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How To Monitor Leaky Radioactive Water Tanks
freaklabs writes "The radioactive water leaks are getting worse at Fukushima Dai-Ichi. In a recent New York Times article, it was mentioned that TEPCO didn't have a reliable way to monitor the water storage tanks for leaks. I decided to write a tutorial on how to wirelessly monitor water levels in storage tanks."
Slashdotted yourself, looks like
I guarantee that there is frustrated engineer with a workable solution who spends half of all
his days trying to argue for the installation of monitoring equipment, but the organization
- doesn't really want to monitor the tanks
- is too incompetent to execute anything
- has a turf war over who is supposed to be monitoring the tanks
- is hung up on acquisition/budget issues
- is hung up on safety protocols
So now we'll never know whether they remembered to take into account radiation hardening.
So this is fine when it concerns non-radioactive water, but this solution wasn't tested in an environment where the radioactive levels are higher than usual, there was no test case in the story for that. Will the electronics live long enough? Also what about humidity, how long before this stops working because of higher humidity levels?
You can't handle the truth.
The only thing it's missing is a small solar panel to keep the battery charged. That way, no one has to climb those tanks of deadly radioactive water unless hardware has actually failed. Some of those Arduino boards already have battery chargers on them, but if not, a small regulated LiPo or NiCad battery charger is what you need. Then you just need a solar panel that is small and has the right output voltage. Sunelec.com seems to sell a 10 watt, 12 volt panel for $15. No big deal, and that's more than enough juice. Size the panel right, and you can do the monitoring continuously for a measurement every minute or so. (not that this really matters, but why not overdeliver?)
Because your website needs more hits and the experts in Japan certainly never thought of some of the most obvious ideas, yes?
You may not be familiar with japanese culture. I am, at least a bit.
In the US, this admition would translate to "we can't be arsed to give it some attention".
In Japan, this is a major loss of face and could well mean the end of someone's career.
This face thing is a major problem in many cases in Japan, because people won't admit to mistakes until they can't hide them anymore. Yes, even more so than in the West.
It would be fantastic if someone from the japanese geeks involved in the whole thing would read /. and rip your blog-wiseassing to shreds. Unfortunately, that's unlikely and so your ego can feed on a false sense of superiority.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening
Maybe the submitter wrote about it, but the site is unavailable right now and his summary certainly does not reveal he knows a thing about the special considerations of electronics in radioactive environments. There is a reason we (in the East German army) had big tube-powered big bulky radios instead of smaller transistor-based ones.
make that a very long stick
The electronics and piezo element in the ultrasonic sensor will fail fast in rad environement.
And then somebody must go there, install and later replace the sensors..
Can you get enough juice from the radiation to power the device?
Since you certainly have the Hubris part mastered.
No usable material inside this comment.
I don't get it; If your water heater was leaky, you'd notice it right away. Same if your gas tank, radiator, or brake fluid reservoir on your car was. In fact, the main way people figure out something is leaking is because something is present where it shouldn't be, and a supposedly-contained source is nearby.
You don't need complex wizz-bang devices to figure this out. You need the Mark I Human Eyeball. TEPCO knew, okay? They didn't want to know, so they ignored evidence that it was leaking. "Well, the tanks emptied out... but it must have just been normal evaporation", or "we expected a certain amount of leakage", or "we were understaffed," or "it was the contractor's fault," or any other rationalization you can think of. The problem here is not technology and it won't be solved by technology.
The problem is management didn't want to know it had a problem, because plausible deniability means no responsibility. So they will go to incredible lengths to avoid noticing the problem. You can't slashvertise your way into a solution here... "wifi sensors! That'll fix it!" Okay... who's going to monitor the sensors? What are the sensors actually sensing? Mind you... sensors being improperly read is what led to the Three Mile Island disaster. Do you trust your $12 wizz-bang to do the job of a trained nuclear engineer? This is what it all comes down to: The tanks were leaking, and somebody noticed. I don't know who that somebody is, but somebody knew enough to look. Whether they did or not...
TEPCO management needs to be dragged to Geneva and held for crimes against humanity. No, I'm dead-serious about this... Japan has a long an inglorious history of allowing epic amounts of corporate failure because it's not in their culture to admit wrongdoing. Trains fly off tracks and crash into apartment complexes and outside investigators conclude that a punitive and stress-inducing corporate culture was what primed the young train conductor to race around the bend too fast to stay on the tight schedule... and the corporation, faced with dozens of fatalities... says everything is fine and keeps the policy as-is: It was the conductor's fault. He couldn't handle our "high standards". This is a prime example of Japanese culture people. It's toxic and it needs international attention and condemnation.
It does not need a wiz-bang sensor monitor. It needs a gun to the head and a "come with us, we're taking a long flight to your trial, asshole".
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I suspect the tanks are being made to leak. One of the articles I read said something to the effect that an open valve was responsible for one of the leaks. They are running out of room for tanks and it isnt politically acceptable to drain directly into the sea. Leaky tanks are probably worse for Japan's water supply but easier to explain away.
... does this "plan" take into account that this is highly *radioactive* water, and the hardware needed probably should be Rad-Hard (radiation hardened) and not just your average off-the-shelf Zigbee or other radio interface? It's easy to monitor water levels with a little SBC with a Zigbee or something, it's an entirely different story when it's going to be subjected to radiation over the long term.
The reality is TEPCO doesn't want the radiation monitored. For the same reasons the beef industry doesn't want cows tested for Mad Cow. The absence of testing allows for plausible deniability.
Wow, what an amazing totally thought out plan!
I love how you thought about radiation causing random flipped bits, the need for adaquete power and shielding, etc.
Amazing, I didn't know the Arudino was rad-hardened and certified for use in safety critical industrial applications. I will instruct everyone I know to use the Arduino for everything. Why pay hundreds of thousands when I can get all the rad-safety and life-safety cerified components for pennies on the dollar!
Sorry mate...
I used to hack for a company that would do this for about $25 a month + installation fees and hardware costs. Although if someone had used the words "nuclear" we'd probably have consuled a lawyer and said hell no.
Complete with certified electricians, low power, cellular, satellite, and 802.x plans, off site data storage, backups, recovery, control, and a pretty little website that could get you the data a dozen different ways including read into your ear over the phone. For the big boys some of our stuff was even in escrow.
But you see, you didn't use radiation hardened electronics.
You're using an arduino which even in its deep sleep is consuming at least 4x as much power as we did while awake nearly a decade ago. And you've got no backup or emergency cry. Or thermistor, or cut off, or sensor stabilization routine...
Look, it's a noble effort for a home hacker, and the proof of concept if you didn't believe it was possible is cute.... and to somebody who can't go corporate I can see why you'd use this at home ...
But you really haven't addressed any of the core engineering issues, and have added an additional maintenance problem.
Now frankly, this case is so straightforward it's nothing a competent engineer and developer can't solve -- you've got the mostly right sensors, you just need to package it up properly. And that is the problem. You're going to pay a small fortune for the certifications you'll need to touch that industry.
Also, as others have said -- the problem isn't that they can't fix it. It's that TEPCO is culturally poisoned. But maybe the VP of engineering will save some face by falling on his sword.
I wonder if he considered the effects due to the radiation in the tank, on the PZT elements used in the ultrasonic transducers.
...followed the link I provided. So again, for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening
No problem, sometimes I don't read before responding myself.
Okay, so no one voted roman_mir down, his articles start with -1, Slashdot punishment for low score. Never knew that was possible. Good comment this time though, a step to ihttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/24/1645258/how-to-monitor-leaky-radioactive-water-tanks#mprove the /. score ;-)
Hit it with a stick, the tank will sound different in parts that have water and parts that don't. That will give you the height of the water, use 4th grade math to calculate volume based on the known dimensions
Providing these are storage tanks whose content is waiting until it can be cleaned up I would suggest to freeze them.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I really like the idea of drilling additional holes in nuclear storage facilities!
I guess it shouldn't be too difficult to detect water level changes from the outside of the container. The pulse response of the container will change with the water level. If I can do it by tapping on a bottle with a coin or something like that, a sensor could easily measure this as well.
0x or or snor perron?!
Wasteland now.
Is more water still being added? How much? Do they know? If the level is supposed to stay constant, don't mess with opening a radioactive tank to install a sonar unit, just mount a fluid level sensor on the exterior of the tank. http://pewa.panasonic.com/assets/acsd/sunx/sensors/discontinued/UA-11.pdf
Put an Obama cam in the TEPCO CEO's toilet.
My area
The Hanford Tank Farms house 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive and chemical waste that is the byproduct of “reprocessing” spent nuclear fuel.* .
http://www.hanfordchallenge.org/the-big-issues/tank-waste/
massive underground storage tanks ranging in capacity from 55,000 gallons to more than 1,000,000 gallons to hold the wastes. Scientists believed that the tanks would only be used temporarily until a permanent place to dispose of the waste was identified.
http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/TankFarms
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository isn't panning, out storage waste levels leakage control are well known.
"Tepco has built nearly 1,000 tanks at the sprawling complex to store as many as 335,000 tons of contaminated water, the product of coolant pumped into the reactors to keep their cores from overheating,"
Old Plutonium reactors in this area used to pump cooling water through the reactors then into huge holding tanks too cool heat wise before being released back into the Columbia river. There were two holding tanks and switched when one was full. Fuel elements at that time were maybe 1.5 inches wide, 6 inches long;
and they popped like popcorn I've heard it say -they were still learning how to do it.
An Eastern Washington newspaper sampled a lot of areas for radiation, where the Columbia river turns after the reactors there a build up and fairly high levels.
I have lived on and off about 50 miles downstream of the Hanford Site all my life as has hundreds of thousands others. Kids are being born with no hair, or teeth but otherwise normal.
The japanese government has passed a law to prevent the release of unauthorized information, especially if that information is suitable to undermine public morale. That is particularly information about radiation. This means, the government can effectively prevent panic about the meltdown from breaking out.
Tepco is the only one who is authorized to perform measurements of radiation. And they try to avoid measuring it as much as they can. They do not measure the release of radiactive isotopes that are released into the food chain. They just measure gamma radition, three feet above ground. They do not measure the amount of plutonium that has been released into the ground water.
Instead, they apparently try to contaminate the rest of the world as much as they can. Like spilling the radioactive waste into the Pacific. That enough plutonium and caesium gets into the eating fish. So that it becomes hard to prove statistically that cancer rates are higher in the vicinity of the reactor. Compared to, say, the U.S. west coast. bon appétit
I wouldn't want to work for TEPCO in Fukushima right now, however there is at this stage nobody who knows as much about the plant as they do. Whatever they are trying to do is probably not optimal, but unfortunately showering them with unsolicited, half baked advice is not improving matters.
As you know, adding more personnel and confusion to a project going badly can make things much worse. Where are we going to find competent, Japanese-speaking nuclear engineers that can actually make a positive contribution at this stage instead of diverting precious resources away from actually solving the many different, varied, complex and dangerous problems that this site has?
Wireless ... yeah, great, marvellous. With a lot of steel-framed buildings around ... some of which you're going to be demolishing during the lifetime of the project. Have fun de-bugging that without adding to your worker's exposure budget. Just make up the cables off-site (after planning the project, of course ; use cameras) with the sensors attached, then make one pass through the site deploying your carefully-spooled and ready-tested cable (and sensors, which hook over the edges of the tanks.
Sonic sensors are OK, but have persistent problems with latching onto echoes from internal pipework in the tanks. Have fun de-bugging that (lovely stable echo ; that tank's not leaking!) without increasing your work force's total exposure. Unfortunately, the least-spoofable sensing technology (strings of reed switches and a magnetic float) also implies bulky sensors.
And measuring the level of fluid in your tanks is one thing - but for each tank it's only going to tell you the difference between net inflow (rainfall, dead bird, groundwater run-off, continuing leakage from nearby tanks) and net outflow.
Designing and installing instrumentation systems is great fun. I'd suggest that you (timothy, and the original author Akiba) spend a few years doing it, then living with having to maintain and repair what you've built, while also having to use the data from those sensors 24x7x52 in safety-critical applications.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
> radioactive water leaks vs. how to wirelessly monitor water levels in storage tanks
Radioactivity and wireless usually do not mix well. The radiation exposure tends to burn out semiconductors (computers, robotic controls) fairly soon, much sooner than hurting humans or animals. Vacuum tubes are much more resistant to radiation, but the size, power and cooling requirements, as well as lack of supply often limit their usefulness.
In fact there are custom made rad-hardened semiconductors (DAC chips, CPUs) but even those only have a fraction of toughness compared to thermionic valves and they are usually strictly export-controlled. (Think about mis-use as guidance and ignition control components for nuclear warheads, where the plutionium pit constantly emits hard radiation.)
When there was a rather serious used fuel rod cleaning tank accident in Hungary's Paks nuclear powerplant in 2003, certified rad-hardened observation CCTV cameras only lasted 5 to 10 minutes each, before breaking down (even though the whole nuclear mess was submerged under water that provided significant shielding effect).
Currently the efficient way to deal with nuclear emergencies is to use "biorobots" and that is what they do in Japan... 8-( The discriminated-against burakumin and ainu ethnic minorities are often hired to perform (threatened to accept) menial cleaning jobs in high-rad environments. The yakuza is hiring on behalf of electric companies... Evil USSR used to use criminals to clean submarine reactor compartment leaks. Don't like your 15-20-25 year verdict? Let's get paroled after this two-week job! Of course the culprit was in a closed hospital ward after 7-10 days, with no hair or bone marrow left whatsoever and got buried in a lead casket, without ever seeing the daylight...
It was really evil to unleash nuclear fission on mankind and the coming generations will curse people of the 1930-40s for what they did.