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

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:"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.

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

[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

[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]

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: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?

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

[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: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:Not inert at all.

[blair1q]

Sigh.

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

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.

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"

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]

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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: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

[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: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: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: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: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: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: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.

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: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: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: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]

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