TEPCO Unveils Plan To Deal With Fukushima Crisis

RedEaredSlider writes "Tokyo Electric Power Co. unveiled its plan for dealing with the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. TEPCO said the radiation levels should drop over the next three months. It will take about six months for the reactors to achieve 'cold shutdown' in which the temperature of the water inside the reactor is less than 100 degrees Celsius (212 F). The current plan for cooling the reactors will mean injecting nitrogen into the reactor pressure vessel. All four damaged reactors experienced hydrogen explosions when water, heated by nuclear fuel, turned to steam and reacted with the zirconium alloy cladding of the fuel rods. Hydrogen, when exposed to oxygen, combusts. Nitrogen is an inert gas, so TEPCO hopes that it will prevent further explosions."

Comments

Half-life

[blair1q]

Really, all they have to do is keep saying what they're going to do, and the problem is going to go away on its own, eventually...

Re:Half-life

[ae1294]

Really, all they have to do is keep saying what they're going to do, and the problem is going to go away on its own, eventually...

So what you're saying is Mr Freemen will take care of it?

Re:Half-life

[icebike]

Your assertion then is that they have done and are doing nothing?

Pack your bags, smart ass, we are sending you over there to run into the plant and turn on the cooling pumps.

Re:Half-life

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Well, that and prepare for unforeseen consequences...

Re:Half-life

[rbrausse]

this guy? ;)

Re:Half-life

[blair1q]

Sure. Do you want to see my rate sheet for that kind of work, first?

I'd have locked this shit down on day 1. But it would have been a much messier day than day 1 was, and you might have been conscripted as wadding for a valve core.

And no, I'm not saying they haven't done anything, or haven't done anything heoric. I'm saying they don't really have to do anything else, and basically aren't, besides keeping stasis until the thing cools off. And it's literally about the half-life. They're just running water over it until the low-level radiation within the individual fuel rods has decayed to where they aren't generating water-boiling levels of heat.

Re:Half-life

[the_fat_kid]

will you take a check?

Re:Half-life

[blair1q]

You would hope. But given that they don't seem to have been prepared for foreseen circumstances*, I'm not betting on their team until I see management make some trades.

* - the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance. Everything after it was foreseeable, and there were design choices that guaranteed a destructive cascade once the power went out. Allowing the buildings to explode and damage the systems used to keep the buildings from exploding more is a pretty major fuckup in the realm of reliability engineering. The use of zinc cladding, the lack of effective venting for the hydrogen, the proximity of the explosion to components that could be damaged in a hydrogen explosion, blockage of access by debris from the explosion... Someone 40 years ago said that having backup generators would prevent these things from happening, and didn't consider what if the generators simply broke and couldn't be replaced. Even though they may have known what could be done.

Oh, and there's the part about how they did get generators rushed to the site, but the electrical connections didn't match up so they couldn't use them. I'm still not sure that's been reported right, because what the fuck?

Re:Half-life

[icebike]

Iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days but Cesium-137 has a much longer half-life of 30 years.
30 years of maintaining a leaking plant that is in shambles and too hot to enter.

This says nothing about the plutonium in the other reactor.
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3906/fepc-info-sheet-414#more-1429

Re:Half-life

[blair1q]

Nope. Bearer bonds.

Re:Half-life

[blair1q]

They didn't say they're waiting for it to be safe enough to hug.

They're just waiting for it to be cool enough to dismantle.

It's still going to be a radioactive nightmare when they have to do that.

Re:Half-life

[Surt]

They'd better hope their gonads haven't been hit by too many rads, because they are going to need children, grand-children, great-grand-children, etc to keep repeating that message.

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

You would hope. But given that they don't seem to have been prepared for foreseen circumstances*, I'm not betting on their team until I see management make some trades.

* - the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance. Everything after it was foreseeable, and there were design choices that guaranteed a destructive cascade once the power went out. Allowing the buildings to explode and damage the systems used to keep the buildings from exploding more is a pretty major fuckup in the realm of reliability engineering. The use of zinc cladding, the lack of effective venting for the hydrogen, the proximity of the explosion to components that could be damaged in a hydrogen explosion, blockage of access by debris from the explosion... Someone 40 years ago said that having backup generators would prevent these things from happening, and didn't consider what if the generators simply broke and couldn't be replaced. Even though they may have known what could be done.

Oh, and there's the part about how they did get generators rushed to the site, but the electrical connections didn't match up so they couldn't use them. I'm still not sure that's been reported right, because what the fuck?

You would hope. But given that they don't seem to have been prepared for foreseen circumstances*, I'm not betting on their team until I see management make some trades.

* - the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance. Everything after it was foreseeable, and there were design choices that guaranteed a destructive cascade once the power went out. Allowing the buildings to explode and damage the systems used to keep the buildings from exploding more is a pretty major fuckup in the realm of reliability engineering. The use of zinc cladding, the lack of effective venting for the hydrogen, the proximity of the explosion to components that could be damaged in a hydrogen explosion, blockage of access by debris from the explosion... Someone 40 years ago said that having backup generators would prevent these things from happening, and didn't consider what if the generators simply broke and couldn't be replaced. Even though they may have known what could be done.

Oh, and there's the part about how they did get generators rushed to the site, but the electrical connections didn't match up so they couldn't use them. I'm still not sure that's been reported right, because what the fuck?

I heard about the back up generators delivered on day two of this incident. Unfortunately I don't have time to track sources right now (I am at work and my initial Google search turned up nothing).

  The fact that the generator did not match up goes back to the 1800s

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134828205/a-country-divided-japans-electric-bottleneck.

"That's partly an accident of history. Eastern Japan followed the German model and has a 50-cycle electrical power grid. The western part of Japan used the American model and has a 60-cycle grid. Transferring power from one grid to another requires a very expensive facility. And there are only three connections between eastern and western Japan. That bottleneck means the power transfer is just a trickle, even during this national emergency. Creating more capacity would take years."

Re:Half-life

[aslagle]

That sound you hear? That's the whoosh of wind as low-flying concepts part your hair.

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

I ask this question: " Would the reactor(s) be OK today if the battery backup could last 200 hours instead of 6?" or
"Did this problem arise because of the lack of $1,000,000.00 worth of nickle/iron batteries?"

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they didn't have a resonance cascade.

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

blair1q, do you do anything with your life? I'm curious. I see your posts everywhere, and none of them actually contain anything requiring thought or originality. Yet you post so much and often with an aggressive undertone, like you're trying to make up on some Internet message board for something you lack in real life. So, what's up? Would you like to talk about it?

You, I and everyone reading this post will both be dead in, what, 80 years? We're both nothing but accidentally and very temporarily organised space dust, so consider me your equal and let's sit down and have a chat.

Re:Half-life

[ByOhTek]

But... If you don't hug the nuclear waste, it will feel un-special and un-wanted!

Re:Half-life

[camperslo]

I'm saying they don't really have to do anything else, and basically aren't, besides keeping stasis until the thing cools off.

Uh no. They can't just keep doing what they're doing and wait. It's more urgent than that. With the rupture in unit 2 (believed to be in the suppression tank), that water they have to keep pumping in keeps coming out bringing highly radioactive particles from the damaged fuels rods along. They pumped over 100 tons of it out of one tunnel only to have it fill back up within two days. They may have briefly interrupted what's getting into the ocean, but it is piling up and needs to be dealt with soon.

They're injecting nitrogen into unit 1 hoping to reduce the chance of a hydrogen explosion, but the pressure not rising indicates a leak. They've said it may be venting contaminated gases. (but don't be too surprised if it turns out they are unintentionally pushing more contaminated water out somewhere)

For some pretty good articles check out what the media over there are saying.

Here's a six part series on how Tepco and the government have complicated matters.
It has many details no covered by most U.S. media.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110416002672.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110415004983.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110414006040.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110413004031.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110412006319.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110411004567.htm

Re:Half-life

[publiclurker]

Would you need 200 hours of battery life? 6 hours is pretty pathetic considering what you are running, but couldn't you off-site some generators on trucks and get them there within, let's say, 24 hours?

Re:Half-life

[vlm]

Allowing the buildings to explode and damage the systems used to keep the buildings from exploding more is a pretty major fuckup in the realm of reliability engineering.

Its also a management failure. Everyone knows once zirconium heats up around water you get H2. But no one wants to be the management guy who pulls the trigger and says trash the roof with a wrecking ball or whatever. So, everyone just sit around until it blows up, that way it'll be an act of god instead of management deciding to crack the building.

Not that it would help (much).

Re:Half-life

[The Archon V2.0]

But... If you don't hug the nuclear waste, it will feel un-special and un-wanted!

You can't hug your nuclear with children arms?

Re:Half-life

[michelcolman]

But if they keep pumping water in, and water keeps coming out with radioactive particles, won't the fuel rods eventually just erode away completely? That would take care of that...

Re:Half-life

[blair1q]

People have argued the roads were out. But It's only a couple of hours by boat from Tokyo harbor, where there are ships and floating cranes and probably ten thousand spare generators, or even some non-spare ones that could be ripped out and moved because someone thinks stopping a nuclear meltdown is more important than flashing the Hitachi sign on the Ginza.

Instead they spent weeks unspooling cable from another grid. Retarded.

Re:Half-life

[djdanlib]

To hug nuclear waste, you need nuclear arms!

Re:Half-life

[ShavedOrangutan]

Or perhaps they could have fixed the generators?

Too many nuclear scientists and not enough diesel mechanics.

Re:Half-life

[BeanThere]

- the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance.

And yet many of the towns along that coastline with tsunami walls, had 10-meter tsunami walls (while Fukushima's were 6 meters). Clearly many other planners had 'foreseen' a risk of 10m tsunamis.

Re:Half-life

[thegarbz]

Pathetic it may sound to you, but this isn't a backup system. This is a backup backup system. Much like many UPSes are sized not to keep running or even to shutdown an industrial plant, but to keep power on long enough for backup generators to kick in and take over.

When disaster strikes you rely on your backup, when the backup fails you rely on your resources to fix either the primary or the backup.

People seem to forget that the cause of the problems was not that the batteries were too small, but that the backup powersupply was offline, and that its kind of hard to get replacement resources in a country which has just been hit by the biggest frigging earthquake they have ever seen.

Re:Half-life

[pixelpusher220]

if you're on the coast and a tsunami wiped out the roads for miles around...24 hours might be a wee bit optimistic.

Re:Half-life

[pixelpusher220]

trash the roof with a wrecking ball

Except how do you get close enough? they could barely get water cannons close enough shoot the buildings due to the radiation. And the radiation was in full swing before they blew up since they blew up because of the h2 being released from the exposed fuel rods.

everyone just sit around until it blows up, that way it'll be an act of god instead of management deciding to crack the building.

This is more the Japanese mentality of business. No individual gets the blame, the group decides and executes whatever is decided, including nothing.

Re:Half-life

[publiclurker]

How about a heavy lift chopper. I know they are expensive, but after cutting corners on the backups I think they could afford it.

Re:Half-life

[lennier]

And it's literally about the half-life.

In other words, they can't get into the trench under the reactor because it's full of bullsquids.

Re:Half-life

[lennier]

Well, that and prepare for unforeseen consequences...

Fricken' Combine Advisors.

The Borealis just better make a cameo in Portal 2, that's all I'm sayin'.

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

A 10-metre tsunami shouldn't have been unforeseen. A 38-metre
tsunami hit the same coast further up north only 125 years ago.

The geologic record indicates frequent tsunami along that coast.

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

...that water they have to keep pumping in keeps coming out bringing highly radioactive particles from the damaged fuels rods along...

This is the part that I've never understood. Why are they pumping the containment full of water? The point of a containment structure is that when Shit Goes Wrong, and it most certainly has, you can stand back and watch while the water boils off, the core melts, and ends up as a puddle on the concrete floor. It'll slowly burn through for a while, but it'll eventually stop. You then wait a few decades and clean up the mess.

They've failed in keeping the fuel from melting, so the gaseous radionuclides have already escaped. The plan at this point (and in my opinion, since about day two or three) should have been to let the design do what it's supposed to do. Are there technical reasons that all the water pumping is beneficial, or was it just politics, trying to prevent an "OMFG meltdown" when in reality the contaminated water is actually worse?

Re:Half-life

[fishbowl]

But they are on the coast. Literally a stone's throw from boat docks. Why would they need *roads?*

Re:Half-life

[pixelpusher220]

Because it doesn't have a dock? It's not meant to be a port. In fact they built a 20 ft high wall to keep out the sea :)

Shame they needed a 35 foot wall...

Re:Half-life

[DrJimbo]

Why are they pumping the containment full of water?

Good question. An answer was given in a special on the Fukushima accident on Japan's NHK World, on the one month anniversary of the quake. The trade off is to allow the current (comparatively) low leak off radioactivity in order to minimize the chances of a massive release of radioactivity (which I presume means on the scale of Chernobyl). The expert said they needed to keep cooling the reactors to prevent more fuel rods melting, causing the build up of more hydrogen. He said they are worried that another large hydrogen explosion could blow open a containment vessel causing a massive release of radioactivity.

Are there technical reasons that all the water pumping is beneficial, or was it just politics, trying to prevent an "OMFG meltdown" when in reality the contaminated water is actually worse?

Given that the radioactive water leaking out is giving them terrible PR and is also making the restoration of the cooling systems very difficult, I believe they are doing the right thing from an engineering perspective which is to try to minimize the worst case scenario even if doing so gives them awful PR now.

Re:Half-life

[afidel]

No, the generators were the right cycle, wrong voltage and configuration. They needed say 480V 3 phase and the generators they received were 208 WYE, you can convert from one to the other with a transformer but none of the correct type and rating were immediately available.

Re:Half-life

[tsotha]

I'm saying they don't really have to do anything else, and basically aren't, besides keeping stasis until the thing cools off. And it's literally about the half-life.

What you're saying would be true if they weren't leaking contaminated water. They're going to have to fix all the leaks, which won't be easy. And they're going to have to get the cooling systems working so they can stop the feed-n-bleed. Right now they're only able to cool the reactors by releasing contaminated steam. To say "they don't really have to do anything else" is only true if you don't mind discharging highly contaminated water into the ocean.

Re:Half-life

[afidel]

Heck, there was a US airbase within a couple hour helo flight, all they had to do was ask and I'm sure whatever heavy lift capability we had was at their disposal, I mean is the base commander really going to say "no you can't borrow our resource's we'd rather the airmen take anti-radiation meds"?

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

you can stand back and watch while the water boils off, the core melts, and ends up as a puddle on the concrete floor. It'll slowly burn through for a while, but it'll eventually stop.

No. The uranium in the fuel rods that are nicely spaced apart to prevent uncontrolled criticality melts, flows together, and goes re-critical, now getting hotter and hotter. Then it melts through your nice concrete floor, and burns its way down into the water table where it sits emitting the usual isotopes into groundwater for the next 50 years. Preventing re-criticality is why you have to apply external cooling to this reactor design for months after shutdown.

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

As I understand it, though, low-enriched uranium isn't much of a risk for re-criticality when dry. It requires a neutron moderator (water, in the case of a BWR) to reach a critical configuration. I'm not sure if that's an absolute - perhaps it'd be critical if formed into a sphere - but the "core on the floor" is supposed to be considerably subcritical.

Or is there less margin than I think?

Re:Half-life

[DrJimbo]

I remember hearing that the generators they needed were way too heavy to be lifted even by the largest helicopter.

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

Good question. An answer was given in a special on the Fukushima accident on Japan's NHK World, on the one month anniversary of the quake. The trade off is to allow the current (comparatively) low leak off radioactivity in order to minimize the chances of a massive release of radioactivity (which I presume means on the scale of Chernobyl). The expert said they needed to keep cooling the reactors to prevent more fuel rods melting, causing the build up of more hydrogen. He said they are worried that another large hydrogen explosion could blow open a containment vessel causing a massive release of radioactivity.

Chernobyl's massive release was due to two main factors: 1) the steam explosion (and subsequently what was likely a small nuclear explosion) that blew the whole thing open; 2) the burning of the graphite moderator, whose smoke carried heavier radionuclides over long distances.

That's not the case here - with a BWR's water-moderation (not flammable), negative void coefficient (prevents steam explosions), and current state (shut down and unlikely to light off again), a meltdown just spews on the floor and sits there. The gaseous waste already got loose.

The hydrogen explosions were foreseeable and preventable - a dry meltdown doesn't generate hydrogen; having decided to melt down wet and generating hydrogen (which is no surprise - it's a known, documented problem), they should have vented to atmosphere instead of to the building. That would have caused some backlash because they'd be venting radiation directly out - but that radiation got out anyway and we now have a whole mess of exploded buildings.

Given that the radioactive water leaking out is giving them terrible PR and is also making the restoration of the cooling systems very difficult, I believe they are doing the right thing from an engineering perspective which is to try to minimize the worst case scenario even if doing so gives them awful PR now.

I'm worried that in the early stages of the meltdown they performed a risky nonstandard procedure hoping that it'd be adequate to keep things under control and prevent a giant PR problem... but the risky coverup didn't work, and now they're dealing with consequences that are much worse than if they'd just let it fail the way it was designed.

I've given them a lot of slack assuming that they're doing what they know is best, but from the first days of this event I've had the impression that they've deviated from the established sequence of containment strategies. I doubt seawater injection is listed in their operations manual.

Re:Half-life

[DrBoumBoum]

the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance

Worse, the risk was was really more disregarded than unforseen. A greater than 10m tsumani is to be expected once every 30 years in Japan according to this interesting study(caution, PDF). And TEPCO ignored tsunami warnings for years.

Re:Half-life

[DrJimbo]

I was just reporting what was said in the Japanese special program about the accident. Like you, I was wondering why they didn't just stop with all the water so I payed very close attention when they gave their reason for it.

Camperslo posted links to six articles about the details of the accident above. Each article is rather short so it is a quick read. Those articles contain the most information I've seen so far on what exactly went wrong.

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Fukushima have catalytic hydrogen recombiners? The job of those devices is to get rid of the hydrogen gas and hence prevent the explosions that occurred:

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/hydrogen-recombiners-at-all-20-npc-plants-to-avoid-fukushima/431306/

Re:Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

"the use of zinc cladding"

First of all Tepco and the Japanese government has majorly done a horrible job with regards to the whole Fukushima situation. I live in Japan and see how they are lifting bans on the sale of some foods from the area ALREADY and am not happy about it.

Fuel rods use zirconium alloy cladding, and the reason is that it is relatively inert and doesn't become radioactive itself in the presence of neutron radiation unlike other metals. Because of this property this material is popular nuclear, particle accelerator, and other areas where you need a metal casing that won't become overly radioactive itself when it by radiation.

Re:Half-life

[GooberToo]

Chernobyl did not have a "small nuclear explosion". Period. What carried the particles so far was the massive steam and hydrogen explosions followed by super hot fires. The hotter the fire, the higher the particles rise into the atmosphere; after initial launch. For nuclear bombs, its the massive heat from nuclear mushroom clouds which force so much radioactivity into the air - forcing it very, very high.

In fairness, the seawater injection didn't begin until the reactors were already well off anybody's operating manual. In fact, the seawater injection was reported as the best option available at the time by world international experts. Time will tell if that was PR or fact, but according to the available timeline it fits perfectly - as in, well into uncharted waters.

One of the big reasons why water is constantly re-applied to the reactors in Japan is because water does wonders to keep particulates out of the air. That why construction projects with lots of exposed dirt are frequently watered by truck. It keeps the particulates down - in two ways. One, it keeps them clumped together preventing them from flying. And two, it creates smaller, heavier particles which tend to fly shorter distances and worst case, not rise as high. Hell, even the twin towers site was watered to minimize airborne particulates.

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

Chernobyl did not have a "small nuclear explosion". Period.

RBMKs (as configured at the time) had a very large positive void coefficient; after the steam explosion depressurized the vessel, the coolant was boiling like mad with essentially no liquid water inside the fuel assemblies. Combined with all the extra graphite from the control rod tips which were in exactly the wrong place, a prompt criticality was very possible as things were settling inside.

"A second, more powerful explosion occurred about two or three seconds after the first; evidence indicates that the second explosion resulted from a nuclear excursion." The citation is over here.

Since the assembly was slow (compared to a weapon) the criticality ended quickly as it blew itself apart. The yield was on the order of 10t (not low Kt, as expected in an unboosted uranium weapon). There are other theories for the second explosion, but this one has the best case made for it.

Anyway, I wasn't suggesting that it was the explosion itself that carried particles long distances (though it did make quite a mess locally); it just blew the thing wide open so when the fires started the only thing covering them was the blue sky.

In fairness, the seawater injection didn't begin until the reactors were already well off anybody's operating manual. In fact, the seawater injection was reported as the best option available at the time by world international experts.

Confusing things there were two injections of seawater: the injection into the pressure vessel was a likely a good move under the circumstances; the part I'm questioning is flooding the containment vessel, which is highly unusual. Why is that second move, which puts the system in a state it wasn't designed for, a better idea than following the documented plan: let the core dump, then optionally spray (but not flood) it with water?

It may be a good idea - but if so, why wasn't it part of the normal emergency procedures? I'm concerned that the answer may be that it was considered and rejected because of the risk of losing control of large volumes of contaminated water, or that an explosion inside the filled containment would be more likely to cause a breach due to hydraulic shock.

One of the big reasons why water is constantly re-applied to the reactors in Japan is because water does wonders to keep particulates out of the air.

So does a containment vessel. They were largely intact (as evidenced by high pressure) until the explosion inside the wetwell of #2. The others are still good to go.

Mind you, I'm glad to have an extra safety net as long as it's not making things worse. Unfortunately, I've not found any good in-depth analysis of these decisions. I'm sure someone's doing it, but it's not anywhere I can see it.

Re:Half-life

[GooberToo]

I've literally been told by a nuclear engineer a nuclear explosion with that material is impossible, even with a meltdown. Likewise, its well established the densities of the fuel make it impossible - EXACTLY BY DESIGN. The fuel is specifically created so as to avoid super criticality should the worst ever happen. So you're going to have to prove how fuel which is physically impossible to create a nuclear explosion actually makes a nuclear explosion. A secondary explosion is in no way proof it was a nuclear explosion. In fact, if there were a nuclear explosion, it would be extremely likely there would have been a mushroom cloud as a result of the generated heat and resulting convection activity; especially given there wasn't containment of any kind at that point. I've never read or heard of any such account. Basically, the observed physics strongly suggests a nuclear explosion did not happen. That combined with the physics which say its impossible, create a massive burden of proof.

As for the study, unless they've actually modeled the explosion and are in fact, experts in dealing with explosions, the study is literally worthless. Explosions are very tricky things are frequently perform in ways thought to be impossible because of unexpected reactions with the world around them. Even something as simple as a cloud deck and barometric pressure can create huge differences in perceived yield, the measured shock wave, and the collateral damage. See the various studies into US terrorist attacks to better understand what I'm talking about; meaning the fall of the towers and the federal building in Oklahoma.

Bluntly, the burden of proof is exceptionally high and I seriously doubt there was a nuclear explosion.

Lastly, if there was any credibility to such reports, you can be absolutely sure the anti-nuke nut-jobs would be all over that. After all, it would completely undermine one of the most significant safety tenets of nuclear power.

the part I'm questioning is flooding the containment vessel, which is highly unusual.

At the time, the containment vessel was believed to already be compromised. Since no one knows what the compromise looked like, it was reported the salt water plus boron plus other additives would slow the reaction which they hoped would allow them to gain the upper hand. But again, at this point, they were already in uncharted waters.

Re:Half-life

[Agripa]

Or perhaps they could have fixed the generators?

The fuel tanks were washed away and the switching rooms were under water.

Garry: The generator's gone.
MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?
Garry: It's "gone", MacReady.

Re:Half-life

[Agripa]

Oh, and there's the part about how they did get generators rushed to the site, but the electrical connections didn't match up so they couldn't use them. I'm still not sure that's been reported right, because what the fuck?

It did not help that the switching rooms were submerged and filled with water.

Re:Half-life

[Agripa]

Are these the same docks which have to survive the tsunami which took everything else down?

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

I agree that a prompt criticality is essentially impossible after a meltdown, but at the initial moment of failure in Chernobyl, much higher reactivity was easily attainable.

In an operating reactor the safety margin of reactivity is only about 0.6% between the threshold of delayed-critical and prompt-critical. The fuel alone is incapable of going prompt-critical (or even delayed-critical, in most cases) - but with enough neutron moderator present, you can get past that gap. One of the flaws of the RBMK - an insane design - is it has a long section of graphite (a neutron moderator) at the tip of each control rod to increase reactivity in certain regions when they're fully withdrawn. That's supposed to be done in a few regions at a time.

When Chernobyl popped, they had withdrawn nearly all of the control rods. At the end of the experiment, they SCRAMmed the reactor, and all the control rods descended together. It blew as the graphite sections were aligned with the bottom of the core. Thus, the bottom of the core - already primed from the previous activities - was in an extremely over-reactive configuration. The first explosion happened, causing three important things: 1, the rod channels shattered, so all that extra graphite stayed in the core; 2, a total coolant loss (which raised the reactivity considerably); 3, the fuel assemblies broke up, allowing the configuration to change further (likely with very high reactivity at some moments). It's entirely possible that those effects combined to reach a prompt-critical configuration briefly.

Ask your nuclear engineer friend for a clarification - I'll bet he was talking about a molten mess of fuel, not about an operating reactor that was placed into a *very* over-reactive configuration.

No, a nuclear explosion doesn't mean you get a mushroom cloud. Mushroom clouds occur from *large* explosions. As I said, the Chernobyl explosion was only around 10t - comparable to a MOAB but a pathetic fizzle compared to a nuclear bomb. An explosion that size DID happen - it's just a question of how. A large hydrogen explosion is also likely.

I guess you didn't bother to read the links I posted. The study wasn't based on modeling the explosion - it was based on analyzing the Xe-133 present after the meltdown. The ratios of isotopes give a picture of what processes were occurring. It's hardy conclusive, but it's a good indicator.

Re:Half-life

[GooberToo]

No, a nuclear explosion doesn't mean you get a mushroom cloud.

When you said, "no", you mean, "yes", since that's what I said. I clearly denoted a mushroom cloud is the result of convective-thermal activity. They are not unique to nuclear explosions but they are common with nuclear explosions given that a considerable thermal component is common to most nuclear explosions. Grant, its possible to have a nuclear explosion without a mushroom but its pretty rare.

A large hydrogen explosion is also likely.

That's my point. We have overwhelming evidence as an extremely likely cause - let's go with what's likely.

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

Grant, its possible to have a nuclear explosion without a mushroom but its pretty rare.

This would be one of those cases. 10t, nuclear or chemical, doesn't make a mushroom cloud. There's not enough heat to get it rolling.

That's my point. We have overwhelming evidence as an extremely likely cause - let's go with what's likely.

Your original point was that a nuclear explosion was impossible, full stop, and that the lack of a mushroom cloud is proof that it didn't happen. You are moving the goalposts.

I never said a nuclear explosion was the only explanation - only that it's likely. I concede that a hydrogen explosion is also likely, but I haven't seen "overwhelming evidence" for either theory.

Re:Half-life

[GooberToo]

Ah - no! I'm not a moving goalpost and the fact you provided a link underscores your lacking intelligence and general disregard for polite discourse. Its insulting. The simple fact is, its all but impossible there was a nuclear explosion. Period.

You're confusing polite brushoff of your rediculas assertion for a concession. The simple fact is YOU are the moving goalpost - and now a hypocrite, while asserting what is basically impossible, while half-ass acknowledging the likely explanation is in fact, THE explanation.

Very likely what happened is there was some form of reaction FROM the secondary explosion which created the isotopes in question. That is not the same thing as an explosion. Such cases are well known to occur and is in fact, why some bomb designs use explosives to set off the nuclear reaction. This stuff is literally so complex, they use some of the world's most powerful supercomputers to actually understand the physics involved. Which brings me full circle; unless they simulated the explosion, the report is question is baseless, useless, and completely full of shit.

Basically, the chances of a nuclear explosion, while not zero, are so close to zero so as to make the discussion literally rediculas. Its extremely improbable and likely beyond impossible. Unless they were using some bizarre fuel well outside of established norms, it didn't happen.

Re:Half-life

[subreality]

I have been entirely civil and forthright, but you're too caught up in being adversarial to see it. Or perhaps you're just a troll. Either way, this conversation can serve no purpose any more.

Good day, sir.

Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

Send in Gordon Freeman

Well crap

[OverlordQ]

Hydrogen, when exposed to oxygen, combusts.

You better not tell water that.

Re:Well crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to test that claim if you don't think it's true. It worked out pretty well for the Hindenburg as I recall.

Re:Well crap

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to go back to Chem class. Otherwise that element that reacts badly with water (Na), and a poisonous gas (Cl) will kill you. Yep salt. And I'm talking about a more immediate death than an increased risk of heart attack down the line.....

Re:Well crap

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Is water still too young to learn about what happens when a (previously stable and happy) diatomic Oxygen structure encounters a couple of barely-legal hydrogen atoms under sufficiently energetic conditions?

Re:Well crap

[icebike]

Take water, add a great deal of energy and a catalyst or electrical current, and you get oxygen and hydrogen.

Take oxygen and hydrogen, mix, ignite, and you get water and the heat is released.

So Water already knows this. Combustion is waters birth place.

Re:Well crap

[the_fat_kid]

I think that it requires an ignition source.
A match, a spark, a stray cigarette or some thing.

Re:Well crap

[tom17]

A stray lump of nuclear fuel...

Re:Well crap

[OverlordQ]

Yes, we all know how combustion works. If TFS means combustion it should say that, it shouldn't bandy about phrases like the above. Bad science is bad science and we shouldn't encourage it.

Re:Well crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, those Hydrogen atoms are old enough to be Oxygen's parents. I think they can handle it.

Re:Well crap

[snspdaarf]

When Hydrogen U. played Oxygen Tech,
The game had just begun,
When Hydrogen racked up two quick points,
And Oxygen still had none.
Then, Oxygen scored a single goal,
And, thus, it did remain,
Hydrogen 2, Oxygen 1,
Called because of rain.

Johnny Hart - "BC"

Re:Well crap

[SETIGuy]

The temperature in the containment building was sufficiently low that both the hydrogen and oxygen were bi. The twisted combination was inevitible.

Re:Well crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, geek rap :))

Re:Well crap

[Coren22]

What is the gramatical difference between combusts and combustion? Are you really arguing that it should say combustion when the quote clearly has combust in it.

"cool shutdown"

[Iamthecheese]

I'm confused: If it's above 100 c it's steam or under a huge amount of pressure; The cooling water has always been below that temperature. What does the fine article mean here?

Re:"cool shutdown"

[smelch]

That the thing they're cooling is above 100 C still. Is this a serious question?

Re:"cool shutdown"

[blair1q]

It's above 100C. The coolant is constantly flowing, and under pressure; or, if the pressure vessel is breached, it's just flowing and there's steam being generated constantly.

When the temperature stays below 100C, presumably when the water is standing and not flowing, then the reactor is considered cold.

That's in six months, when the low-level reactions in the fuel have run through their half-lives enough that they don't generate heat faster than non-boiling water can pull it away.

Re:"cool shutdown"

[gman003]

Not necessarily a "huge" amount of pressure. Water at 1.5 atmospheres is liquid up to 111.7 C, and up to 120 C at 2 atmospheres. Both of those are well below the pressure inside a car tire, or a champagne bottle. Hell, it's below standard water pressure for city mains water.

Re:"cool shutdown"

[icebike]

I'm confused: If it's above 100 c it's steam or under a huge amount of pressure; The cooling water has always been below that temperature. What does the fine article mean here?

Cold Shutdown is just a technical term.

Cold shutdown means the reactor is at a temperature where is is not producing enough heat to make steam and drive generators. That happens as it falls below 100c/212f. Its not clear to me if that state is With or Without active cooling systems running.

However, that temperature is not the goal, just some definition of a stable state that is thought to be manageable. Ideally you would like to get it to a state cold enough so that you could de-fuel it, or where you could build a sarcophagus around it as they did in Chernobyl.

Re:"cool shutdown"

[Solandri]

The boiling temp of water rises with pressure. So under pressure, water can be above 100 C and still liquid (ignoring partial pressure of course). The submersible Alvin had a close encounter with this when they discovered the first deep water thermal vents. They were trying to move in for a closer look, when someone glanced at the temperature gauge and realized the water temperature at the manipulator arm (>400 F) was hotter than the melting point of the Plexiglas windows (320 F).

What's magic about 100 C is that even if a pipe bursts and you lose pressure, the system is guaranteed to remain stable. With a rapid depressurization, the temperature will drop (think of a can of compressed air getting colder as you use it). So if your initial temp is 100 C under pressure, the final temp after depressurization will be below 100 C. If it were above 100 C, some or all of the water would flash into steam if a pipe burst.

Chemistry class

[blair1q]

Hydrogen, when exposed to oxygen, combusts.

No, something has to raise it above its autoignition temperature, which is over 500C in air.

But, since it was in a nuclear reactor that was probably still that hot...

Re:Chemistry class

[owlstead]

In such huge buildings with electrical wires and equipment all around, and the possibility of lightning and other static discharges, and people trying to fix a nuclear reactor, I don't think it would be a good idea to store a large amount of hydrogen in the buildings. Of course, if you look at the pictures, the good thing is that there are plenty of holes that could be used by the hydrogen to escape (except in the closed loop cooling system, I suppose).

The new plan in brief

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wait six months."

(Plus the five weeks it took to come up with the plan.)

Not inert at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nitrogen is an inert gas"

Not really. Neon would be an inert gas. Nitrogen can react with a bunch of stuff.

Re:Not inert at all.

[blair1q]

Sigh.

N2 is inert, unless they're planning on planting peanuts in the reactor room...

Re:Not inert at all.

[Surt]

I think that was, in fact, actually one of the plans at one point. But they've had sooooooo many plans, who can keep track anymore.

Re:Not inert at all.

[blair1q]

The "do something ridiculous" method is more like what those dopes in the drilling business call intervention. Golf balls? Walnut shells? They were buying time and mocking the world with that crap.

Bad Article

[Anonymous Coward]

"The current plan for cooling the reactors will mean injecting nitrogen into the reactor pressure vessel."

Last I checked, nitrogen was to prevent a hydrogen explosion, not to cool the reactor.

Re:Bad Article

[h4rr4r]

Maybe it is liquid nitrogen, that would do both.

of course I am kidding.

Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Pump the reactor full of lead birdshot. Displace the water. Circulate the molten lead. Problem solved. Heaven forbid they use sodium.

This disaster wouldn't have been nearly as bad if they had simply let the fuel rods melt instead of blasting the region with steam, xenon, and iodine. Speaking of which: why in the hell is steam vented to the atmosphere and not run through a condenser?

Here's an idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_precipitator Use corona discharge to clean the steam before it even gets to the fucking condensor!

I'm living on the goddamn planet of the apes. I didn't even go to college and I have better ideas on how to manage this shit than PhDs. What the fuck is wrong with the world?

Re:Morons

[Wyatt Earp]

Because they didn't have any electricity on site to run water pumps, let alone bring in your electrostatic precipitator and power it.

Remember the earthquake and tsunami there?

Re:Morons

[h4rr4r]

They blew the top off the building, dipstick. You think the condenser survived that?

Re:Morons

[kevinNCSU]

This disaster wouldn't have been nearly as bad if they had simply let the fuel rods melt instead of blasting the region with steam, xenon, and iodine. Speaking of which: why in the hell is steam vented to the atmosphere and not run through a condenser? Here's an idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_precipitator Use corona discharge to clean the steam before it even gets to the fucking condensor! I'm living on the goddamn planet of the apes. I didn't even go to college and I have better ideas on how to manage this shit than PhDs. What the fuck is wrong with the world?

Maybe if you HAD gone to college you might see the difficulty in attaching the input feed of a condenser unit onto a collapsed and burning pile of radioactive rubble that's pouring steam out of every orifice? Or the danger in allowing nuclear fuel to melt through the bottom of the containment vessel/structure unopposed. Or if you're talking about before the accident, perhaps if you had gone to high school and learned how to Google BWR designs you'd see they do have a condenser after the steam turbines in the internal loop. But no, why bother to to do even precursory research to gain an understanding of the problem and situation when you can just arrogantly assume you live in a world of apes and all them college boys don't know what they're doing.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm living on the goddamn planet of the apes. I didn't even go to college and I have better ideas on how to manage this shit than PhDs. What the fuck is wrong with the world?

What's wrong with the world is an excess of people like you.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how every single one of you butthurt college boys completely ignored the option of lead cooling.

Hydrogen explosion wasn't until several days until after the quake. And what is the point of a containment vessel if it's dangerous to use it to contain a melt down?

I'm familiar enough with BWR designs and nothing about the fact that they have a condenser included as part of their Rankine cycle is inconsistent with my post. Steam is self pressurizing so they didn't need any pumps to do it.

As for the college boys, this is their fuck up not mine, so get defensive all you like.

The fact remains that these assholes don't seem to have a contingency plan that doesn't involve irradiating the atmosphere, and I'm very curious as to why in the fuck they can't relieve steam over-pressure without spraying radioactive particulate over japan. If I can take a 3000 psi oxygen tank and use liquid nitrogen to make LOX in my backyard I'm very curious as to why they can't take a 75ATM/1100psi steam tank and make liquid water.

These supposed rocket scientists allowed the hydrogen to build up and explode instead of doing a controlled burn. These supposed rocket scientists built a Generation II reactor with half-assed failure modes in the first place. These supposed rocket scientists designed a "containment vessel" that can't contain the consequences of a LOSS OF FUCKING POWER.

The same phase transition problems which perplex the greatest minds of your local DOT's pot-hole repair crew seem to be too much for you "college boys" to handle.

Where in the hell is the safety factor? You assholes are asleep at the wheel cutting costs on concrete and steel(two of the cheapest building materials in the god-damned world). Where are your professional ethics. You're either too stupid, or too unscrupulous to build a reactor that just fucking works.

Meanwhile, the fucking russians and china(a goddamned third world country) are either running, or leading the development of generation IV & V reactors.

Nevermind the entire disaster has been exacerbated by a leaking inflatable gasket which has a failure mode of spilling waste water everywhere. Never-mind that before these supposed rocket scientists went to work, the only thing wrong with the reactor was a loss of power. These fucking MORONS signed off on a reactor design which can fuck up an entire country for several decades because somebody trips and UNPLUGS THE FUCKING POWER!

Who cut the corners on the steam powered pumps? Who's dumb ass decisions fucked the pooch here? All of this just confirms in my mind that differential calculus does not an engineer make. Neither does my tax dollars apparently. The Japanese may have fucked up worse but we gave them the firecracker and matches.

I have a very short list of people on my shit list. The Prima Dona engineers who are patronizing the public's betrayed trust and are killing the planets LAST REAL FUCKING HOPE AT SUSTAINABLE ENERGY at the alter of public opinion? They are second only to the shitheads responsible for TARP and Government Motors. The Treasury continues to pay rent on it's own damn money to the shitheads who cause a global recession which has undoubtedly killed 1000s of people. Donald Rumsfeld kills thousands of Iraqi civilians and US troops through his incompetence, but the people responsible for this meltdown have 30 years of coal death on their hands. How many years of automobile related deaths will be caused by the extended reliance on hydrocarbons?

Go play with a Sun SPOT or write some Java google-boy. Otherwise, go fuck yourself, but don't you dare defend these shitheads. They managed to take a simple power outage and turn it in to a deathblow against one of the safest energy sources available. Smooth moves chief. Bravo. Since all of you are obviously incapable I'd do your job for you and design a safer sparkler but clearly fireworks engineer is a dead fucking end now.

Re:Morons

[CODiNE]

This disaster wouldn't have been nearly as bad if they had simply let the fuel rods melt instead of blasting the region with steam, xenon, and iodine.

Awwww... leave your geek card at the door.

Seriously, haven't you heard of the China Syndrome before? Nice old-school disaster flick that scared the crap out of everyone since the events in the movie took place almost exactly the same just 10 days after it's release.

But seriously, the term is based on the idea that it'll just burn through the floor and "keep going til it makes it all the way to China." That's a joke ... get it? Hah.

But eventually it'll hit some water underground and blast out a ton of radioactive steam that can't be contained.

Re:Morons

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

After seeing so many brilliant ideas(all posted Anon of course) in this comment section, I began to wonder(I'm 17 and homeschooled, so I don't know); is it actually normal for people to consider their own mastery to be above that of the team placed in charge of such dismal situations? Is this level of arrogance not uncommon? I'm honestly asking this question, no trolling intended.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but in various contexts. What you have to understand here is that the nuclear apologists, having exhausted their initial denial options: it's overblown (er, yes it blew)! it's not chernobyl (nope, and it might get worse than chernobyl due to all that used fuel stored onsite)! the release is mostly iodine (so was chernobyl)! the containment vessels held (nope)! it was a black swan (sorry, but that wasn't the biggest tsunami to his japan in the past two centuries)! the radionuclide are mostly diluted into the ocean (where they will bioaccumulate into the predator species we like to eat)!

So now they're moving on to blaming the plant operators, becuase, you know, nuclear power is pure and beautiful and the technology itself cannot have systemic flaws. Next they'll seize on some tangent and argue that to death amongst themselves in order to avoid occupying their minds with the fact that the business of running nuclear plants is as corrupt, short-cut ridden, and plagued with short-term outlook as any other business.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not arrogance if you're right. Pump a BWR full of lead and you'll never have to vent steam. Period. End of story. It's why the russians use it in their submarines.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

(moderating)

I'm very curious as to why they can't take a 75ATM/1100psi steam tank and make liquid water.

I'm sure your not referring to the reactor vessel, that's only 65psi. So are you talking about a separate construct in the primary or secondary cooling loop?

Where in the hell is the safety factor? You assholes are asleep at the wheel cutting costs on concrete and steel(two of the cheapest building materials in the god-damned world). Where are your professional ethics. You're either too stupid, or too unscrupulous to build a reactor that just fucking works.

Obviously you are talking about the AP-1000 here, but the short answer is money.

The Prima Dona engineers who are patronizing the public's betrayed trust and are killing the planets

I'd leave room for the policy makers. Uncle Sam has removed the list of design modification from the interwebs because of the tewworist threat, but the NRC chartered an industry panel to suggest design improvements for nuclear reactors. I have the list. Of the thrity suggested *none* have been put into new designs. Nuclear power could be made safer, but it costs too much. It's simply not an activity that can be conducted by private industry.

I am intrigued by your reactor design modifications.

Best laid plans

[divec]

I wonder WTF their contingency plan is if a big tsunami hits now ...

I strongly believe we know how to set up technical systems for safe nuclear power. However I'm extremely sceptical of the idea that we know how to set up social / administrative systems for safe nuclear power. It's too easy to hide systemic weakness behind secrecy, or too embarrassing to identify and fix present failings, or the debate gets too polarised and ideological so people, politicians and regulatory systems lose sight of the actual safety issues because of the headline effect etc.

I wouldn't be quick to blame money or corruption or unscrupulous people, either. The key problem is secrecy -- even without malice, familiarity makes you blind to system flaws -- we software people know this very well. Only total transparency can ensure that flaws do not get hidden. On the other hand I don't know how this can be reconciled with security against sabotage.

There's a need for a sober, measured debate about all this and it's a pity that a few fundamentalists (on both sides) are making this impossible.

Re:Best laid plans

[BlueParrot]

To give you an idea of just how retarded political and administrative dealings with nuclear power is, consider what we've been doing in Sweden. Nuclear was bad, so we banned construction of new reactors, then we closed down one of our existing plants, replacing its energy generation by turning up the power on the other plants ( thereby reducing safety margins). Now because the renewables that were supposed to replace nuclear didn't make it (surprise surprise ), we will extend the reactor lifetimes by 50% or so.

I.e, rather than building newer and safer designs we have cranked up the power on the old ones and extended their operation permits beyond their design lifetime, and we still don't have any plausible way to replace them other than some wishful thinking about wind power. We're not building new reactors, so the obvious outcome will be further life extensions to our already ageing reactor fleet. Then when they finally do fall apart at 6+ decades of operation, it will all be because nuclear is inherently dangerous, and not at all because we stopped its development and improvement for 40 years and decided to go with a wind power pipe dream that saw the reactors pushed way beyond what they were ever designed for.

If it was down to me we would be building ESBWR or CANDU reactors for the short to medium term, with an aim of Lead or Molten Salt cooled breeders in the long term, but there's far too many people here who honestly think we will replace Petrol and Nuclear with Wind farms and Solar Photovoltaics. Yes, Solar, in Sweden ... It isn't even economical in California, but somehow we expect to do better because we're not Americans.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they will have plenty of water.

Re:Best laid plans

[vlm]

I wonder WTF their contingency plan is if a big tsunami hits now ...

4th biggest earthquakes in recorded history don't happen often. However, our regular scheduled hurricane season is rapidly approaching. Now that light at the end of the tunnel is not really avoidable.

Re:Best laid plans

[Solandri]

Generally I'm agreed. However, safety measures need to be scaled to the actual level of risk involved. Due to the high-publicity nature of nuclear accidents, the nuclear industry already faces much stricter safety standards than any other energy technology. The radiation alarms at nuclear plants will trigger if you bring in certain substances anyone can buy at the corner drugstore. Per TWh of electricity generated, wind and solar have killed more people than nuclear. Coal kills hundreds of times more people each year than Chernobyl did. And the deadliest power generation accident in history was a hydroelectric dam failure. Yet people accept all those risks without a second thought. It's only nuclear which gets raked over the coals.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be trying to improve nuclear safety. But if our goal is to save lives, our money and worrying would be much better spent improving the safety of the other power technologies, instead of concentrating on the one which generates the most media coverage when there's an accident. The latter is the very definition of hysteria. Level of fear generated is a lousy metric to use for risk assessment (though it is a legit measure for PR).

I wonder WTF their contingency plan is if a big tsunami hits now

This is something I've been harping on over and over though it hasn't been getting as much favorable moderation here. When people do risk assessment, too often they only consider independent events. The risk of a generator failing to start is (say) 10%, so just put a half dozen generators there and you have 99.9999% reliability, right? This fails to account for the possibility of a single event, like oh, I dunno, a tsunami? wiping out all your generators at once. Likewise, the probability of a two large tsunamis is not just the probability of one large tsunami squared. If an earthquake generated a large tsunami, it's almost certain to generate several large or larger aftershocks (technically the 9.0 quake was an aftershock to an 7.2 a few days prior). And along with it comes a high probability that one of those aftershocks could generate another large tsunami. So important structures in tsunami-prone regions should be designed to withstand two successive tsunamis. Not just one.

Re:Best laid plans

[Kjella]

They do try to have backups of the backups of the backups. But this isn't a data center that can fail-over to one thousands of miles away, ultimately all the cooling solutions have to end up at the same reactor at the same plant which is your "single point of failure" you wouldn't allow in a critical IT solution. That really limits the practical level of redundancy you can have, adding more backup systems doesn't help unless they'll function in a scenario where all the other fail. With 9+ magnitude earthquake it's more "how many meters thick are your concrete walls" than "how many redundant systems do you have.

Re:Best laid plans

[BeanThere]

I strongly believe we know how to set up technical systems for safe nuclear power. However I'm extremely sceptical of the idea that we know how to set up social / administrative systems for safe nuclear power.

I agree. The tech behind nuclear power is potentially very safe. Humans, on the other hand, remain the weakest link. We're just not evolved enough for this.

Re:Best laid plans

[BeanThere]

Is it just me or are the European Solar lobbies crazy powerful. Look at what's happening Germany now as an extreme case - they're talking about shutting down all nuclear entirely. And ah, there's always the good ol' reliable taxpayer to foot the massive bills coming their way. I'm sorry but there is no way this is happening spontaneously without some sort of manipulation from solar lobbies.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is economical, both in California and Sweden. In fact, Google is currently investing 168M into a solar plant in California. The US deploys enough solar panels every 18 months to replace the output of an entire nuclear reactor.

Germany has made it their goal to reach 35% of electricity generation by 2020 and they aren't a sunny climate (solar panels produce even when it's cloudy). They've already achieved nearly 20% of their entire electricity production from renewables. Ignoring capacity factor, Germany has deployed enough solar panels at peak production to replace the average production output from Fukushima's six reactors.

Sweden has an even more aggressive schedule -- 49% of energy by 2020. They're already at 44%. Sweden Leads the European Union

Ultimately the resistance to renewables comes down to people not recognizing that renewables are getting every year after year while non-renewables and the fuel they consume keeps getting more expensive year by year.

Re:Best laid plans

[TopSpin]

somehow we expect to do better because we're not Americans

That's basically it. You must feel a degree of isolation thinking as you do.

have cranked up the power on the old ones and extended their operation permits

The US is doing the same. We 'uprate' about half a dozen reactors a year. All the reactors get rubber-stamped life extensions as well.

One day some uprated, life extended zombie reactor is going to burst a main steam line and blow down into containment. Maybe the 50 year old LPCI kicks in as designed and protects the fuel. Maybe not. Either way that reactor will never restart.

Then, as you say, the media will foist one anti-nuke 'expert' after another onto the tube to explain how all this is inherently fatal by nature.

The grandparent questions whether we know how to 'set up social / administrative systems for safe nuclear power.' The answer is yes; look to Western Navies. Better naval reactor designs aren't precluded by hysteria. A flag officer is never more than a few hundred yards from reactor(s) operated by the finest minds the navy can train. If you fuck up you don't wander off and write a book; you face court-martial. While service extensions are granted, reactors get full overhauls with upgrades during refueling.

Could that degree of competence and discipline be applied to civilian nuclear power? Yes, but it would cost more. So will everything that isn't coal. The advantage of nuclear is that it can actually work without inducing energy poverty.

Re:Best laid plans

[lennier]

rather than building newer and safer design

There's a big unstated "if" in that phrase, and that's that newer reactor designs are in fact safer.

I mean, technically, on paper, sure, these third and fourth generation designs em>sound safer. Passive cooling, foolproof, failsafe, etc, etc. It's all very nice and clean and clinical. On paper.

But weren't last few generations of reactors also supposed to be literally failsafe? Never in a thousand years would we see the types of accidents we've had five or so of in the last forty years? We were assured that by people who literally swore on their childrens' lives that it would be perfectly safe.

And of course, the only way we can tell for sure if these new designs - which of course are going to be "lighter" and "cheaper" because they'll have smaller containments - is to build them and run them. And then there'll be pressure to rapidly deploy them. Oh, what does that remind me of? a little thing called the "boiling water reactor" which was a second generation model improved from the old clunky pressurised water systems and didn't need the big heavy containment, because it had this neat "torus" to suppress leakage?

But these new reactors are different you say? Of course they are. They're built by the same companies who made the old, inferior, should never have been deployed ones? Gee, now that's an odd coincidence. I'm sure there's nothing to it. I'm sure we can trust this new generation of nuclear advocates in exactly the way we couldn't trust their fathers.

Lie to me once, shame on me. Lie to me twice... don't let the spent fuel pool blow up and contaminate your farmland on the way out.

Re:Best laid plans

[lennier]

Sorry, I meant this new generation of nucler advocates.

Re:Best laid plans

[lennier]

solar lobbies.

Yeah, who do those freaking sun-lovers think they are? Don't they realise if we all use the sun it will go out faster?

Re:Best laid plans

[lennier]

The tech behind nuclear power is potentially very safe.

"Potential safety" sounds a bit like "possible correctness". That doesn't get you very far in math. Why should it be a free pass in engineering?

A thing is either safe, or it's dangerous. If in itself it's dangerous, but can be sorta-kinda "made" safe, within limits, by constantly pushing a massive amount of active resources at it... and if those resources go away, the process runs away on you and does something very toxic and very irreversible... in most people's books, that's actually the opposite of "safe".

It's just that the danger of nuclear power is so long-term that most people don't think in those terms. Short-term, yes, it's "safe" until one day isn't. But the universe lays a long game.

Re:Best laid plans

[afidel]

PV solar is good for localized generation and since a substantial amount of peak load coincides with peak output it's a good fit to demand, for base load molten salt solar is a scalable, relatively low cost solution. We need both renewable's and nuclear to move off coal and NG.

Re:Best laid plans

[khallow]

I wonder WTF their contingency plan is if a big tsunami hits now ...

They can just repeat what they already did. It's a proven strategy now.

Re:Best laid plans

[dfenstrate]

But weren't last few generations of reactors also supposed to be literally failsafe? Never in a thousand years would we see the types of accidents we've had five or so of in the last forty years? We were assured that by people who literally swore on their childrens' lives that it would be perfectly safe.

You might notice that the Fukishima Daichi plants that are in trouble are GE Mark I designs. That's mark 1. As in the first designs. Do you think engineers have learned a few things in the decades since?

As a side note, do you think the folks who drowned to death or were crushed when that wave hit might, if given the chance,not mind a little radiation? I bring up this morbid defense because it took a natural disaster that killed over 10,000 people immediately, in a country well-prepared for this sort of thing, to overwhelm this 40 year old design. Have some perspective!

That being said, there are design decisions that matter. I'm a fan of containment domes for this reason- there's a lot more volume to absorb the energy caused by a loss of heat sink.

Spent fuel pools can be put below grade- so they're easier to fill and their walls are backed by concrete and earth.

Many nuclear power plants are built with these features, which would have lessened this disaster significantly.

Lie to me once, shame on me. Lie to me twice... don't let the spent fuel pool blow up and contaminate your farmland on the way out.

Now go shake your fist at the earth itself for killing >10,000 people right off the bat, and wiping cities off the map.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

So you don't believe in technological progress then? Should we continually use the older ones which are much more dangerous than newer designs just because they might have flaws? Sheesh.

Re:Best laid plans

[sjames]

Nobody would claim RMBK (Chernobyl) is perfectly safe except at gunpoint. TMI was a non-incident in the end, nobody was harmed. For all the hype, Fukushima suffered a tremendous earthquake AND a tsunami and, despite being a rather old design, hasn't actually harmed anyone beyond what could be expected if a coal plant suffered the same conditions.

That's not to say that it hasn't left a rather expensive mess to clean up. That looks like a massive cost, but amortized over the decades of operation and across all the reactors, it's not It looks even better if you coult up all of the externalized costs of coal or gas plants.

Re:Best laid plans

[subreality]

But weren't last few generations of reactors also supposed to be literally failsafe? Never in a thousand years would we see the types of accidents we've had five or so of in the last forty years? We were assured that by people who literally swore on their childrens' lives that it would be perfectly safe.

Who swore? Gen I BWRs were built to an standard of industrial safety that was considered adequate in the 1960s, when they were designed. "Adequately safe" never meant "perfectly safe" - it meant that the risk-reward profile was worthwhile.

I'm quite confident that if the Fukushima reactors had been replaced with ABWRs, ESBWRs, ACR-1000s, or AP-1000s, we would not be having the present crisis. In particular, all of these designs are capable of maintaining cooling even in a station blackout. This is not a case of hindsight being 20/20 - the problem of station blackouts was foreseen and mitigated, as were many others.

Part of the great increase in safety is because they're considerably simplified from GenII designs. Because of this they are more likely to survive (or simply not be vulnerable to) other failures that we haven't anticipated.

Modern nuclear safety standards are now much better than current industrial safety standards - which includes all other methods of large scale power generation commercially available at present.

...which of course are going to be "lighter" and "cheaper" because they'll have smaller containments...

This simply isn't true. Careful engineering is allowing some modest reduction in containment size in some of the latest designs compared to the 1980s era, but even the smallest ones are an order of magnitude larger than the 1960s era containments.

Re:Best laid plans

[BlueParrot]

Sweden has an even more aggressive schedule -- 49% of energy by 2020. They're already at 44%. Sweden Leads the European Union

The vast majority of which is biofuels and hydroelectrics. We have made it policy not to expand hydroelectrics further because it causes large ecological damage to create the artificial dam, and biofuels are mostly in the form of district heating ( i.e burning spill material for heat). Trying to expand them further would cause ecological problems and rising food prices since most of our arable land is either forest or agricultural. Electricity generation is still completely dominated by Nuclear and Hydroelectrics. Wind is less than 1% , and Solar doesn't even show up in our statistics.

I can only assume your other claims are equally misleading and full of it. Heck, if renewables were as competitive as you claim there wouldn't be any discussion to begin with.

Re:Best laid plans

[AmiMoJo]

Age alone is not a problem for reactors. Like aircraft and other complex machines they can be maintained indefinitely, assuming you have suitable spare parts, skilled workers and regular maintenance. The reason they get decommissioned is that maintenance gets too costly and newer, safer and more efficient reactor designs come along.

So while it is a good idea to replace old reactors for newer, better ones, just keeping the old ones going is not necessarily a problem if they are properly looked after.

The problem at Fukishima was not due to age, it was due to not anticipating such a high tsunami. The earthquake was well within design limits, so presumably the failure to plan for such a large wave was a failure to understand and calculate its effects.

Re:Best laid plans

[pedestrian crossing]

The grandparent questions whether we know how to 'set up social / administrative systems for safe nuclear power.' The answer is yes; look to Western Navies. Better naval reactor designs aren't precluded by hysteria. A flag officer is never more than a few hundred yards from reactor(s) operated by the finest minds the navy can train. If you fuck up you don't wander off and write a book; you face court-martial. While service extensions are granted, reactors get full overhauls with upgrades during refueling.

Exactly. Capitalism and safe nuclear power are mutually exclusive.

Could that degree of competence and discipline be applied to civilian nuclear power? Yes, but it would cost more...

The question is how much more would it cost to do nuclear safely?

Re:Best laid plans

[Coren22]

Exactly. I pointed out above that this was not the only reactor in the area that was hit, it just happens to be that this is the oldest plant in the area. The newer plants were much more passively safe and shut down without issue when the earthquake hit.

Re:Best laid plans

[Coren22]

I'm quite confident that if the Fukushima reactors had been replaced with ABWRs, ESBWRs, ACR-1000s, or AP-1000s, we would not be having the present crisis.

This was demonstrated, several other reactors in the area safely shut down.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem at Fukishima was not due to age, it was due to not anticipating such a high tsunami. The earthquake was well within design limits, so presumably the failure to plan for such a large wave was a failure to understand and calculate its effects.

You're aware that some modern reactor designs address blackout with passive cooling that is sufficient to prevent core damage? An AP-600 or AP-1000 design will passively cool for up to 72 hours after loss of all power. Extending the cooling beyond this limit requires only a simple external supply of water, such as a fire truck.

You see, the nuclear industry isn't oblivious to the problems encountered at Fukushima Daiichi. They have created reactor designs that are capable of surviving the exact failure mode suffered in Japan.

There was no intention of leveraging these advances, however. The No.1 reactor license would have expired only weeks after it melted down. TEPCO was in the process of obtaining a license extension. They were specifically not in the process of seeking approval to replace the obsolescent reactor with a newer, better design.

As designs improve we are permitted to assign fault to obsolescent systems; just because it was once built a certain way doesn't indemnify the design, or the choice to persist in its operation, from criticism for all time, and we are not required to maintain our criteria to accommodate obsolescent designs forever.

Age alone is not a problem

Probabilistic risk analysis of reactor life cycles shows that age is, indeed, a 'problem.' The probably of failure increases. The capability of reactor safety systems to respond decreases. Reactors are designed to survive their design life cycle while maintaining sufficient safety margin. An extension is granted when operators can convince their sovereign regulator that sufficient margin still exists, despite the criteria established when originally commissioned.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Capitalism and safe nuclear power are mutually exclusive.

Oh bullshit. The actual record (as opposed to the affirmation seeking statist fictions that pollute your head) operating hundreds of reactors for decades demonstrate that the western model of civilian reactor operation is generally safe, and profoundly safer than the alternatives, which you may read about here and here.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Can someone from the "anti-nuclear" camp refute this with some facts? Or refute the scale problem for solar and other renewables (land area, production capacity, TCO) that have been pointed out again and again?

This "debate" is like the evolution "debate" or even the "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs". Yeah, there are extremist idiots on both sides, but one side is armed with factual arguments, the other with hysteria or religion. It's not "extremist" (not aiming specifically at the GP here) to object to the implication that nuclear isn't already safe. There's a scale of "safe" for energy sources, and nuclear is the safest or among the safest on that scale, almost regardless how you define safe (environmental, human, etc.).

It makes me think that one of the best things we could do for the world would be to get an applied probability and statistics course mandated for public schools. Voters need to understand the kinds of risk-based arguments that need to be made here, so they can maybe get past the natural human instinct to underestimate mundane risks and overestimate dramatic risks.

Re:Best laid plans

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The main reason for shutting down Barsebäcks reactors was that we built them right next to the capital of Denmark, which the Danes for some reason or other didn't appreciate.

2. Extending the life of existing reactors and maximing their power-output isn't just about not building new ones to appease the crazy greens and environmentalist, it's about making them profitable. Every slashdotter would like to see reactors replaced every decade or so, but this would make the power they generate much more expensive. Since they cost a lot to build, we have to run them for a long time to make them worthwhile. New designs, while they may be technically superior on paper, also lacks proven track records, and may cause more problems than older designs.

3. Waterpower provides ~60 TWh yearly in Sweden, while nuclear power provides 65- 70 TWh yearly (http://www.svenskenergi.se).

Are these guys dumb, or is it just Slashdot?

[tekrat]

Is it just me, or does that summary make absolutely no sense whatsoever? Almost everything about it sounds just plain idiotic. I can't tell if it was dumbed down for the press, or if the Slashdot submitter/editor (sic), just got everything wrong.

Liquid N2?

[MrQuacker]

Is there a technical reason they cant just pump in liquid nitrogen?

Re:Liquid N2?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would still take the same amount of time to cool it and have it stay cool. Half-lives et all

Re:Liquid N2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it would boil off rapidly, while at the same time making the container walls, which weren't designed for LN2, brittle? Which, you know... Bad combo?

Re:Liquid N2?

[tippe]

Possibly because the shock of the violent expansion that would result would possibly cause way more damage than there is already? Also, assuming nothing was damaged when all of that LN2 expanded back into gas, what do you think would happen to the pressure inside the RPV? I could imagine that the resulting pressure and large volume of gas would also displace the coolant, uncovering more of the rods and making things even worse, overall. For the last month, they've been fighting to reduce pressure and temperature inside of the vessel while keeping the coolant topped up (or filling it back up in some cases, because some had been lost).

Anyway, I haven't read the article but have been following what has been going on at the IAEA website, and I believe the procedure that they are following is pumping nitrogen gas into the containment vessel (which surrounds the reactor pressure vessel where the core and coolant are) to displace any air that might be there. I don't think they are proposing to pump nitrogen directly into the RPV.

Re:Liquid N2?

[Solandri]

Liquid nitrogen is less effective than water at extracting heat. I ran through the calcs a few weeks ago:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2039038&cid=35501128

Re:Liquid N2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nitrogen is not for cooling, is for displacing oxygen and prevent an explosion caused by the chemical reaction between hidrogen and oxygen.

Re:Liquid N2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Temperature isn't everything. Heat capacity is more important and water has a much higher one than nitrogen.

Re:Liquid N2?

[DRJlaw]

Liquid nitrogen is less effective than water at extracting heat. I ran through the calcs a few weeks ago...

TEPCO will not use liquid nitrogen to cool the reactor (other than incidentally). TEPCO will use liquid nitrogen because that is the form in which one manufactures and ships large quantities of nitrogen gas. They will still use water for primary cooling, and use nitrogen to dilute any hydrogen that is accumulating inside the containment.

Hydrogen has a wide explosive range of 4%-75% at STP in an otherwise normal atmospheric mix. By introducing appropriate amounts of nitrogen into an enclosed space, TEPCO can dilute the hydrogen in the escaping gas to a point where it cannot explode

Very simplified example: Escaping gas is 4% H2 and 96% N2. Air is about 20% O2. Now consider a mix of: 4 parts H2, 96 parts N2, 25 parts O2. Merely adding the oxygen necessary to bring levels up to those found in air creates mixture that is about 3.2% H2, 76.8% N2, and 20% O2. The hydrogen drops below its LEL. There's more flexibility in real life since the atmosphere is a 78/21/other mixture, but then there's safety factors and other complications as well.

Re:Liquid N2?

[sjames]

That and the probable extreme overpressure when the nitrogen boils violently.

I was more impressed by:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nitrogen is an inert gas"

I wasn't aware it had been promoted to nobel gas status but hey, Pluto's not a planet anymore so who knows...

note: that's not necessarily dissn' the plan - nitrogen may be a lesser of evils (dunno) but unless there's some new (possibly PC) definition of "inert" of which I'm unaware nitrogen ain't it...

Re:I was more impressed by:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nitrogen is an inert gas"

I wasn't aware it had been promoted to nobel gas status but hey, Pluto's not a planet anymore so who knows...

note: that's not necessarily dissn' the plan - nitrogen may be a lesser of evils (dunno) but unless there's some new (possibly PC) definition of "inert" of which I'm unaware nitrogen ain't it...

Nobel had a much more violent use for nitrogen.

Re:I was more impressed by:

[toastar]

"Nitrogen is an inert gas"

I wasn't aware it had been promoted to nobel gas status but hey, Pluto's not a planet anymore so who knows...

note: that's not necessarily dissn' the plan - nitrogen may be a lesser of evils (dunno) but unless there's some new (possibly PC) definition of "inert" of which I'm unaware nitrogen ain't it...

Hunh....

Maybe you should edit the wikipedia page to remove N2 and SF6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas

or maybe Just... yah know... read it.

Re:I was more impressed by:

[blair1q]

N2 is as close to inert as you're going to get, in that kind of quantity, for the nickel Tepco has left to its name.

It takes some interesting lock-picking to pry those two N's apart and fix them to hydrogen. Mere banging won't do it.

Re:I was more impressed by:

[Politburo]

Better tell all of the chemical manufacturers that inert tanks with nitrogen about your "discovery"..

Re:I was more impressed by:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's no noble gas; but N2 is pretty mild mannered. Nitrogen fixation generally requires either really clever enzymes(as with nitrogen fixing bacteria) or fairly abusive temperature and pressure along with a catalyst(as with the Haber Process). It is commonly used as a shield gas for welding of many of the less zesty metals; because it is probably the best-placed material on the cost/inertness curve. Nitrogen, liquid or compressed gas, is dirt cheap compared to any genuinely inert gas, and is inert enough for quite a few applications.

Compounds with a high proportion of nitrogen atoms, on the other hand, are to be considered guilty until someone who loves their fingers less than you do has finished proving them innocent...

Re:I was more impressed by:

[Anonymous Coward]

N2 was pretty unreactive last time I checked... that is unless you've a load of alkali metals knocking about, which you probably don't in a huge pool of boiling hot water.

Re:Better plan - just nuke it

[Wyatt Earp]

Nukes don't work that way.

If they put a tactical nuke(s) right by the buildings containing the reactor and detonated it there would be tons of fallout in the area and out to sea and well downwind. The reactors vessels, the fuel, the fuel rods and the remains of the nuclear weapons themselves would all be fallout.

If they airburst one to minimize fallout it wouldn't "push the whole plant into the ocean.", it'd just mess up the structures and containment structures worse than the earthquake and tsunami did.

Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[Animats]

Normally, cold shutdown takes a few days. At Three Mile Island, it took two weeks. Six months is worrisome. Too many more things can go wrong during that period.

They still have so little information about what's going on inside the reactors. Check the latest JAIF status report. Pressure is unknown. Temperature is unknown. Water level is unknown. "Fuel rods exposed partially or fully". Reactors 1 and 3 are buried under piles of rubble. And they have to fix the plumbing under that debris.

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Cold shutdown of a boiling water reactor takes many weeks of externally-powered cooling, and that's when the originally installed cooling systems are working.

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[sl3xd]

The IAEA maintains an excellent log of the status of the reactors, spent fuel pools, isotope monitoring, and radiation levels.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

In Unit 1, fresh water is being continuously injected into the RPV through the feed-water line at an indicated flow rate of 6 m3/h using a temporary electric pump with off-site power. In Units 2 and 3, fresh water is being continuously injected through the fire extinguisher lines at an indicated rate of 7 m3/h using temporary electric pumps with off-site power.

So we know the amount of water being pumped in.

RPV temperatures remain above cold shutdown conditions in all Units, (typically less than 95oC). In Unit 1 the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 180oC and at the bottom of the RPV is 117oC. In Unit 2, the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 141oC. In Unit 3 the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 91oC and at the bottom of the RPV is 122oC.

We know a fair amount about the temperatures of the reactor units.

In accordance with the report of the Nuclear Emergency Response HQs (Prime Minister’s Office) from 15th April, thermography temperatures of the Containment Vessel and Spent Fuel Pool in Unit 1 were 33 oC and 36 oC respectively. In Unit 3 the temperatures were 68oC and 59oC at the same positions. Also on the 15th April, thermography temperature of the Unit 2 reactor building roof was 31 oC

We know the temperatures in the spent fuel pools.

In accordance with NISA Release 94, TEPCO took water samples from the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 on 12th April, in order to examine the conditions. The sample was taken by using the arm of the concrete pump vehicle. At the same time, the temperature of water in the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 was measured with a thermistor attached to the arm of the concrete pump vehicle. The activities for I-131, Cs-134 and Cs-137 were 220 Bq/cm3, 88 Bq/cm3 and 93 Bq/cm3 respectively.

And we know the radioactivity of the water in the spent fuel pools.

A reference: Between naturally occurring radioactive Potassium and Carbon-14, every human body (or other form of carbon-based life) is radioactive. Humans have about 8 kBq of radiation per person (more or less depending on one's mass, of course). It works out to around 114 Bq/cm3. So the water in spent fuel pool 4 is about twice as radioactive as your average hunk of meat - or about the same as a banana. (Potassium & Carbon 14 are much safer forms of radiation than radioactive Iodine & Cesium; but it's a fun comparison).

We know that units 2 & 3 are at atmospheric pressure, and that unit 1's pressure is in the same range as tire pressure (0.4 Mpa, or ~58 PSI for Americans...).

So there's actually quite a bit that is known.

It's taking so long because the Japanese are being quite cautious about radiation exposure. I read a report yesterday that no worker has received more than 100 mSv since Mar 11; the maximum allowed for emergency workers is 200-250 mSv or so. (They did have a couple of guys whose feet were well dosed for a short time, but the whole-body radiation level was still below 100 mSv).

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[stabiesoft]

I check the IAEA site fairly often. Temps are down a little. But, it is pretty amazing that a reactor that is "off" is still generating close to 2000 gallons of ? degree C temp rise per hour (Reactor 1). Not sure what the temp of the water they are injecting is, but I am guessing around 40 degree C giving 150 degree rise from 40C. That is alot of hot water. The temp is not quite as high as it was a few weeks ago, used to be over 200C in reactor 1, so slow progress.

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do you think nuclear fission is? It doesn't just "stop", any more than a freight train just "stops". Except this freight train is the length of a continent and needs months of "braking" to stop, and if it isn't braked it heats up and accelerates. THAT IS HOW THESE REACTORS ARE DESIGNED TO WORK. THERE IS NOTHING AMAZING ABOUT IT, UNLESS YOU CONSIDER THAT THESE FORD PINTO'S OF THE REACTOR WORLD ARE STILL IN OPERATION.

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it takes longer because they have to repair stuff that exploded thanks to the hydrogen generation in the reactor. They still have not fixed the pumps at the reactor. There is still a leak of water from the reactor into the building at #2.

"Cold shutdown" is a defined state meaning less than about 95C. A temperature of 115C is not cold shutdown, by definition. To get there, cooling systems have to work or you have to wait a longer period of time until decay heat dies down.

More information here,

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

The information you linked is because it is only reported what is known and confirmed. Unconfirmed data is listed as unknown.

And no, no one will be fixing plumbing under debris. Debris will be removed first. It is currently being removed. Remote controlled machinery is used to minimize risks.

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[Animats]

needs months of "braking" to stop,

Wrong. Normal cold shutdown time for a GE Mark I reactor is less than a day. Some newer BWRs can reach cold shutdown even faster. It's not supposed to take months.

If they'd had 24 hours of battery backup, or one well-located engine generator, this never would have happened.

Re:Cold shutdown is supposed to take a few days

[Kyusaku Natsume]

In fact, most of the reactors at NPS affected by the tsunami were at cold shutdown in the 2 days from the earthquake. One of the units at Onagawa NPS was at cold shutdown almost at the time of the earthquake, the other was at cold shutdown before the day ended. Still, we can't take into account the normal cold shutdown time since the units from Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini weren't working under normal circumstances. After all, the first evacuation order from nuclear emergency was issued for Fukushima Daini, since they thought it was the one at most danger.

WSJ says TEPCO should fail

[mdsolar]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704004004576270424155464958.html

So all the victims can just suffer I guess owing to insufficient insurance.

I'll say it...

[Mr.Fork]

...the problem with this entire situation is that Japan let commercial companies run their entire nuclear infrastructure. I'm not sure about you folks, but all commercial companies do exactly what is required within the letter of the law, but not an ounce more if it would cost more money. Sure, it's a 40 year old facility, sure it was built within the specs for the time. But it was still operational in 2011.

Question is, would a public-run utility design and build nuclear infrastructure to within the letter of the law or would they 'overbuild' for safety? Is this entire situation the cause of capitalism running into its core fault - its lack of concern for the expensive 'doing the right thing' vs the cheaper 'doing things right.'? I don't really know, but it smacks of the reality of letting a company totally focused on making and saving money vs making decisions to protect the people of Japan.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

So do you drive under the speed limit? If you drive the speed limit, you're just operating to within the letter of the law. If you get in an accident, it is your fault for just doing the bare minimum for what the law requires. This problem has nothing to do with 'capitalism.' If they were following the laws and everything was up to spec, the only argument is that the laws might need to be changed. Don't let your misguided ideals blind your opinion.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

A public run utility might argue for "overbuilt" standards, but they would probably always build right to the minimum. Public entities are not immune from the pressures of capitalism and are constantly forced to justify their expenditures. At least that's my experience with public entities (commuter railroads).

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who works in Government, I have to say that you're wrong. State run endeavors also do exactly what is required within the letter of the law but not an ounce more. They just take three times longer to do it and at ten times the cost. Even then, it would be of inferior quality.

Re:I'll say it...

[DeadCatX2]

Are you seriously comparing speed limits to nuclear reactor regulations?

Just consider for a moment: if you speed and cause an accident, you might die. Maybe you kill someone in another car. Maybe a few people.

If a nuclear reactor melts down, we're looking at thousands of deaths. At least.

The problem is in fact with capitalism. The ruthless pursuit of profit means cutting corners where the risks are considered acceptable. There are no acceptable corners to cut when it comes to nuclear reactor safety. Therefore, nuclear power should be a public utility, to prevent the pressure to profit from compromising safety.

Re:I'll say it...

[MobyDisk]

Every safety feature costs money. The question always is "how much does it cost?" That doesn't change when moving to the public sector. There is still a finite amount of money.

Would it be economically viable to overbuild it? Would the taxpayers be willing to pay for it? Would that necessarily even solve the problems? I wonder if it would even have been physically possible to overbuild Fukushima to withstand this assault.

Re:I'll say it...

[Kjella]

Question is, would a public-run utility design and build nuclear infrastructure to within the letter of the law or would they 'overbuild' for safety?

If safety margins are needed the safety margins should be in the law, not expecting everyone to overbuild. Just like building codes design for worst possible load and then some - basically you can have the whole place stacked with people doing line dancing and the floor still won't collapse by 100 people jumping simultaneously.

Re:I'll say it...

[mr1911]

A public-run utility would hire commercial companies to design, build, and maintain the entire nuclear infrastructure. It would look a lot like what we have today. But ignore that for a minute.

Question is, how far would you have them overbuild? Overbuilding adds a significant amount to the cost of a project. The Fukushima reactors were build to a specification and they survived much worse with regard to the earthquake to the point of stating they were overbuilt for safety. The tsunami wasn't unexpected, but overwhelmed the design redundancies. So now you are a genius and will design a reactor for a 7.2 earthquake and resulting mega-tsunami. Won't you look like a dumbass when the 7.7 earthquake and resulting even-bigger tsunami wipe our your design.

Re:I'll say it...

[drachenfyre]

Question is, would a public-run utility design and build nuclear infrastructure to within the letter of the law or would they 'overbuild' for safety? Is this entire situation the cause of capitalism running into its core fault - its lack of concern for the expensive 'doing the right thing' vs the cheaper 'doing things right.'? I don't really know, but it smacks of the reality of letting a company totally focused on making and saving money vs making decisions to protect the people of Japan.

Lets ask the fine folk of Pripyat how the government run nuclear facility, completely free from capitalism running into it's core fault worked out.....

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I was comparing speeding to nuclear regulations. The GP argued that TEPCO was only following the law, and not going above and beyond it. The comparison to driving was not SPEEDING, but driving under the limit, since the LAW only requires you to drive at a certain speed. Arguing that capitalism is the cause of this disaster is much like arguing that driving the speed limit and causing an accident was because you were not DRIVING SLOWER THAN THE SPEED LIMIT. TEPCO was following the letter of the law, and was reasonably safe from everything but a 1000-year disaster. The costs of engineering something to withstand a 1000-year disaster vs the planned life the reactor was taken into account by the Japanese government when writing the regulations and design requirements in the first place.

There have to be trade offs on safety vs. affordability, otherwise we'd have to over-engineer everything to withstand every possible disaster that could ever happen.

Want to build that wind turbine? Sorry, can't do that until you can build something that can withstand the sun going supernova and causing the blades to break off. Might land on someone and kill them!

Re:I'll say it...

[DeadCatX2]

Wow, look at the hyperbole. "Can't build that wind turbine unless it can withstand the sun going supernova." Surely even you realize that the sun going supernova has exactly nothing to do with the safety of wind turbines. Also, consider the consequences of a wind turbine experiencing a worst-case scenario, say a tornado. Weigh that against the consequences of an earthquake causing a nuclear meltdown. Long-tail risks like nuclear meltdown are precisely the instances where the government should front all the costs for safety, to prevent private corporations from cutting corners to save costs because "we won't have a 9.0 earthquake in our life time!"

And your conjecture about "you can't plan for a 1000 year disaster"?

In the past 60 years there have been FIVE earthquakes that exceeded 9.0, all along the Ring of Fire. That sounds more like a 12 year disaster to me.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

So the government, who originally wrote the laws and regulations regarding safety at the plant should be in charge of the same plant? Foxes guarding the hen house?

Re:I'll say it...

[BeanThere]

Way to interject your agenda here, thanks, but no, this has nothing to do with it. And here's a question for you comrade, about this so-called evil "capitalism" with its so-called "core fault" - would it not be the case that corporations would be under less pressure to 'cut costs' if they weren't under such incredibly heavy pressure from 'big government taxation'? Let corporations keep a bit more of their money and they will have more money to spend engineering for safety, that is simple logic.

Re:I'll say it...

[DeadCatX2]

"Foxes guarding the hen house"? This implies that the government wants the nuclear reactor safety to be sub-par. It also implies that the government actually wrote the regulations, as opposed to some corporate lobbyist.

But to answer your question, yes, the government should be in charge of the plant that it regulates. Government does not have shareholders pounding on their door demanding a profit.

Re:I'll say it...

[BeanThere]

Mr. Fork also seems to imply that private companies do not have an incentive to engineer for safety. As if it is somehow more profitable for a private company if their nuclear reactors explode!??!? On the contrary, they have a very strong financial incentive to engineer for safety. Governments, on the other hand, don't actually have to worry about share prices and profits dropping if a publicly run reactor explodes, it doesn't impact their 'bottom line' at all, they just keep going and hand the bill to the taxpayer.

TEPCO wasn't well-run, but the Fukushima disaster wasn't ultimately caused by a private company taking shortcuts, and to state that is a complete fiction - in case Mr Fork missed it, it was caused by a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by an unprecedented tsunami slamming into the plant. In fact, they were compliant with government safety regulations - did government force them to build a bigger tsunami wall? No. And yet that was ALL they would have had to do.

Re:I'll say it...

[steelfood]

Humans are humans. I don't think it matters whether the human is paid by a government or by a faceless CEO in a company.

Yeah, DoD, with their unlimited funding, might be able to build decent nuclear reactors. But that's only because of their unlimited funding. Even NASA cut corners when they built the space shuttle by using solid fuel instead of liquid, resulting in the Challenger disaster.

Re:I'll say it...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Question is, would a public-run utility design and build nuclear infrastructure to within the letter of the law or would they 'overbuild' for safety?

There's a town near here where there's a road built next to a brook that stretches nearly the length of that town. That brook, during rainy periods, gets under the road (indirectly, through saturated soils) and wrecks the pavement with the freeze/thaw cycle.

So, every 10 years, for the past 60 years, the town embarks on a 4-year repaving project, where they rip up the old blacktop and put new blacktop down on a quarter of the road each year. It's junk within about 5 years.

Every privately maintained road in that area (shared roads, driveways, etc.) has been dug up, had gravel put down, had a layer of geotextile put down on that, then a proper roadbed (dirt or pavement) on top of that.

The Town won't do 1/10th of the road every year, fixing the roadbed as they go, because that would take too long. 60 years from now, it seems they'll be doing just the same thing.

It's worse than a corporation because there's no controlling external authority to hold them to a reasonable standard.

Re:I'll say it...

[wrook]

In some place other than Japan, what you are saying is feasible. But in Japan I really, really doubt that private/public makes any difference what-so-ever in how things are run. It's not like they are cutting costs in order to deal with a hostile market. I'm paying something like 30 cents a KWH for electricity. That will definitely be going up I guess (which is a good thing in my books). Pretty much every big organisation in Japan runs the same way as far as I can tell. On the one hand, they aren't going to be stingy just to reduce the price. But on the other hand there are huge swathes of bureaucracy and plenty of places for a ball to be dropped. It has both advantages and disadvantages.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Thank God Chernobyl was run by the ever safety-conscious Soviet Government. That is of course why Chernobyl was an infinitely smaller accident and why nobody died there. And of course, Chernobyl only happened at all because of an unprecedented natural disaster that killed over 14,000 people even though none of the deaths were due to the nuclear plant. Everyone knows that the Japanese nuclear accident was solely due to human error after the greedy capitalist operators intentionally turned off all the safety features of the reactor and let it run away on purpose. Of course, the evil capitalists used an inherently unsafe RMBK design since in their evil greed they wanted to use the plant to build nuclear weapons that they sell freely on an unregulated evil market. Capitalism is obviously the sole cause of all evil in the world. Thank God that Chernobyl was completely run by the benevolent Soviet Govern and that absolutely no one was hurt and there was no environmental damage.

Re:I'll say it...

[fnj]

Oh for gosh sake. That's NOT "simple logic." It's bogus logic which fails to recognize the purpose of a corporation and the fiduciary responsibility of its management. A corporation will perform the minimum engineering required to meet specs. PERIOD. That's not a function of their evilness, it's a function of their PURPOSE. If you tax them less, it just means more will be left over for profit, or they will be able to cut the cost of their product. It certainly doesn't mean they will say, "Oh gee, the government is grabbing less of our money now, let's just blow off the stockholders and customers and spend more on engineering, just because we can."

Corporations are fundamentally less trustworthy than governments. Maybe governments are not trustworthy in practice, but at least nominally their sole responsibility is to the people, while the sole responsibility of corporations is to the stockholders. To the extent governments do not look out for the interests of the people, they are defective, corrupt. Corporations do not look out for the interests of the people by DESIGN; not because they are defective or corrupt.

If you want to change the behavior of a corporation in a case like this, you can only do it by REGULATING minimum specs, and ENFORCING those regulations.

And THAT is better than simple logic. That is realism.

Re:I'll say it...

[kurish666]

While I have serious concerns about the combination of profit-seeking and nuclear power, as well, recall that the Soviet "Ministry of Medium Machine Building," responsible for the USSR's nuclear facilities including Chernobyl, was not exactly a capitalist enterprise.

Re:I'll say it...

[fnj]

The reason the US Navy builds reliable nuclear reactors is not because they have "unlimited" funding. That idea is absurd. They have a budget they must decide how to divide up, just like everybody else. Every extra dollar they spend on reactors is a dollar they could have spent on cruise missiles or fighters. The reason the US Navy builds reliable nuclear reactors is because their mission and their very expensive assets depend on that reliability. And they have the freedom to formulate specifications that a for-profit company would have a lot of trouble justifying to their stockholders/investors.

Re:I'll say it...

[lennier]

Would it be economically viable to overbuild it? Would the taxpayers be willing to pay for it? Would that necessarily even solve the problems? I wonder if it would even have been physically possible to overbuild Fukushima to withstand this assault.

If you run that calculation and come up with "no", then perhaps now you understand why anti-nuclear advocates are so worried. The numbers suggest that it's simply not possible to make nuclear fission any more than one at once of cheap, safe and plentiful.

But not to worry! We're shooting for "plentiful".

There's absolutely nothing that can possibly ever go wrong with this solution to climate change.

Re:I'll say it...

[lennier]

Let corporations keep a bit more of their money and they will have more money to spend on either engineering for safety to appease some boring pencilhead tech guy somewhere or massive bonuses for their executives and investors and marketing department, that is simple logic.

Fixed that for you.

Re:I'll say it...

[DrBoumBoum]

the Fukushima disaster wasn't ultimately caused by a private company taking shortcuts

Yes it was (obviously). Read also this study (caution pdf) for some interesting insight on the probability of such a tsunami in Japan (hint: pretty high).

Mr. Fork also seems to imply that private companies do not have an incentive to engineer for safety. As if it is somehow more profitable for a private company if their nuclear reactors explode!

This is not how it works; large companies are not level-headed individuals who ponder for the most reasonable decisions. Companies are run by engineers whose reputations, well-being and yearly bonuses depend on the reliability and safety of their product, and by managers whose reputations, well-being and yearly bonuses depend on the profitability of the endeavour, also on the short term, and sometimes, depending on economic and financial conditions, on the very short term. Sometimes engineers quit because they feel they're not heard, sometimes managers are fired because they're not cutting costs aggressively enough. At the end of the day the decisions that are made can be very remote from the ideal, most reasonable decisions.

We have seen that with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, we have seen that with the lost space shuttles, and probably with most large-scale industrial disasters at the end of the day. However I don't think that it has much to do with the fact that a company be public or private, it's more profound than that, it's almost a basic law of human nature from my understanding.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fukushima has had safety margins built in. It survived the earthquake. It shut down following it. The problem was the tsunami that was more than 2x the maximal safety level allowed by design. The thing flooded.

Now, I don't want to second guess operators at the time of the tsunami, but from what I can deduce, there weren't any plans in case of flooding of the facility and the entire cooling area (ie. pumps et al. underwater and disabled). Apparently the steam-powered cooling system required electricity to turn on (ie. rearrange valves) instead of being more passive, like the US's spring-loaded activation system.

Steam powered cooling would have been enough to prevent the events that happened at Fukushima. Inability to turn it on in time, I'm guessing due to design failures and/or lack of training, could have played significantly into the accident.

Was the ability to turn it on manually? If yes, why wasn't it done within 30 minutes after all cooling was lost? If it was not possible to activate it manually, then why not?? By manually, I mean a manually operated valve.

Questions like this will have to be answered.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Foxes guarding the hen house"? This implies that the government wants the nuclear reactor safety to be sub-par. It also implies that the government actually wrote the regulations, as opposed to some corporate lobbyist.

But to answer your question, yes, the government should be in charge of the plant that it regulates. Government does not have shareholders pounding on their door demanding a profit.

So, you want entrust both regulation and operation of the plant to a government that apparently can't even handle the first part competently? Interesting.

By the way, the government does have shareholders; they are usually called voters.

Re:I'll say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

it is somehow more profitable for a private company if their nuclear reactors explode!??!?

No, he probably implies that it's cheaper to gamble that nothing will happen than take appropriate measures.

Governments, on the other hand, don't actually have to worry about share prices and lawsuits if the shareholders thinks the company is investing too much in safety and not enough in delivering profits

FTFY.

And, no, a 10m tsunamin is in no way, shape or form "unprecedented", that sorry excuse is just hog-wash. And as for being compliant, so that's the excuse de jour now? And how do you get the standards set so you are compliant, even after the measures taken are shown as being inadequate, as demonstrated by the 2004 boxing-day tsunami? Inquiring minds would like to know. You think it was the government types who sought up the TEPCO people and said "Hey, we're just seen a huge tsunami which there's absolutely no fucking way you guys could handle, but we won't force you to do anything because clearly it won't happen here?

Re:Better plan - just nuke it

[Anonymous Coward]

What a brilliant idea. Vaporize the 4000 tons of uranium and plutonium that is stored onsite and launch it into the upper atmosphere, where it can be shared with the rest of the world over the next week as fallout.

Jesus are you stupid.

No problem

[publiclurker]

They'll just hire more uneducated foreign workers to do the work.

Re:No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Americans?

Re:No problem

[RockDoctor]

I thought there must be some cunning strategy behind the Creationists. What heroes they are, for providing the rest of the world with such a pool of, err, talent.

Pyramid?

[Max_W]

Why not just bury it under an artificial mountain?

Or is it because nuclear agencies like to tinker with remaining gear?

Re:Pyramid?

[drinkypoo]

They don't want to just pump a bunch of concrete into it because if they do that then it's going to fester under the ground for years, and they still think they can eventually get it shut down before they have to bury it, or maybe even truck it out of there (haha.)

Re:Pyramid?

[rubycodez]

no, because if buried now the various reactors and pools would overheat, destroy concrete under them, and leak massive contamination into water table. To say nothing of the problem of making structures around vessels and pools so weight of burial wouldn't be brought to bear on them. Burying, if done at all, would be much later.

"inert" is relative

[cinnamon colbert]

As a chemist, may i remind /.ers that "inert" is a relative term.
You can certainly get nitrogen gas to react; I think that is what causes serious pollutants like nitrogen oxides.
of course, really inert gas - "noble" gases like Helium, Argon, Neon, Xenon, Krypton - are $$ and probably not available in sufficient quanty; in the old days, you would make nitrogen by simply chilling air; a nitrogen generator is a big honkin' machine iwth a little spout; you turn it on and liquid N2 starts pouring out the spout; I think the more modern technology is a sheet that is permable to only oxygen or nitrogen; since air is mostly N2 or O2, simply pushing air against the sheet means that you can generate relatively pure N2 easily and cheaply.

Re:"inert" is relative

[Iskender]

And even with the noble gases inert is a relative term, so your statement applies there too.

Xenon fluoride has been made. Hell, it has industrial applications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_difluoride#Applications. Also, I heard about helium oxide from somewhere. That oxide was VERY unstable, but apparently it can exist for long enough to be measured.

Neon is the only one that's completely inert at this point as far as I'm aware.

Re:"inert" is relative

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, I was well aware of noble gas/fluoride compounds (although I didn't know about helium oxide - thanks)
just thought that was a little esoteric for /. oh wait, to esoteric for /. ? what was I thinking ?

Re:"inert" is relative

[cinnamon colbert]

I did a search on the american chem soc website, for "helium oxide" and "helium compounds" the first had no relevant hits, the second gave the hit below, which suggests that HeO doesn't exist (or may exist transiently, as some unstable species) http://pubs.acs.org.ezproxy.rit.edu/doi/pdf/10.1021/jp908254r

Alternate plan

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are planning on pumping nitrogen into the containment vessels under pressure then I assume they could also vent the pressure to an external container. Why not look into converting common containers into temporary storage units for the pressurized gas. Look for common, transportable storage containers for gases such as rail cars used to ship gasses and ship them in and encase them in concrete or another more appropriate material on site. Dig a hole, line up rows of containers, connect the appropriate plumbing, fill in hole with dense concrete, let cure, open valves to vent pressurized gas into buried containers. The process of venting the gasses quickly should cool the containment vessel.

I have an idea.

[mbkennel]

Why not run nuclear reactors in a nitrogen heavy/oxygen-light atmosphere all the time?

Explosions + nuclear cores do not mix well. Surely some genius might have recognized this.

Re:I have an idea.

[vlm]

Why not run nuclear reactors in a nitrogen heavy/oxygen-light atmosphere all the time?

Explosions + nuclear cores do not mix well. Surely some genius might have recognized this.

Nitrogen atmosphere kills too many people; even highly trained and prepared individuals under normal conditions. NASA ground crew, etc.

Crazy as it might sound, even this late in the game, running in a pure N2 atmosphere for 40 years would have killed way more people than are gonna die from this event.

Re:I have an idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the cores are normally filled with water?!

They should make the whole reactor structure out of the stuff they make the black box from airplanes from.

Re:I have an idea.

[DrJimbo]

Why not run nuclear reactors in a nitrogen heavy/oxygen-light atmosphere all the time?

The hydrogen in the water is required. It acts as a moderator, to slow neutrons down to raise the cross section of interacting with another uranium (or plutonium) nucleus. Hydrogen is a very good moderator for slowing neutrons because the mass of a hydrogen nucleus is roughly the same as the mass of an neutron.

This was supposed to be a safety feature, and in many ways it ways. The idea is that if there is no water then the chain-reaction stops. AFAWK, the chain reaction has stopped in all the damaged reactors. The problem they've been wrestling with this past month is getting rid of the heat generated by the residual radioactivity that remains in the fuel rods. If the chain reactions had continued, they would have had to contend with 10 times the amount of heat.

Re:I have an idea.

[lennier]

way more people than are gonna die from this event.

Yep. The hideously deformed babies born from pregnancies affected by radioisotopes, the ocean fish stock die-offs, and the early cancers hidden in the statistical noise, don't count as actual "deaths", so it's all good.

Re:I have an idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

And so us layman learn a little from every nuclear catastrophy. Apparently even something as innocent sounding as residual heat (gee, my oven at home has that!) can be enormously dangerous in nuclear installations. The thing that actually scares me the most is the danger posed by the spent-fuel pools. And these things were just hanging there underneath the thin outer walls of the reactor. It seems one could have started a disaster just by crashing a sports plane into a reactor. Let alone a jer airliner.

How much Nitrogen?

[SuperCharlie]

My first thought was wondering how much of a cloud of this would be wandering around.. I know wind and dissipation and such.. but working in the A/C industry for a while taught me to be very cautious of flooding places with gasses.. that whole asphyxiation thing kinda ruin your day.

nuke it

[Is0m0rph]

Nuke it from orbit...It's the only way to be sure.

reactor lifetimes

[QuantumPion]

This misconception has been going around quite a bit, so let me correct again.

Reactors were not designed to only last 40 years. 40 years is just the number the license period the original Atomic Energy Commission decided on based on the reactors being designed to last [i]at least[/i] 40 years, and to be re-evaluated periodically thereafter. This was because there was no prior knowledge or experience in this type of engineering. 40 and 60 year old reactors are not clunkers waiting to fall apart, they are just as safe (actually safer, due to upgrades) as the day they were built.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[fnj]

So you don't think the metal pressure vessels, piping and fittings corrode and degrade under conditions of very high temperature, pressure, and nuclear radiation? They will never be as safe as the day they were built because it's not practical to inspect constantly and thoroughly enough to catch every single flaw before it becomes the least bit dangerous. The difference is if a coal, oil, or gas plant blows a pipe, a bunch of non-radioactive steam escapes, maybe kills some personnel on site, and maybe causes some fairly expensive damage. In a nuclear plant, there is always that possibility that a failure may progress to the catastrophic complete devastation of the entire site and some of the surrounding area.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[rubycodez]

as former construction scheduler at nuke plant, I disagree. We have containment buildings with "bandages" in them, where the concrete was cut to allow steam generator to be removed and replaced. Reactor heads have been found with enough nozzle penetration wear and leaking they will soon need replaced (at something like $150M a pop). Primary coolant pumps are being replaced as end of life. In other words, somewhat over 40 years is about what you get without major rebuilding being needed, they are indeed clunkers needing major expensive maintenance.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a nuclear power plant, and I'm really getting a kick out of these replies....

They will never be as safe as the day they were built because it's not practical to inspect constantly and thoroughly enough to catch every single flaw before it becomes the least bit dangerous.

Actually, it is practical, constantly done, and we do perform repairs when we find the occasional flaw.

In a nuclear plant, there is always that possibility that a failure may progress to the catastrophic complete devastation of the entire site and some of the surrounding area.

Do you imagine we're unaware of this? Do you further imagine we have no redundant systems?

Existing nuclear power plants are billion-dollar investments that are massively profitable. In addition to taking our duty to protect the health and safety of the public seriously, we also are very keen on protecting the investment, and our personal livelihoods.

There have been the occasional bastards who have shirked this duty (Davis-Besse) and put their investment (and to a much lesser extent, the health and safety of the public) at risk. These people- and organizations- are painfully re-educated as to the gravity of our industry's responsibility.

(Anonymous because I'm sure my employer would prefer I not discuss piping flaws at all, mostly because folks like fnj would run wild with nonsensical fearmongering.)

Re:reactor lifetimes

[petermgreen]

On the other hand IIRC there have been underground coal mine fires that have rendered the towns on top unsafe for human habitation.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[fnj]

Thank you for the highly amusing reply which proves nothing. Just in case you are who you claim to be, I'll play it straight. As to the flaws you find at periodic inspections - do you really think they were not there the month before you found them? You are always playing catch-up by the nature of the beast and people are on to the fact that you are riding the edge of the whirlwind.

They inspect airplanes regularly, too, you know. And every once in a while an airplane has a structural failure in flight due to some flaw that was not found in time. Maybe close is good enough for planes, where the maximum extent of the consequences is pretty well bound, but it's just not good enough for nuclear power.

As an EX supporter of nuclear power who finally woke up, the one thing this is not is "nonsensical fearmongering," and you show yourself in an unprofessional light to call it that.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[Mspangler]

Neutron embrittlement.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=96256

Wikipedia lacks an article for this. This is another thing that is dealt with much better in newer plants that it was in the '70s. There was a lot of reserve in the design because neutron embrittlement as not well understood, but eventually that safety margin will be used up.

Another reason to scrap old plants and build new ones, assuming we are going to stay with nuclear power.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is if a coal, oil, or gas plant blows a pipe, a bunch of non-radioactive steam escapes, maybe kills some personnel on site, and maybe causes some fairly expensive damage.

Coal, oil, and gas plants kill more people during their "safe", normal operation than nuclear power plants have killed even counting their failures.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[sjames]

Coal plants can render the surrounding area uninhabitable even in normal operation.

We hear all about every microgram of anything vaguely radioactive that escapes from any nuclear plant, but nothing about the fine thorium and radium particles that come from a coal plant every day by design.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[Anonymous Coward]

only the CO2 that is continually released by the coal/gas plant slowly compounds the greenhouse effect warming the planet, melting the ice caps raising the sea levels, destroying biodiversity and adding unpredictability to the weather (fire storms in Russia, Big tornadoes and hurricanes in US). Plus with the exponential growth in our energy demands (and population) we have like 10 years of cheep access to those resources left tops. I think then things will get very interesting.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[AmiMoJo]

Aircraft have the same problems - microscopic cracks developing in critical places, corrosion that can't be seen etc. They use a variety of techniques, including x-rays, to check for that kind of damage. As long as the inspection is done properly and effective maintenance steps taken to fix any issues the aircraft can fly safely almost indefinitely. What tends to take them our of service is lack of spare parts or cost, not age.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[AmiMoJo]

Expensive, but possible to do safely.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a moderating AC that is not the AC you are having a conversation with. I think I know your AC. But as seriously as he takes his job I don't think there is anything he can do about reactor vessel embrittlement as a result of neutron bombardment. This is the fundamental limitation of reactor lifespans.

Re:reactor lifetimes

[Coren22]

But but but, that's not what I learned in Sim City 2k...

Godzilla

[bill_mcgonigle]

I wonder if it would even have been physically possible to overbuild Fukushima to withstand this assault.

Of course it would have - they could have built a 45-foot tall seawall. Then when a 60-foot tsunami hit, we could all be having the same conversation.

This is known as the Godzilla argument. It eventually comes down to, "why didn't you build to withstand a Godzilla attack?". That this is a Japanese problem is merely coincidental (or unfortunate) to the argument.

Greed has no upper limit

[Radtastic]

Sorry. Corporations' obligations to their shareholders is to maximize profit, not deliver "good enough" profits.

their plan is rather laughable

[rubycodez]

Considering the results of the robot surveys found the areas close to the reactors are too radioactive for humans to work for more than 10 hours without getting radiation poisoning, I find their plan a "hoot"

Also, Nitrogen absorbs thermal neutrons ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"Nitrogen is an inert gas"

Not really. [Chemical reactivity.]

Also: Nitrogen absorbs thermal neutrons and becomes radioactive carbon, which then reacts with oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide.

N14 + n -> C14 + p.

C14 halflife is 5730 years, emitting an electron and antineutrino and returning to N14. Not too hot, and the neutron flux isn't great with the reaction shut down. But it's hardly "inert".

Water is a neutron moderator

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem is that water is a neutron moderator. A BWR relies on steam bubbles for stability and boiling water will reduce the power output of the reactor. So pumping in fresh water, increases the power output and similarly pumping in air instead, will decrease the power output.

Re:Nitrogen?

[pushing-robot]

The anti-nuke brigade is apparently in full force, since the scenario I described was actually predicted by scientists (and debunked by those with a better understanding of nuclear physics).

Let me guess...

[tehcyder]

This continues to prove just how safe and sensible nuclear energy is? The fact that the planet has not split in two shows that any concerns over the viability of nuclear power are tree-hugging scaremongering? It wouldn't happen with a modern plant anyway? How were the Japanese supposed to know they'd have such a large earthquake and tsunami? Oil and coal are both one thousand times more radioactive than uranium anyway?

Temperature and pressure

[DragonHawk]

"Nitrogen fixation generally requires ... fairly abusive temperature and pressure along with a catalyst"

High temperature and pressure? Hmmm, right, okay, I've got a nuclear reactor, where could I find some of that...

:-)

(Yes, I see "along with a catalyst".)

Can I have a seat in the non-explosion section?

[DragonHawk]

"I bring up this morbid defense because it took a natural disaster that killed over 10,000 people immediately, in a country well-prepared for this sort of thing, to overwhelm this 40 year old design."

I must admit I am perplexed that some people keep bringing this up. The argument seems to be, a bunch of people just died in a natural disaster, so it's okay for a nuclear power plant to explode.

No. As far as I'm concerned, If we can't build a nuclear power plant that can survive a big -- but entirely reasonably foreseeable -- natural disaster we shouldn't be building them.

Note that I'm not asserting we cannot build such a plant. Perhaps we can. But it's fairly obvious we didn't. And I have a problem with that.

Re:Can I have a seat in the non-explosion section?

[Coren22]

You do realize that this plant is one of many plants in that area? This is one plant that had catastrophic failures while several others shutdown without problems. The newer plants proved their ability to withstand this earthquake/tsunami, but of course, nuclear is unsafe... This is a very bad situation, but what should be pointed out is that this was an expected failure mode, and had procedures for dealing with it. Had this plant been replaced as was recommended repeatedly in the past, it most likely would have been able to withstand everything that happened without the problems, but you can continue bashing nuclear for the failures of capitalism if you feel like it, I am sure it makes you feel better.

Flood proofing

[DragonHawk]

"Of course it would have - they could have built a 45-foot tall seawall. Then when a 60-foot tsunami hit, we could all be having the same conversation."

One thing I'm somewhat surprised at is that their designs are susceptible to flooding at all. It's perfectly possible to put generators and switchgear inside water-proof vaults. It's pretty available technology; telcos routinely use such in some of their installations. Generators won't run without an air intake, of course, but tsunami waters recede relatively quickly.

"It eventually comes down to, "why didn't you build to withstand a Godzilla attack?". "

There's a mighty big difference between supposing a giant lizard and supposing a flood at a site next to the ocean in an earthquake-prone region.

Re:Flood proofing

[bill_mcgonigle]

it's perfectly possible to put generators and switchgear inside water-proof vaults.

yup, they totally fail at defense-in-depth. They had a sea-wall to stop the waves, doncha know? Sounds like an IT guy who just picked up a used PIX and thinks he can now stop apply security updates.

Speaking of lessons learned from IT, they never tested their emergency plans either. If they had, they would have known that their backup generator trucks were incompatible with their cooling pumps (I've head 50 vs 60 Hz as the root problem, but that's a rumor). If they had managed to maintain the cooling integrity, probably most of this disaster could have been avoided.

Controlling external authority

[DragonHawk]

"It's worse than a corporation because there's no controlling external authority to hold them to a reasonable standard."

I thought that was supposed to be the voting public? ;-)

Re:Controlling external authority

[bill_mcgonigle]

I thought that was supposed to be the voting public? ;-)

Hehe, competition is a beautiful thing!

Re:Better plan - just nuke it

[gr8_phk]

If they airburst one to minimize fallout it wouldn't "push the whole plant into the ocean.", it'd just mess up the structures and containment structures worse than the earthquake and tsunami did.

Hiroshima looks like it got wiped rather completely - and that was an air burst. See the before and after shots. As for fallout from the nuke itself, we've exposed the world to plenty of those back before the test bans - it's not that bad, and then we could put this all behind us. Besides, I was actually half joking about this solution. Half...

The actual road map ...

[RockDoctor]

The actual roadmap documents are available from http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11041707-e.html .

A few comments : (110417e12.pdf)

Prevention of hydrogen explosion inside the primary containment vessel (hereafter, PCV) (Units 1 to 3.)
ãf Cooling the reactor by injecting fresh water into the reactor increases the chance of steam condensation, leading to a concern of potentially triggering a hydrogen explosion.
â'Nitrogen gas will be injected into the PCV of each unit to keep the concentration of hydrogen and oxygen below flammability limit.

Several comments I've seen and heard have said that nitrogen injection was being used to COOL the reactors. This it seems, is not the case.

(110417e13.pdf)

Current Status [7]: Walls of the building supporting the pool have been damaged.
â'Tolerance evaluation is especially needed for Unit 4.
â'A certain level of seismic tolerance has been confirmed.

Why do I feel a terrible sense of impending doom when I read things like that?

(110417e13.pdf)

Current Status [11]: High likelihood of underground water around the building (sub-drainage water) to be contaminated.
Countermeasure [36]: Preparing to decontaminate sub-drainage water after being pumped up.

Hmmm, hadn't heard that one mentioned in the news. Not surprising, but it's another thing to be done.

(110417e13.pdf)

Countermeasure [45]: Reuse of processed water as reactor coolant.

That makes sense. No point in using clean water to clean up shit if you've got shitty water around. At least, to start with.

(110417e13.pdf)

Countermeasure [55]: Complete installing reactor building covers (Units 1, 3, 4.)
Risk [9]: Possibility of cover being damaged by a huge typhoon.

Uh oh! When does typhoon season start there? Summer / Early Autumn according to Wikipedia.
Uh oh!

(110417e14.pdf)

[As an aim for the future.]Remote control of water injection

So, to control injection at the moment, someone physically has to go and turn on pumps. In the contamination zone. Yeuch!
Fancy swapping your daily commute and life in the cubicle farm for that sort of day job?

Lots of work there. Good steady career.

Re:Better plan - just nuke it

[Wyatt Earp]

Little Boy on Hiroshima was a device dropped on a city of wood and paper, most of the damage in photos of Hiroshima are from the fire storm that broke out 20-30 minutes after the blast, a nuclear reactor won't do that.

If you look at Trinity (20 KT airburst at 100 feet AGL - fireball radius of 110-115 feet), we have pieces of steel left at the base of the tower.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/Trinity/image18.shtml

Now at Fukushima, much stronger and exotic metals, plus uranium, there will be a lot more metal left intact. Fukushima's containment structure can survive 410-1400 kPa, you'd have to put a nuclear device right next to the containment structure and trigger it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

As for fallout, even if you use a device(s) large enough to engulf the facility in the fireball, all that vaporized metal is going to fall out of the sky somewhere downwind, you know like in the North Pacific fisheries.