Talk:Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station

Cleanup
This write up is so poor, that I think it should be discarded entirely and a new one written. There are numerous factual and grammatical errors throughout. jmsiiJmsii 21:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Lots of work since then... the article now looks reasonable to me. Are we getting close to removing the cleanup tag? Andrewa 18:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, it's still start-class, but it doesn't need the tag anymore. Next time I stop by I'll take it off (feel free to do it yourself). Last chance for objections. Alfredo22 03:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Ugh, is the new cut and paste from the NRC web page really an improvement (Sept 13 edit)? It's a lot longer may be too technical.  I may revert it.  I don't think it was the solution to our citation problems. Alfredo22 04:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The electric power output of the Fermi I breeder reactor was 61 MW(e), not 94. Perhaps it was eventually expected to get to 94 or more, but it never reached that power. (Reference: American Nuclear Society "World List of Nuclear Power Plants") Anuke (talk) 16:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Fermi 3
On DTE Energy's main website's news does speak of DTE possibly building an additional reactor. The final desicison has not been made, but the NRC has given them the ability to make this new reactor. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.38.3.94 (talk) 00:08, 23 March 2007 (UTC).

Someone posted the below in the article. I moved it here for consideration:

The second cooling tower was NOT for the original Fermi 3. The design of the Fermi 2 Main Condenser requires 2 cooling towers due to it's higher designed flow. A former Fermi Senior Reactor Operator.

We have to remove two reference articles in this... well... article. The conclusions drawn from them are a stretch, at best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.52.125 (talk) 04:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

[I assume that last was an attempt at a sig] Mzmadmike (talk) 05:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The article still states that Fermi 3 both is and is not planned, in the Fermi 3 and Reactor Data sections. __ 2warped@gmail.com 68.36.147.128 (talk) 08:08, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

We Almost Lost Detroit
This book is not a fiction book, regardless of how to owners would like it classified. The libary of congress lists it in 621 of the Dewey Decimal system as "Applied Physics" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessicabreckenridge (talk • contribs) 03:20, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Despite how the Library of Congress has this book classified it is a book of fiction, the purported facts of the book are not verifiable. FOIA requests to the Monroe County Sherriff's Department and the Michigan State Police do not find any record of the calls the book claims were made to central dispatch of Monroe County. All calls into the emergency center are routinely logged for legal reasons, yet the calls are not in the record.

Secondly the book was refuted by engineers who worked at the plant at the time of the incident in a paper entitled clearly "We Did Not Almost Lose Detroit!" by Earl Page referred to @ http://local.ans.org/mi/bios/page_earl.htm Energy Citations Database also has reference to this work @ http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=7353715 but the paper is not available in electronic format. I have personally viewed and held a copy which is kept in the reference center of the Monroe County Library System.

Third while attempting to copy the edit above to dispute it I accidentally deleted the paragraph, someone needs to bring it back so it can be properly disputed and reviewed.

Tanada 21:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that "contains only verifiable facts" is the standard that divides fiction and non-fiction. Under that standard, perhaps 90% of all non-fiction would have to be re-classified. If you have a beef with the events in the book, argue with those events, rather than impugning the classification of the book.

I lived through this event, just a few miles away, and am familiar with some of the players. My mother was active in watching the plant, and the "Fermi Whistleblowers" hotline phone rang in our house for some time. I can assure you that more went on than is reported in call logs, precisely because of the "legal reasons" you cite. A high-school buddy's friend was an engineer during the crisis, and I got to hear some of the chit-chat. He was dead in his early '50's from leukaemia, less than a decade later.

Of course, none of this is appropriate for the main page. I'm writing this because my personal experiences of the time make me believe Fuller is more correct than incorrect. --Bytesmiths (talk) 17:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

IF FERMI I WAS THE SCENE OF THE SECOND-WORST DISASTER of US nuclear plants, should that not be the lede of this article? If not, then perhaps the lede should be "Fermi I was the shortest-lived power plant anyone has ever heard of.  It operated for 5 1/2 years before retirement 'due to lack of funds and aging equipment.'"  Seriously, it is evident that Detroit Edison largely wrote this article. There is certainly more to the story of its retirement than "lack of funds and aging equipment."C. Cerf (talk) 21:20, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Incident 1966, 700°F ??
Sodium cooled fast reactor operating at 500°C=900°F. PWR operating from 300°C=540°F (AP1000) to 500°C=900°F (EPR, RBMK). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.24.104.114 (talk) 07:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Can we get a reference here?
"On October 5, 1966 Fermi 1 suffered a partial fuel meltdown, although no radioactive material was released."

anyone? an NRC.gov reference, maybe? something like that would have to be on record... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.52.125 (talk) 04:43, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Dispute about "no one injured"
Although it is almost impossible to link radiation exposure with health problems much later, I think there should be room for expressing dispute over the phrase "no one was injured."

I lived less than five miles from Fermi 1; I was eleven years old at the time.

I later played in a garage band with Tony Harrigan, who played electric violin. His father was Phil Harrigan, an engineer at the plant. His father had taken me on a tour of Fermi II while they were still struggling to bring Fermi I back on-line. Phil was very actively involved in the diagnosis and repair, and had worked around the clock during the crisis, often in a state of panic, often using improvised tools, often ignoring proper safety protocol, generally without a dosimeter.

Within a decade, Phil was dead of leukaemia, in his early 50's. I remember Tony's mother crying and saying, "They're dropping like flies."

My mother (Shirley Steinman) became active in the anti-Fermi movement. For some years, the confidential Fermi whistle-blower phone rang in our house. She has notes of calls from people who had worked through the accident and then come down with cancer, fearing for their jobs, claiming that whenever anyone got cancer at Fermi, they were immediately fired. She says almost no one who worked at Fermi I during the accident is still alive, all succumbing to various cancers.

So, my question is, what is the proper way to add this information? If I get my mother's written notes from the whistle-blower hot line, can they be cited as a reference? Can first-person testimony be included while maintaining neutral point-of-view?

People were injured as a result of the Fermi I melt-down. As I mentioned, it's hard to link cause and effect over a decade or longer, but I'm also sure a lot of this information has been covered up.

Bytesmiths (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I've since changed the statement regarding lack of injury, and included a reference to a recent article: Cancer questions grow around Fermi nuclear plant --Bytesmiths (talk) 18:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've removed it. Personal correspondence is not a reliable source. It would need to be published by a reliable source. Exceptional claims require exceptional sources. The Michigan messenger article does not adequately support the statement that the "cancer rate has tripled since the meltdown" The article makes no mention of the meltdown or the Fermi 1 reactor. It specifically states that the rate tripled between 1996 and 2005 - 30-40 years after the incident, for people under the age of 25. Mr.Z-man 05:18, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I cleaned up the references
I added an inline citation to an NRC page about Fermi 1, an inline citation to an NRC page about Fermi 2, and deleted 2 dead links. I also deleted a reference link that showed as "Fermi 3". It went to a website of a group (or groups) opposed to the licensing of the proposed reactor in Michigan. Not shilling here for nuclear power or saying anti-nuke people are wrong, but if opposition to nuke plants is going to be covered on Wikipedia then it needs to be better organized than that. I also removed a sentence from 15 months ago that simply stated the current operational status of one of the reactors. Sloppy. There's a NRC page that gives up-to-date information like that for ALL reactors in the US, but again, if it's going to be presented then it should be done in a logical and consistent manner. The sentence I removed was not; it was random.

I removed the sentence that said "no one was injured" regarding the Fermi I accident. Since there is now an authoritative reference to the NRC that states no harmful radiation was released, then it logically follows that noone was injured (OT: is noone a word? doesn't look right). One cannot be injured by something that did not happen. Saying "no one was harmed" is moot. I have no problem at all if someone can come up with a reference that convincingly makes the argument that radiation was, in fact, released, and that people suffered because of it. You don't have to prove it beyond a doubt, but there has to be some evidence for it, and I agree a personal recollection is not enough.

One man's fact is another man's conspiracy theory, and the issue of nuclear power is sure to get a lot of attention in the wake of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crises. I hope Wikipedia isn't affected too much by extreme POV on either side of the debate. It would be nice if these pages regarding nuke power could remain free of moderation/lockdown/whatever. I don't edit much and am not up to speed on all the current policies. If I was a betting man, though, I'd wager on massive vandalism incoming sooner rather than later. JeffTracy (talk)

Details concerning the partial meltdown
I believe the description of the partial meltdown of Fermi I is misleading. My understanding is that there was a cone at the bottom of the containment vessel that was designed to spread the nuclear material around its perimeter in the event of a meltdown. The cone had titanium plates welded to the outside. One of these plates broke free and followed the sodium flow, which went from bottom to top of the containment vessel. The plate impinged on the bottom of the reactor core, blocking cooling to several fuel rod assemblies. The plate was unfortunately described as being "about the size of a beer can", and this was misconstrued in the press as actually being a beer can. I worked at Fermi II briefly in the 1980's, and actually held the offending plate in my hands (it was no longer radioactive).

Fermi II shutdown and power outages
The article says that the shutdown of Fermi II on June 6, 2010 left 30,000 people in the area without power. This is inaccurate. A shutdown of a power plant, by itself, does not leave anyone without power. Power plants in the United States and Canada are interconnected, and if one shuts down, others are run to provide the needed power. The 30,000 customers were without power because the electric lines were down, not because the plant was shut down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.53.120.63 (talk) 20:53, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

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In popular culture
Song: Gil Scott Heron - We almost Lost Detroit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.243.2.30 (talk) 18:17, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Unmentioned major accident, failure of the main turbine at Fermi 2, Christmas Day 1993
A blade of the main turbine broke apart on December 25th 1993. This huge chunk of metal tore through the plant narrowly missing the main containment vessel. It caused a fire and broke cooling pipes, which flooded the lower level of the plant with slightly radioactive water. It remained flooded for many months until the operator got permission to pump this water into Lake Erie. This incident didn't cause a major "meltdown" or release of highly radioactive material; to some degree proving that some of the safety protocols did work. If my memory is correct, the most egregious cause of this incident was that there was a documented crack in the turbine blade. It had been, with the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, been welded several times rather then be replaced. How did this not make it into the article!? 2601:406:4302:59F0:D31:5C3B:673C:5C64 (talk) 17:32, 4 April 2022 (UTC)