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."

Comments

sounds like a way to re-start

[gravesb]

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.

Re:sounds like a way to re-start

[sumdumass]

Actually, there might be a few plants not in commission but that have never been destroyed that could ease the cost of going this route. And a couple of billion dollars isn't all that much to the type of people who wold fund something like this. It would probably a couple investment groups and so on. Keep in mind, the 100 million is only a down payment. The final product will costs more. But EPA regulations and unions wold probably still make it a non-starter in the US.

Candu

[BlueParrot]

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.

Re:Candu

[Cecil]

Partially, I think the idea was that they could sell this reactor to other countries without the risk of nuclear proliferation associated with enriched uranium, although the relatively difficulty of attaining enriched uranium was also a factor I think it had more to do with the proliferation risks than the actual sourcing of the material. This was unfortunately justified when India used their Canadian/US-built CIRUS research reactor to create enough plutonium for their first nuclear bomb. Being strongly against nuclear weapons in any form, Canadians generally felt pretty betrayed by this, and the concept behind the CANDU reactor was cemented.

Re:4 per year

[Foolicious]

However, the problem is China and its vast natural resources. I honestly don't know about China's natural resources, but they seem to be consuming so much that they need to import steel and metals in scrap form from the US like gangbusters. I think this is because it's currently cheaper to refine it from scrap than mine it, but at this point China's resources, whether vast or otherwise, aren't as big of a sticking point as some people would think. Of course, their labor -- now that's definitely a cheaper pasture!

The only one for sure?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.

Doesn't add up

[hcdejong]

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.

Re:Japan, WWII, allied bombing, and nukes

[discogravy]

this is ha-ha-only-serious in a way; the godzilla movies serve as a kind of metric for japanese societal attitudes towards nuclear power. immediately post-war, gojira is a monster created by radiation that comes and terrorizes tokyo but within 20 years or so, he's japan's protector from outside alien monsters (mothra, gamera, etc) and is japan's big scaly mascot (with annoying "go-get-'em-pop!" godzilla-baby, godzuki.)

Re:Hm

[rcw-home]

If you really need a heavy sword, use a little Tungsten filler. It's 19.25 g/cc, has a high tensile strength, and makes steel stronger as an alloy. It lost out to DU because it typically has to be imported from China (and the US wanted to use the DU, not store it indefinately). DU is also pyrophoric.

Not an unexpected fact considering...

[arthurpaliden]

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.

Re:More on pressure vessels

[doom]

Doing this in a way that's no weaker than the surrounding material is hard.

If I may pick a nit here, if I understand this right, on average a weld will be stronger than the surrounding metal, the difficulty lies in being certain that that's the case for all of your welds. The problem isn't getting the strength up, but getting the variation down -- and as you point out earlier, non-destructive inspection of welds is a tough problem.

This is the reason that aircraft are still assembled using bolts and rivets -- in theory you could make a lighter aircraft using welds, but there isn't any way to be certain that any particular weld was done right, so we usually stick with a slightly inferior, but more dependable way of doing it.

(Or at least that was the case some years back... it would seem like there must be some way of cracking this problem.)