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Samurai-Sword Maker May Cool Nuclear Revival
NobleSavage sends a story from Bloomberg about Japan Steel Works Ltd., a company that still makes Samurai swords, and how it may control the fate of the global nuclear-energy renaissance. "There stands the only plant in the world, a survivor of Allied bombing in World War II, capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak. Utilities that won't need the equipment for years are making $100 million down payments now on components Japan Steel makes from 600-ton ingots. Each year the Tokyo-based company can turn out just four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor. Even after it doubles capacity in the next two years, there won't be enough production to meet building plans."
So what I want to know is... can they make me a sword out of uranium? Now THAT would be sweet.
they should now by know
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
This sounds like an area where American metal working could enjoy some sort of renaissance. I wonder what the start-up costs for such an endeavor are, what the future growth and profit margins are, and where such competency could be applied outside of reactors and and swords. But, with low skill metal working being outsourced, such specialized skills might be a place for America to specialize, especially as the dollar continues to fall.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
If they can't meet demands now, and they will be backlogged for years to come, I'm wondering why 5 years to catch up is even remotely important at this point? And, you know, if the business goes south you can still make swords afterwords.
These story elements (Japan, WWII, Allied bombing and nuclear technology) usually have a different theme than protecting the world from the hazards of nuclear fission gone awry.
+1 Ironic
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
But can't you make more places to build them? I realize that you may need specific hardware to forge this stuff out of one piece of steel, but seems to me that if you really needed them, you could make more than one factory.
The guys who make Swiss Army knives have nearly perfected fusion reactors. That can open wine bottles.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I for one welcome our new Nuclear Samurai Overlords.
a matter of time before some company starts making cheap ripp-offs of these, and there will be enough of these puppies on the market to fill everyones needs.
maybe some company from japan or so... wait, nevermind...
As I understand it CANDU reactors don't even use a pressure vessel as such, but instead uses an assembly of pressurized tubes. One for each fuel bundle. This design was chosen precisely because it eliminated the need for this type of technological bottleneck and it is still in use today. I think tfa neglects to mention that there are several reactor designs that aren't dependent on this particular company.
This article is from 2006. Surely there's more recent news, even about this topic?
If you have to ask - you don't qualify for one. They might say something on the JP side of the site - away from gaijin eyes.
What is strange is that there are no chinese company claiming i can do the same for cheaper... They always copy anything they can (at least so claim the japanese people I meet)
Surely they must be protecting their production processes to still be the only ones in asia to produce that.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
I am puzzled. In last thirty years, our country in the heart of Europe has independently manufactured about twenty five complete reactor units. And we're not exactly the pinnacle of the world's engineering, even though compared to our neighbours, we might be pretty good. I would expect USA and other western countries having much more resources than us to be more independent in this respect. Now it may be that the qualiry criteria have been tightened up a little, but still, USA, for example, is a huge country. Don't tell me that a country capable of delivering people to Moon and space probes to the outer Solar system can't manufacture even a single bloody reactor vessel.
Ezekiel 23:20
There weren't any factories that built Apollo's when we decided to go to the moon but somehow we managed.
I think someone will be on top of this problem when the money is there.
New nuclear build is not going to grind to a halt because this plant can't keep up.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
to use in committing "sepuku" maybe?
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Commander we need that factory.
It's the only factory in the world that can produce nuclear reactor cores.
If you complete this mission we will get a +20% bonus in our nuclear plants.
You can't let the enemy have that!!!
Nuclear fission is a poor solution anyway. Inherent safety problems, limited fuel supply (on the order of a century or two at most, perhaps much less), security concerns (both weapons technology proliferation and terrorist targeting concerns), unsolved waste disposal problems - the only reason this gets the support it does is because the military-industrial complex loves nuclear technologies, and some technical types who grew up on science fiction have a romantic attachment to Harassing the Power of the Atom.
We should be devoting our resources to efficiency, renewables (including orbital photovoltaic), accelerator-based thorium reactors, and fusion. Building new fission reactors is a distraction from the real solutions.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I work reasonably closely with manufacturers of all sorts of marine equipment. Lifeboat davits, cranes, winches, diesel engines, etc. The most common thing they do when they can't source a part is change the design. This encourages innovation, and usually the new design is safer than the old one anyway. If you're waiting on a part for 2+ years for a crane, are you going to wait and see if someone else starts manufacturing them? No. You're going to change that design (maybe 6 months, probably less) and build it.
Nuclear engineering may be a lot different since everyone wants to stick with what has worked in the past, but can't getting the parts to build something usually results in a new design in my experience.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Does the sword run Linux?
Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
You know not only Japan has the know how of making nuclear reactors. There is Russia, France and even US. Though arguably only Japan has semi decent nuclear energy policy .Us has the most retarded policy of the bunch and France recently went the dumb way as well.
to a Hanzo Hattori sword?
Who needs giant containment vessels anymore? Toshiba has already announced the design of a small reactor capable of powering a single building or a neighborhood of homes. Why build giant nuclear reactors when we could have a distributed network of small power plants.
If it takes three weeks to forge one vessel, why can they only produce four vessels per year?
Also, the forging is described as a cylinder, which leaves the top and bottom of the pressure vessel. How do you weld 30 cm thick steel? ISTR reading about submarine construction (which use a pressure hull maybe a few cm thick) where welding the hull sections had to take place at night because daytime operations would overload the local power grid. These vessels would be even more difficult to weld correctly.
, they are relatively "clean", and employ lots of white collar/upper middle class workers. Most communities were glad to have them built nearby. Especially, when they were helping "beat those commies to the moon".
A heavy steel forging operation, OTOH, would face opposition because of the smokestack emissions, and the ingrained idea that we don't need workers who actually MAKE anything anymore, when we can base our entire economy on shuffling money around and suing each other.
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I think the article confuses the reactor vessel with the containment vessel.
A reactor vessel is a large-room-sized steel vessel, that holds the fuel and steam transfer pipes and so forth and is subjected to huge internal pressures in normal operation.
A containment vessel is the building-sized concrete structure that gives many reactors buildings their impressive dome shape. It is only important in the case of an accident, when it might be subjected to pressures on the order of an atmosphere or so. It is intended to hold in or contain any radioactive materials released after an accident has occurred.
Interestingly enough, in light of his demonization by anti-nuclear factions, it was Edward Teller who was largely responsible for insisting on containment vessels, a nice simple brute-force protection measure.
Every reactor has a reactor vessel, but not all reactors have containment vessels. Some reactors, such as Chernobyl, and, in the United States, GE boiling-water reactors such as the one in Plymouth, Massachusetts have very ordinary-looking block-like buildings rather than containment domes. These reactors are designed to "suppress" pressure in an accident rather than "contain" it, by the use of engineered mechanisms that open valves at the right time and direct steam through big tanks of water, cooling it down and condensing it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The Cliffs Of Insanity!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'm sure China is capable of certifying and delivering these new designs at a lower cost.
No, no. Those are not your tax dollars coming to arrest you. They are my tax dollars.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
for nuclear reactors. they're building them to ENSLAVE WHALES
maybe the japanese are trying to NUKE THE WHALES?
first fake scientific research, now this?
will the japanese stop at nothing to satisfy their insatiable whale flesh thirst?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They have tours of Japan Steel Work's sword factories, following link has some pictures:
http://ameblo.jp/machizukuri-engineer/entry-10070632943.html
An older example of the swords they make (from the Russo-Japanese war):
http://www.e-sword.jp/sale/0650/0650_1006syousai.htm
The company also uses sword-making as a source of research that they apply to other field's of forging
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110001457129/
To call Japan Steel Works a "sword maker" is like referring to Microsoft as "that company that makes Minesweeper". Japan Steel Works is a very large steel company that makes a very wide variety of products (of which swords are a very, very small part) and did $2 billion worth of sales in 2007 alone.
I mean seriously, Slashdot, isn't this story cool enough without adding misleading sensationalist crap onto it?
The
Forging the reactor vessel midsection in one piece at this factory is not all that much better.
Isn't there a bit in Frank Miller's Elektra Assasin, where Elektra uses a Samurai Sword to kill a nigh-indestructible cyborg, essentially by slicing through his central core, which contains a nuclear reactor?
But release all their women first. Especially the hot ones.
Until you actually read the article and see that your cheap foreign labour is in Japan? Japan hasn't been cheap in decades.
Oh and where are those Intel chips actually produced?
Read up on Henry Ford and exactly why he allowed his factory workers special loans to buy the cars they produced. If a rabid capatalist understood, why don't you?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What I want to know is, why isn't this being done in the 'States as well? For the better part of the last century, steel was one of the United States' best manufactured export. The US' steel quality was the envy of the world, and sometime in the last decade or so, it's gone nonexistent. I suspect that offshoring is the primary (if not the sole) reason for the decline, and if so, it's a sad day indeed. While the Michigan and Illinois governments did plenty to ruin the environment for business in their states, this can't be the only reason.
So sad.
Why not just cast the vessel? Forgings are stronger for the same weight, but you can just make the cast part larger. Once installed, it isn't going anywhere.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
And that plant, children, is the reason that no nukes have ever been built without Japan agreeing to it.
--
make install -not war
Just a note: But you did realize that the natural background radiation in that part of the world is in some places several times over the safe legal limit in all contries that have such a law. If fact one of the hotest places is in nothrern Iraq/ Iran.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Nuclear reactor pressure vessels are a real problem. Most of the larger ones are in fact built up from welded sections. This isn't an easy welding job, and inspection of welds is a big headache. Several Japanese nuclear plants have had problems with cracks in pressure vessel welds, although in internal reactor components welded to the shell, not the shell itself. So making the pressure vessel and its internal support structures from one big forging makes a better product.
The environment of a reactor pressure vessel is tough. First, there's "embrittlement". Neutrons are constantly blasting apart the atoms in the pressure vessel, and over a period of years, this structural damage adds up. Then there's corrosion. There have been major corrosion problems requiring reactor shutdowns from carbon dioxide and boric acid corrosion inside the pressure vessel. Remember, this is a steam pressure vessel; at steam temperatures and pressures, minor corrosive effects at room temperature become big problems.
High quality welding of thick steel sections is a tough problem. Many approaches have been tried. The general idea is to make a V-shaped notch and fill it in during the welding process. Doing this in a way that's no weaker than the surrounding material is hard. Electric arc welding under an inert gas is the usual approach. Electron beam welding and laser welding have been tried. Then there's the problem of approach angle - welding on a vertical surface is not easy. Quality control requires X-rays, ultrasonic tests, and regulators that aren't corrupt.
So there's much to be said for building the pressure vessel as one big forging. Of course, then there's the problem of delivering a 550-ton object to the job site. There are companies that can do that, if you can find them a clear path from a seaport.
Sword making technology is relevant to the making of big forgings. Swords are built-up forgings. This is unusual in modern metalworking; most modern forged objects, like tools, are banged out in one piece by equipment much larger than the thing being manufactured. Big pressure vessels are built-up forgings; the scale requires it. In Japan, it's considered a good doctoral thesis in metallurgy to improve on sword making technology. So smart people are still thinking about the technology of built-up forgings. Nobody else bothers much.
Here's a US NRC fact sheet. on pressure vessels, and a similar European document.
even the article itself admits it, this is the only plant in the world, except for the one in russia. Ah modern reporting, gotta love it.
So it is NOT the only one in the world even the article writers know this and yet that is the headline.
I would not be suprised to have lots of poster point out countless other facilities that can produce similar stuff after all or that some facilities could if they wanted too with little adjustment.
Scaremongering, the author is doing it right.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Of course depleted uranium and "regular" uranium have the same effect on the body - they are the SAME thing. It would be like saying that there is this regular Oxygen that is different from the special Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18. Chemically, they are identical, just like Uranium vs. U-235 vs. U-238.
Furthermore, "regular" Uranium and "depleted" Uranium and "enriched" Uranium have nothing to do with it being Uranium or not. It only has to do with Uranium-235 abundance. Regular just has under 1% of the U-235 and the depleted has "less". But it is still Uranium!!! Heck, the two types have virtually identical radioactivity (depleted vs. natural)
And chemically, they pose the same problems because they have identical chemical properties (because both are Uranium!)
Anyone saying that DU is safe is full of *shit*. We all know that Uranium mining and smelting can be hazardous tasks. Spreading it around in dust form and saying the opposite in light of the truth and past experiences is criminal.
From the Wikipedia article on CANDUs:
So posters are quite right that plenty of reactor designs are unaffected by the capacity problems at this steel plant. Indeed, the only effect on CANDU reactors is likely to be a potential increase in customers.
Also:
The CANDU design had started by 1958, and the first commercial PWR in the US was opened in 1957 - and was just 60MW - making it somewhat unlikely that Canada could have simply purchased PWRs even if it had chosen to. Work started on the first CANDU in 1960, the same year the US started operating only its third nuclear power plant. It appears unlikely that US-built nuclear plants would have been highly available outside the US at that point.
Generally, surgeons now leave bullets in, unless they will cause a problem by moving. Most people erroneously think that bullets have to come out, but really it's the going in part that does the damage. Leaving them where they are are tolerated quite well. I have had a bullet in my foot (stuck on my calcaneus) for more than 25 years. Bullets in joints need to be removed, since the joint fluid will dissolve the lead causing lead poisoning. During my surgical residency, I took care of one patient at a V.A. hospital. We were asked to see him, as he had just coughed up a piece of shrapnel from WWI - 50 years ago!!!. he was 80 or so, and very healthy.
..........FULL STOP.
It will act like one of those ringworld mono wire swords, and cut thru flesh like butter.
..........FULL STOP.
people forget that things can be non-linearly scaled.
..........FULL STOP.
Bullets _really_ need to be removed if you're ever going to be NMRIed. As NMRIs are pretty routine for a wide variety of cancers and other medical conditions (though n.b. I'm in europe, I know americans with their third-world medical system make a big fuss about NMRIs), it's typically worth removing the bullet just in case.
The lethality of DU is directly proportional to the delivery velocity.
No sig today...
OK, how many of you old timers flashed back to the John Belushi samurai, the frozen image of him bringing his blade down toward a sphere of uranium to the words:
"Tune in next week for - Samurai Hazmat Technician!!"
It's late and I need a drink.
Canada's CANDU reactor design uses lots of high pressure pipes instead of one big pressure vessel. The difficulty of making a monolithic vessel is one of the reasons for this.
Another alternative is to avoid using a primary loop coolant with such a high vapor pressure as water. If molten metal or molten salt os ised instead it is not necessary to have a high pressure vessel made in one piece. A containment vessel welded from multiple pieces would be more than sufficient when the reactor core is at 1 atmosphere.
But for conventional pressurized water reactors this steel plant in Japan doea appear to be a bottleneck.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.