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Japan Plans To Scrap Nuclear Plants After 40 Years
An anonymous reader writes with this news as carried by the San Francisco Chronicle: "After the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima plant, 'Japan says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety.' If, however, a nuclear plant is deemed still safe it may continue operation."
I promised my neighbors I will stop burning cow dung after 10 years, unless I deem it doesn't still smell like sh*t.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
well, people have to reapply for their driver licenses after certain amount of time, this makes some sense.
But I am looking for the people to overthrow governments and finally to take the power into their own hands and to restart economies by looking at things that we've been prohibited from looking into. I want a nuclear powered car, dammit!
You can't handle the truth.
Japan will continue to use nuclear plants after 40 years after some political/financial lubrication and rubber stamping a safety report, just like every other first world nation with old plants in the news lately.
War is peace; Freedom is slavery, etc...
Mmm...chocolate rations...
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Doesn't seem like a change, unless they presently don't shutdown an unsafe plant before 40 years.
So... inspect old plants and shut them down if they're not operating safely. That sounds oddly reasonable.
Make up your mind. Either you pre-determine 40 years or you don't. This is a 100% political announcement.
What if you have a LIFTR or some other Thorium reactor which is good for 45 or 100 years? What if the current Toshiba local reactors which can be installed in Russia or China but not in USA or Japan due to arbitrary regulatory rules become downright popular?
BTW may I please have a Toshiba reactor in my back yard? I promise to charge small rent for the underground storage and electric grid easements. :)
JJ
40 years old nuclear plants will be shut down, unless they're still safe. --> 40 years old nuclear plants that are no longer safe will be shut down
One would assume that this has been the policy all along. Hell, if a nuclear plant is deemed "no longer safe" they should shut it down whether it's 20, 40 or 60 years old!
So, they'll keep doing what they have always been doing, except that they now introduced arbitrary time limit, which they can circumvent if they want to.
It'll be interesting to see if Gen 3+ and Gen 4 nuclear reactors will be allowed longer terms of lease, given that they have less parts to fail and more passive saftey systems. I think that nuclear could really be a keystone of Japan's nuclear energy future. That, and the Japanese have done research on how to extract uranium from the sea after Uranium prices spike in the future once easily mineable resources become exhausted. If we don't get breeders or thorium running, Japan has done the research.
http://www.jaea.go.jp/jaeri/english/ff/ff43/topics.html
Japan's only major energy resource is the sea. And the sea has enough Uranium to keep Japan ticking long after their population dwindles away due to their low birth rate.
So what have they done up to this point? Shouldn't all plants require safety inspections, all the time, and if they're not up to standards they get shut down? Age of the plant shouldn't matter at all -- in fact, a plant built 50 years ago should be held to the same standards as a plant built 2 years ago. It doesn't matter if putting generators in the basement next to the ocean was deemed to be okay in 1967. If current standards say your backup power has to be protected from tsunamis, then the plant has to be fixed, or shut down.
Speak before you think
They are dependent on nuclear energy obviously, and 40 years is probably quite a feat. But after those 40 years, when there is radioactive waste that will last for thousands, and after leaving certain zones inhabitable for centuries... was it worth it?
That also implies that if a plant is unsafe, it still gets 40 years. Otherwise, what does the time limit mean? At the end of 40 years, a plant is either safe or unsafe. If safe, they can keep going. If unsafe, why was it still running?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The engineering was fine, they just didn't have a backup backup generator that was hardened against tsunami. It surprises me a bit that nobody thought to plan for that eventuality being located where it is, but they didn't. The plant itself survived a significant earthquake and only had troubles because it couldn't cool down when it lost power.
Also look into Thorium for the reaction process, which has fewer risks and more advantages compared to Uranium.
Care to show me an active, commercial scale Thorium based reactor? There aren't any. India is presumably working on one.
Personally, I would rather take my chances with a well defined, well researched, well engineered technology than one that has yet to see the light of day in real world terms. By all means, do the damned research - make and run an 10 GW Thorium reactor and get back to us.
The problem isn't engineering - it's politics and economics. Politics in that companies running nuclear plants had managed big time regulatory capture (especially in Japan). That blew up in their face when both TEPCO and the Japanese government remained asleep at the wheel for over a decade. Recall that there were numerous geologic studies that indicated that Fukashima wasn't safe as originally built. TEPCO didn't want to put the money into the plant and the government didn't want to bother TEPCO. Just a couple of million dollars of sea wall and spare generators might have saved countless billions of dollars. Economics in the fact that the US government, at least, is basically insuring the nuclear power industry because private insurers think the risks too large. That makes non nuclear "alternative" energy less competitive that it should be. To really solve the problem for the long term, the playing field needs to be as flat as possible. For long term survival of nuclear power, the industry really needs to figure out a way to make the plants less expensive because they're really pricier than it looks. And solve the waste problem, but that, again, is more political than anything else.
I'd like my Unicorn now......
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I find that statement very reassuring, unless with future data, it's not.
Funny
They've pledged to decommission them under a duration-based circumstance, unless they determine they should not be decommissioned under a set of circumstances that they should be using exclusively to determine decommissioning anyway. In other news, the sky is either blue or it is not, depending on the relative positions of the earth and the sun, and the presence or absence of cloud-cover, atmospheric contaminants, etc. So if you can't see the sky, it implies that one of these factors is reducing sky visibility. Or your eyes are closed.
Hey, that's great. In fourty years I'll be dead.
The engineering was fine, they just didn't have a backup backup generator that was hardened against tsunami.
So it wasn't fine. It could have been protected merely by locating the site a little further inland.
Take the village of Aneyoshi - it was basically wiped out in 1896, suffered major destruction in 1933, and in 1960 they were fine because they had moved to higher ground by then. So that gives us around 30 years between major tsunamis - the Fukushima site would have had to assume at least one during the intended operating period. Not planning for that was a major flaw. It doesn't by itself indicate that the reactor _type_ is unsafe, but the design of the site was not correct.
If you look at the history of the Research and Development of nuclear reactors you will notice they were scaled up from test reactors to full sized commercial reactors very quickly. Speaking in general terms if you look closely at the design of most commercial reactors they just look like big versions of the test reactors. Even the AP-1000 and the EPR reactors suffer from a plethora of design inadequacies that demonstrate the full life cycle of a reactor was not considered.
I reason this because the simplest and most obvious design change to Nuclear reactors would be to build them underground which would mean any nuclear accident would be automatically contained and the entire facility sealed off and, if necessary, flooded with water. It would also mean decommissioning and disposal of the reactor could take place in-situ and that would avoid the energy costs (around one third of the reactors lifetime output) incurred. I've only ever seen an IFR reactor design underground but there are many other safety features that can be applied.
The argument for Nuclear Power generally ignores the entire nuclear industry paradigm and focuses on reactor technology as the answer, whilst the argument against focuses on the consequences of an industry that was rushed into existence based of the premise of nuclear weapons production. But I believe there is a middle ground based on spent fuel containment and a proper infrastructure to support it.
There is little doubt that Fukushima would be much easier to deal with now if the spent fuel pools were empty but the truly sobering thought is that US reactors of the same design have up to five times the density of spent fuel contained in those pools and the same type of accident in one of those reactors would almost certainly result in a un-contained plutonium fire.
It is possible to build a much safer nuclear industry but it would start with an international effort that incorporated the Joint industry findings the NRC commissioned AND the EPR design enhancements applied to all new reactor designs. That and a proper infrastructure program to handle spent fuel would answer most of the arguments the critics have of the Nuclear industry.
It's really only attributable to the arrogance of the 50's thinking that leaves legal artifacts like the Price-Anderson act in existence long after it's use by date and demonstrates that announcements such of these are as insincere as the regulatory enforcement that led Japan, and the world, into this mess in the first place.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No, the design of the reactor complex was fine, they could also have engineered a taller wall to protect against it as well. At some point you do have to draw a line as to how over engineered you're going to be. Based upon what was understood about the risks they built what they could, and considering that the wave was substantially larger than what they were anticipating things went quite well.
I'm just surprised that they didn't have a secondary backup generator in case something happened that prevented the primary backup generator from working or for periods when they needed to take it apart for maintenance.
I remember reading Asimov's 'Foundation'; where people after colonising the whole galaxy, fell into lackluster apathy and gave up on their knowlege of science, abandoning nuclear energy in favour of combusting carbon based fuels. I'm glad Asimov's not alive to see the day when the human race lives up to the end of days scenario he thought so terrible before even touching the stars.
Locating the site farther inland requires more pipes to be dug, which bring in cold water from the ocean. Longer pipes are at a greater risk from earth quakes breaking them.
The only flaw in the building layout was locating the emergency generators in an underground bunker that was designed to be protected against earthquakes. That bunker was flooded by 20 feet of water drowning the generators.
instead of guessing about the engineering specs why don't you look them up? They put the generators in a location such that if the reactors buildings were damaged then the generators would be safe. that saftey came at a cost of being flooded SO they built a wall to keep water out. That wall wasn't tall enough and the bunker filled with water.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Based upon what was understood about the risks they built what they could
They assumed the risks so their site would be viable, and they put protections in place which were not too expensive to run the reactor economically. This was a very large tsunami, yes - but the site was not where the waves were highest. A smaller quake could have occurred at a worse location, and the site would have been hit even harder.
The Fukushima plant assumed a max wave height of 5.5 meters. That's less than historically reported wave height. The Onagawa nuclear power plant was 75 km closer to the epicenter, but it was built at 15 meters above sea level.
According to this: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-25/tsunami-risk-well-known-to-nuclear-engineers-regulators-who-failed-to-act.html - Three [tsunamis] in the past three decades had waves of more than 10 meters. So they actually regularly get tsunami waves higher than the max assumption made for that site.
The Onagawa nuclear power plant was 75 km closer to the epicenter, but it was built at 15 meters above sea level. It did fine. Maybe you want to look that up? Maybe if you try to designs and one performs far worse than the other (under better circumstances), that's some indication which design is better?
Seems to me we had multiple reactors hit with a giant earthquake AND tsumani and aside for the major news not a lot of people died. Seems evidence to build more nuclear for me. I swear the anti-nuclear hippies must be funded by big oil cause I can't see any reason not to keep building safer and safer plants till energy is basically free.
I'm not an expert on reactors but I don't this attitude of there being a 'nuclear plant' as if there were only one type there are different types and even the growing popularity of liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs).
Canada, where I live, has plants using natural uranium in vessels that are not pressurized and they work fine without all the drama.
Japan can do as it pleases of course I understand why but everyone else is freaking out over misinformation.
Obviously, Japan HAS been running Nukes for the LAST fourty years, and now AFTER 40 YEARS OF SAFE OPERATION they will close nukes they deem unsafe, and ones they deem safe will remain in operation.
What exactly is the news here? They will close 'unsafe' power plants and keep 'safe' plants up and running. Did Japan knowingly keep unsafe power plants online?
Ken
I love this 'I'll build a wall to keep out [hurricanes|tsunamis]' mentality that Japan and the folks in New Orleans have - I think it shows great chutzpah!
Ken
The plant in question did have issues coping with the water.
So... the engineering was fine then?
Not sure why engineering is judged on a sliding scale here. Did the plant survive a massive but not unprecedented earthquake/tsunami or didn't it? Japan is one of the few countries on earth that's plagued by earthquakes on a regular basis, every once in a while a massive one. Shouldn't the absolute worst case have been part of the planning? If it was, then the planning obviously wasn't good enough. If it wasn't then why the heck was that thing built in the first place?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Did you mean the inferior design of the plants they brought from the US? Or are not talking about the one that blew?
Rethinking email
There are other parts of the plant layout I don't understand. The wiring closets were below ground level under the reactors, meaning they could be flooded and would have been in any case hard to get to in an emergency. Engineers have been fretting over a loss of power problem for years and deemed it the most likely problem to cause a meltdown. And yet the reactor building is designed such that you can't run emergency external power to the pumps without going under the reactor.
And why is the spent fuel pool directly above the reactor? I realize it's easier to pull out old rods and put them in a pool that's right there, but it's not like they swap in new rods every day.
And why put the reactors so close together? I would have put a big earthen berm in between them to prevent cascading failures. The Russians were still running reactors at Chernobyl long after the #4 unit burned, but at Fukushima if they'd lost control of a single reactor they would have been forced to abandon all four plus all the spent rods stored on site. It seems like the plant could have been laid out in a way that made what happened (and the much, much worse thing that almost happened) much less likely.
See, that's the difference between your view and mine. You seem to be saying that's a reason to write off thorium. But it makes me say, what is wrong with the establishment for not aggressively developing thorium technology. The time is coming, not all that far off, when uranium fuel for nuclear power will run out. At that point, you can either have no nuclear energy, or you can be sure to be well ready with thorium based designs (or possibly fusion, but nobody has any solutions how to do that).
What's the alternative?
Japan is devoid of natural resources.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
40 years was the original design life for nuclear reactors. Of course, this article is pretty much 'life as normal'. In the USA you get a permit good for X years, normally 40. When a reactor reaches the end of that life, the owner of the plant has to decide whether to shut it down or move for permit renewal, where they have to, guess what, prove the plant is still safe to standards. That most likely means spending some millions on plant refurbishment/upgrades.
Look at Fukushima - it was scheduled to be shut down.
That being said - I DO support replacing old nuclear plants with new ones - they're more efficient and safer.
I don't read AC A human right
So it wasn't fine. It could have been protected merely by locating the site a little further inland.
You can't do that. Nuclear power plants need cooling, lots of it, because they don't heat their water properly. This means they need to be near a river or the ocean, or you need to pipe lots of water to them. If you go for pipes, better protect them well against failure, because if they fail you will have the exact Fukushima scenario again -- and your energy needs for cooling are much higher, so you will have many more backup generators to keep working and much more fuel to protect.
There are designs which get their steam properly hot (800K at least), but AFAIK none are in commercial use yet.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Let us know when they invent a solar panel that works at night.
Covering night energy needs is trivial in most of the world, assuming that energy is plentiful in daytime. The only significant challenge is to keep houses warm in cold climates, and heat is easy to store for half a day.
The meagre needs for industry and households for actual electricity at night can be met by hydro + wind almost everywhere and natural gas in the remaining areas.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The mistakes were management cutting corners. The "engineering mistakes" were elementary ones that could have only come from greedy bean counters.
It reminds me of the rent control laws in my city. At some point people got rent control laws passed, but were forced to put in compromises that sabotaged the goals of the law. Landlords were given the right to raise rent, significantly after a person was moved out and landlords were given the right to order people to move out for no particular reason, just with 60 days notice. So you get a situation of people getting kicked out of their homes every few years.
This sounds like some good people in Japan started off with a progressive idea for shutting down the worst nuclear power plants and perhaps encouraging their replacement with better models/designs.
It looks reality set in and compromises which took the teeth out of the law.
America should be doing the same. In particular, we should get the GE PRISM going and put it on-site of old gen 1 and 2 plants. Then use that to process the nuke 'waste' that is stored there. In doing that, it allows current nuke plants to tear down old reactors that use old tech, while still maintaining energy, and profits. In addition, it converts a train-load of waste that would be transported to WIPP and stored for 20K years. Instead, we now remove all of the energy, put in place a SAFE reactor, and then drop the large train-load of waste, to less than a car of true waste of 200 years worth of issues.
Then with any new sites, we should instead use a thorium reactor or some of the micro reactors, such as what GA, B&W, etc are working towards.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How about joining the 21st century and leaving the 20th? We are already a decade in and better designs that are much safer exist. Oh yea it is very hard to make bombs out of them. Who would want safe, reliable, cheap energy if you can't have bombs?
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8&feature=player_embedded
TEPCO clearly didn't confess it was unsafe before the tsunami. So this rule is worthless.
That said, I didn't RTFA. But any loophole is inevitably exploited by profiteers.
you had me at #!
That a big earthquake in 2011 makes it less likely for a similar quake to happen in the near future in the same area has fuck-all to do with the fact that they should have built it higher in the first place, with data they had at the time.
And that's before you get to the fact that the chances of having to deal with a once-in-a-thousand-years event gets more likely as the number of sites you have increases.
Actually, as I point out, I'm not writing off Thorium (or anything else for that matter). I'm just pointing out that it's not a good idea to plan on large scale deployments of technologies that aren't out of the lab - for whatever reason.
It is a common problem in the US at least - witness pretty much every large scale military weapon system devised in the past 40 years.
Do the research. Then deploy it.
And given the fact that Thorium hasn't made many inroads, it is quite possible that there are good reasons for it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The reason thorium technology has been mostly ignored is not mysterious; it is mostly that it is pretty useless for nuclear weapons production, and because 40 years ago idiots decided uranium technology in the form of BWRs and PWRs was "good enough" and practically stopped what was very promising research at that time.
The advantages of liquid fluoride thorium reactors are so compelling that until everyone agrees "we have put $100 billion dollars into R&D and failed to make it work", it should be very high priority NOW.
INHERENT safety
Abundant and low cost fuel
Much more manageable waste reprocessing
If we had standardized designs, the NRC could issue mandatory safety bulletins are require upgrades across all instances of a particular reactor model much like the FAA/NTSB does for aircraft. As it stands all plants are custom-built, making lessons learned at plant A impossible to apply to plant B.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.