
possibilities may very well have become a nightmarish reality.

Thankfully, though, these photos and some abandoned, absurdly faulty
machinery are all that remains of Cuba's attempt at nuclear power. And
at least for now, that's not likely to change.

Source: The Abandoned Communist Nuclear Reactor That Could Have Killed
Us All -
http://gizmodo.com/the-abandoned-communist-reactor-that-could-have-killed-1644415889

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