Australia, Country Fire Service, environment, fire departments, Fire Service, Firefighters, Forest Fires, grass fires, low visibility, major hazard management, major hazards, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Nothing Like the Sun, nuclear dangers, nuclear energy, nuclear fuel chain, nuclear power, nuclear reactor meltdown, nuclear regulatory commission, radiological risk management, renewable energy, renewables, risk management, Royal Nuclear Commission, rural fire departments, solar energy, South Australia, South Australia Country Fire Service, South Australia Metropolitan Fire Service, Victoria Fire Authority, volunteerism, wildfires, wildland fires
From “Bushfire Safety and Survival for Businesses and Organisations“, p. 19: http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/public/download.jsp?id=30936
“Bushfires in Australia are frequent events during the hotter months of the year, due to Australia’s mostly hot, dry climate. Each year, such fires impact extensive areas”
See more here: http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/prepare_for_bushfire/be_bushfire_ready/be_bushfire_ready_app.jsp#step1
According to the South Australia Country Fire Service, nearly 1/2 of people living in bushfire prone areas don’t understand the threat. This is apparently true of those proposing adding nuclear anything in Australia. For, in such a context, the risks of nuclear anything are clearly even higher than average. And, the solar potential in Australia is higher than average. The choice should be clear.
CC: SolarGIS © 2015 GeoModel Solar Australia
Almost 1/3rd of South Australia’s energy production is renewable energy, of which around 27% is wind, meaning that there is a huge, untapped, solar potential. 
In January of this year (2015) over 700 South Australian Country Fire Service volunteers fought the Sampson Flat bushfire series, helped by teams from New South Wales Rural Fire Service and Victoria Fire Authority, over the course of a week. On “Black Sunday” 1955 in South Australia, 1,000 Emergency Fire Service volunteers fought fires, but were overwhelmed and 2,500 citizens volunteered to help. For the 1983 Ash Wednesday Bushfires (II), 130,000 firefighters, defence force personnel, relief workers and support crews worked to fight the bushfires. Clearly this is serious business and dangerous in the best of circumstances. Adding nuclear to firestorms is even more dangerous than the Fukushima earthquake-tsunami disaster.
Firefighting in Australia, and most of the world, is largely dependent upon volunteerism. Making these volunteer firefighters face radiological risks associated with additional nuclear facilities (there is already uranium mining in Australia) is unfair, and may jeopardize the entire system of volunteerism. As the volunteers are covered by workers compensation, it appears that it would potentially jeopardize the entire workers comp system, as well. It could even make it more difficult to recruit paid firefighters.
The South Australia Country Fire Service has 13,500 volunteers, of which 1,000 are cadets ages 11 to 16 years of age. The South Australia Metropolitan Fire Service (SAMFS) has 1,000 firefighters. Bushfire season in Australia appears to be somewhat like US tornado season on steroids. It is serious business. Australia even gets fire induced tornados!
Reflecting the seriousness of the matter, South Australia’s Country Fire Service has an amazing web site, with so much information that it is difficult to choose from. But, even a small amount of time spent, on this most interesting of all web sites, drives home the seriousness of Australian Bushfires and Firestorms. Other parts of the world increasingly afflicted by wildfires can learn much from the SA Country Fire Service (CFS) web site.
Since the different parts of the nuclear fuel chain fall under the category of “businesses and organisations” we invite you to take a look at a couple of pages from the 48 page informational book: “Bushfire Safety and Survival for Businesses and Organisations.” What if this “business” were a nuclear power station, for instance?
“What to expect in the event of a Bushfire?” (from p. 24 of “Bushfire Safety and Survival for Businesses and Organisations” http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/public/download.jsp?id=30936
1) Loss of Power: Nuclear Power Stations require power from the grid or backup power for cooling of the reactor and spent fuel pool. Without cooling water, a nuclear meltdown, which could be a major nuclear disaster, will occur in a very short time-frame. Nuclear reactors can not be totally shut down. Backup generators can be clogged with smoke. Fire sucks up oxygen needed to operate the diesel generators. It also sucks up oxygen needed by workers to breathe. Loss of power and smoke can both lead to loss of functional electronics-instrumentation.
2) Loss of Reticulated (Piped) water: Water is required for the cooling of the reactor and spent fuel and for fire-fighting.
3) Loss of Communications: Cannot call for help or backup; Cannot communicate the extent of the problem, etc.
4) Smoke, Darkness, etc: Smoke can clog the generators and air filters; can make it impossible for workers to breathe and do the necessary work to prevent a nuclear reactor meltdown, as can darkness.
5) No available firetrucks; no backup; difficulty or impossibility of any backup workers accessing the site.
6) No warning: Even if there were warning, it would be insufficient, and generators for pumps and cooling water would still be required; electronics would still be impacted.
Some considerations from: “Forest fire propagation simulations for a risk assessment methodology development for a nuclear power plant“, by Yasushi Okano *, Hidemasa Yamano http://wp.me/p2FMRA-4Un
From the above:
Initiator and sequence:
Forest fire breakout; forest fire spread.
Heat; Flame; Smoke; Flying sparks
Intensity and Key Parameters:
Fireline intensity; Reaction intensity; Flame length; Rate of spread; smoke density
Possible Consequential Effects:
Probability firebreak breach; temperature rise by radiation; cable breaking; fire arrival time
Filter Plugging; Low Visibility; spot fire
Direct-Indirect Potential challenges on Nuclear Power Stations:
Direct- Structures: Building and external; fuel tanks; intake air [air filters of cooler and diesel generators.
Line cut-off [electric power; telecommunications; obstruction to human actions [access difficulty; shortened grace period
A lot of these points are clarified by examining the Brown’s Ferry accident in the US, even though the fire started inside, and where meltdown was only narrowly avoided. It also shows the importance of living people on site, who have not fainted, and who are able to react and help compensate for failed equipment.
“How Some Safety Systems were Lost
Beginning at 12:55, the electrical supply was lost both to control and power the emergency core cooling system and other reactor shutdown equipment on Unit 1. The normal feedwater system was lost; the reactor core spray system was lost; the low-pressure ECCS was lost; the reactor core isolation cooling system was lost; and most of the instrumentation which tells the control room what is going on in the reactor was lost. According to the Unit 1 operator, “I checked and found that the only water supply to the reactor at this time was the control rod drive pump, so I increased its output to maximum.”
Meanwhile, a few feet away on the Unit 2 side of the control room, warning lights had also been going off for some time. A shift engineer stated,
“Panel lights were changing color, going on and off. I noticed the annunciators on all four diesel generator control circuits showed ground alarms. I notified the shift engineer of this condition and said I didn’t think they would start.”
According to the official TVA report,
“At 1:00 pm the Unit 2 operator observed decreasing reactor power, many scram alarms, and the loss of some indicating lights. The operator put the reactor in shutdown mode.”
Some of the shutdown equipment began failing on Unit 2, and the high-pressure ECCS was lost at 1:45 pm. Control over the reactor relief valves was lost at 1:20 pm and not restored until 2:15 pm, at which time the reactor was depressurized by using the relief valves and brought under control.
How a Meltdown was Averted
“On the Unit 1 side of the control room things were not going so well. According to the Unit 1 operator,
“At about 1:15 I lost my nuclear instrumentation. I only had control of four relief valves….
“At about 1:30, I knew that the reactor water level could not be maintained, and I was concerned about uncovering the core.”
Had the core become uncovered, a meltdown of the reactor fuel would have begun because of the radioactive decay heat in the fuel.
In order to prevent the reactor water from boiling off, it was necessary to get more water into the core than the single high-pressure control rod drive pump could provide. It was decided that by opening the reactor relief valves, the reactor would be depressurized from 1020 to below 350 pounds per square inch, where a low-pressure pump would be capable of forcing water in to keep the core covered. None of the normal or emergency low-pressure pumps were working, however, so a makeshift arrangement was made, using a condensate booster pump. This was able to provide a temporarily adequate supply of water to the reactor, although the level dropped from its normal 200 inches above the core down to only 48 inches. Using the makeshift system, the Unit 1 reactor was under control for the time being.
Unit 2 was also under control, but by a rather thin margin. The “A” and “C” subsystems of the low-pressure ECCS and the core spray system had been lost early in the incident, and the “B” system failed intermittently between 1:35 pm and 4:35 pm. With only one subsystem of the low-pressure ECCS available, the Unit 2 operator resorted to using the condensate booster pump arrangement similar to the one that had been rigged up for Unit 1.”
““The control room was filling with thick smoke and fumes. The shift engineer and others were choking and coughing on the smoke. It was obvious the control room would have to be evacuated in a very short time unless ventilation was provided.”
Why the Workers Couldn’t Breathe
The official Nuclear Regulatory Commission report noted other deficiencies:
“Breathing apparatus was in short supply and not all of the Scott air packs were serviceable. Some did not have face masks and others were not fully charged at the time of the start of the fire. The breathing apparatus was recharged from precharged bulk cylinders by pressure equalization. As the pressure in the bulk cylinders decreased, the resulting pressure decrease in the Scott packs limited the length of time that the personnel could remain at the scene of the fire.”
One of the assistant unit operators who was sent into the reactor building to manually open the RHR cooling valves reported,
“We made three tries but could not get to the valves. Our breathing equipment could only supply 18 minutes of air per tank, which was not sufficient to enable us to get to the valves and back out of the area. The air tanks were being recharged, but the pressure in the main tanks was not strong enough to fill the tanks to their normal air supply. After the third attempt we went back to the control room and told the assistant shift engineer of the problem and that we needed different equipment or fully charged tanks to succeed.” Excerpted from: “The Fire at the Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Power Station” by David Dinsmore Comey from “Not Man Apart“, published by Friends of the Earth, California, 1976. http://www.ccnr.org/browns_ferry.html (Emphasis added).
The US NRC glosses over the event:
“control circuits for many of the systems which could be used for Unit 1 were ultimately disabled by the fire, the station operating personnel were able to institute alternative measures by which the primary system could be depressurized and adequate cooling water supplied to the reactor vessel.” http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/bulletins/1975/bl75004a.html
These pages from “Bushfire Safety and Survival for Businesses and Organisations” further illustrate and clarify the problems of inability of backup personnel to access sites; lack of communications:
From: “Bushfire safety and survival for businesses and organisations“: http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/public/download.jsp?id=30936 (Red underline added)
2015 Sampson Flat Bushfires
“The 2015 Sampson Flat bushfires were a series of bushfires in Australia in the state of South Australia, that primarily effected the Adelaide region, predominantly the Adelaide Hills and the outer Adelaide metropolitan area. The fires began on 2 January 2015 during a day of extreme heat and lasted until 9 January 2015.
The fires began in the outer northern area of the city, in the suburb of Sampson Flat. It later travelled southeast towards the Kersbrook township and across the Mount Lofty Ranges toward the Adelaide Hills….Over 700 South Australian Country Fire Service volunteers were involved in fighting the fire, supplemented by teams from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service and Victorian Country Fire Authority. A record number of 31 aircraft were available to assist in fighting the fire.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Sampson_Flat_bushfires
Black Sunday 1955
“Around 1,000 Emergency Fire Service volunteers from 60 brigades were tasked to the fires, but were overwhelmed. At 10am, the EFS head office requested urgent public assistance. Around 2,500 citizens volunteered.”
Ash Wednesday Bushfires of 1983
“The Ash Wednesday bushfires, known in South Australia as Ash Wednesday II, were a series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern Australia on 16 February 1983, which was Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar. Within twelve hours, more than 180 fires fanned by winds of up to 110 km/h (68 mph) caused widespread destruction across the states of Victoria and South Australia. Years of severe drought and extreme weather combined to create one of Australia’s worst fire days in a century. The fires became the deadliest bushfire in Australian history, until the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.
In Victoria, 47 people died, while in South Australia there were 28 deaths. This included 14 CFA and 3 CFS volunteer fire-fighters who died across both states that day. Many fatalities were as a result of firestorm conditions caused by a sudden and violent wind change in the evening which rapidly changed the direction and size of the fire front. The speed and ferocity of the flames, aided by abundant fuels and a landscape immersed in smoke, made fire suppression and containment impossible. In many cases, residents fended for themselves as fires broke communications, cut off escape routes and severed electricity and water supplies. Up to 8,000 people were evacuated in Victoria at the height of the crisis and a state of disaster was declared for the first time in South Australia’s history.
Ash Wednesday was one of Australia’s costliest natural disasters. Over 3,700 buildings were destroyed or damaged and 2,545 individuals and families lost their homes. Livestock losses were very high, with over 340,000 sheep, 18,000 cattle and numerous native animals either dead or later destroyed. A total of 4,540 insurance claims were paid totalling A$176 million with a total estimated cost of well over $400 million (1983 values) for both states or $1.3 billion in adjusted terms (2007).
The emergency saw the largest number of volunteers called to duty from across Australia at the same time—an estimated 130,000 firefighters, defence force personnel, relief workers and support crews.”
List of Major Bushfires in Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia#Major_bushfires_in_Australia
Notes; References; Additional Information
 “During 2012-13, South Australia produced 31.5% of the state’s total energy production from renewable energy.” https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/water-energy-and-environment/energy/energy-supply-and-sources/renewable-energy-sources/solar-energy/solar-energy-in-south-australia “The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) estimates that in 2012-13 approximately 27% of the state’s energy production came from wind power.” https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/water-energy-and-environment/energy/energy-supply-and-sources/renewable-energy-sources/wind-energy/wind-energy-in-sa Note that this is energy production. It doesn’t tell how this compares to usage. It may not include off-grid solar and wind. There is an above average huge, untapped, solar energy potential in Australia. It is absolutely criminal that Australia and the US are not totally dependent upon solar with wind for backup, and a bit of biofuels.
“In South Australia, there are two legislated fire fighting organisations. The South Australian Metropolitan FireService(SAMFS)and the South Australian Country Fire Service” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_fire_department
“The South Australian Country Fire Service (CFS) serves communities through dedicated volunteers delivering professional fire and rescue services to outer metropolitan, regional and rural South Australia.
CFS has strong representation in the community across South Australia. This is achieved through our 13,500 volunteers, including our cadets, who are committed to protecting their communities. CFS has 425 brigades operating across the State with a fleet of over 850 fire trucks. Local brigades contribute to out of area deployments to assist neighbouring communities, to communities elsewhere in the State, and interstate where required.” http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/about.jsp (Accessed 2 Aug. 2015)
“SA Country Fire Service (CFS) accepts young men and women aged between 11-18 years to be cadets. At 16 years you have a choice – you can talk with your Brigade Captain and decide if you want to remain as a cadet OR join the Senior Brigade in non-operational support OR become an operational firefighter.” http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/volunteers_and_careers/cadets.jsp#WhyDoNearly1000YoungPeopleBelongtotheCFS (Accessed 2 Aug. 2015)
“The MFS is a fully professional organisation, recognised for excellence of service provision and employs more than 1,000 staff across 36 stations (20 metropolitan and 16 regional) in South Australia.” http://www.mfs.sa.gov.au/site/about_us/our_organisation.jsp (Accessed 2 Aug. 2015)
“Did you know:
More than 35 suburbs in Adelaide’s fringes are in bushfire prone areas
More than 75 towns in the Adelaide Hills, Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island are in bushfire prone areas
75 towns in other parts of rural South Australia are in bushfire prone areas” http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/prepare_for_bushfire/be_bushfire_ready.jsp (accessed 2 August 2015)
“Bushfire Safety and Survival for Businesses and Organisations.”