Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:12 am

Nuclear power is a very dangerous way to boil water, to make steam, to spin turbines, to make electricity. It would certainly seem like three major disasters (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) would say that we need to learn that lesson.

Let's try and think of ways to make electricity that are not inherently catastrophically dangerous?

Wave power. There are at least two types of machines that can do this. Japan is a bunch of islands, surrounded by the ocean, so this would seem to be quite viable.

Tidal power. Also fuel-free and very dependable and constant.

Wind power. With a large array spread out over a large enough area, they produce 33-45% of their total capacity all the time. No down time for refueling like nuclear plants. No mining of uranium, or refining or enrichment time and energy. (Nuclear is hardly carbon free!)

Geothermal.

Solar power. Works in the daytime, when we use the most power.

Biofuels like methane digesters. These can blow up, but at least it's not radioactive.

**************

People are suffering -- let's not forget this. Be civil and respectful, please.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by andymcca » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:43 am

I would just like to point out that you cannot "wing it" with generators of the scale used at the plant. You can't bring in a bunch of little generators and "hook them up". If you could, no one would use the gigantic generators which cost incredible sums just to transport.

ces, if you care, in the first few hours after the disaster I heard discussion, by informed TEPCO representatives, of shipping in generators, but it was dismissed because it was logistically impossible. Then they discussed shipping in batteries, but that also fell apart. If it were as easy as "What's broken? Let's replace it.", this would not be on the news.

I'm not saying that everyone involved is a model employee, or that TEPCO is a model operator (I think we know, in fact, that the opposite is true, based on their history). I'm just saying that given the state of things the moment before the disaster, the coolant problems were assured the moment after the disaster.

Seismologists are saying this is the most intense earthquake in 1200 years (based on geologic record). It is difficult to plan for anything with such low probability. It's like trying to find a bug in your software when the bug has never actually occurred. You can do it, but you never know if you've found them all. In fact, you can say with near-certainty that you have not.

Neil: I agree, all of the energy supplies you listed are great. When it comes to nuclear, I look at it more as the "lesser of two evils", where the field is limited to two at the current time for practical reasons. Japan may be an exception when it comes to wave/tidal, but most of the "renewable" sources have problems with either scale or peakiness (I suppose the real problem would be "troughiness"). The hidden environmental cost of batteries will be huge :(. And large scale grids are a neat idea, but long-distance transmission is not cheap from an infrastructure or operational standpoint.
Then again, nuclear is never as cheap as proponents claim...
It's too bad the space elevator is still a phantom, or we could launch our nuclear waste into space (at the sun)!

Edit: PS I totally want a 150'+ windmill in my yard. First I need a yard!

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Mar 18, 2011 5:43 am

I buy the idea that 8 doublings will make Solar Power incredibly cheap I just don't think it'll happen in 16 years (2027) or that solar power alone can solve all our issues with power even if we had unlimited cheap supply of panels.

As bad as things are in the 3 worst Nuclear disasters I'm still Pro Nuclear energy.

Unfortunately even if we had enough Solar, Wind, Nuclear to meet our energy needs in quantity we still couldn't stop using fossil fuels.

Delivering Stable Electricity covers the issues.

We have to have some power source that we control the output in a quick fashion and None of the renewables other than Hydro come close to doing that and Hydro is very limited in location and capacity compared to the need.

Still I'd be happy if we could replace the base load use of Coal with Nuclear/Solar/Wind. If Coal and Natural Gas were only used for variable loads I'd consider the battle won.

If you think one or two Nuclear Plants need to be shut down I'm OK with that but I'd be pushing for better more modern nuclear plants to be built even as I closed down the oldest ones.

If your in the TLDR mindset on the oil drum article I linked to take a look at
Image and Image
and notice that Nuclear doesn't scale below 80% output (unless you are willing to pay more per KWh). It's stuck in a narrow range in terms of adjusting to demand and still saying competitive price wise.

Wind and Solar adjust a ton but not as we request them. We have little to no control over the loss or return of power with these. (Yes you can cover a solar panel to shut it off but doing so on large scales at the speeds needed to keep up with variable demands is a problem).

Geothermal has better variability than Nuclear and is arguably safer though cost and quantity still have to be proven/scaled up.

Realistically it'll be a long time away before we can get away from Coal. Until we do I wouldn't even consider trying to get away from Nuclear.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by andymcca » Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:24 am

What he said :)

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:41 am

andymcca wrote:You can't bring in a bunch of little generators and "hook them up". If you could, no one would use the gigantic generators which cost incredible sums just to transport.
That is not true. A cluster of small generators are not as cost effective as a single large generator. Where did you get that?

Once the problem occurred there was no cost effective solution. Just solutions with varying likelihoods of success. Perhaps there were willing only to use solutions with 100% chance to success. OOps... there weren't any.
andymcca wrote:ces, if you care, in the first few hours after the disaster I heard discussion, by informed TEPCO representatives, of shipping in generators, but it was dismissed because it was logistically impossible.
US Nuclear power plants are required to have backup generators staged off site for just this purpose.

You are correct. Relying on the flawed judgement of the TEPCO organization as support for any proposition I find questionable. I don't doubt that there are individuals within that organization who knew better (just like the designer of the failed Russian reactor knew better). But in both cases there was a problem with leadership.

How many filters do you think those TEPCO comments went through before they got to you? Do you think they got to you without the TEPCO CEO first hearing them and approving them?

I suspect that TEPCO will never admit that it was possible. Rest assured though they will be required to be prepared to do this impossible task in the future... just as US power plants are required to do so today. Or do you disagree with even this?

Again, it is possible that I could be wrong. I am admittedly working with incomplete information. Time will tell.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:49 am

dhanson865 wrote:Realistically it'll be a long time away before we can get away from Coal. Until we do I wouldn't even consider trying to get away from Nuclear.
Unfortunately what you say is irrefutably true.

That is why when someone melts down a reactor or they melt down an economy, there need to be consequences. Those consequences need to be personal. Organizations don't make decisions, people make decisions.

Those decision makers need to know there will be real consequences for them if they harm others. Something more than retirement with a fat pension (nuclear meltdown) or hundreds of millions or even billions in capital gains (financial meltdown).

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by cordis » Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:00 am

Well, from a couple reports today it sounds like they have some power back on site, so things should be getting under control. Although the report of the leak in the cooling pond is troubling, but it makes sense, I kept wondering why they had trouble keeping the water level up in that. If there's any obvious fix for old plants that comes out of this, it might be to move spent fuel out of the same building the reactor is in, the whole problem of not being able to get at the cooling ponds because of the radioactive releases in the building seems like an obvious flaw in the architecture.

Although I'd hate to support ces's vitriol, it does seem like the ball was dropped somewhere with these power plants. Here in the US, we haven't had any tsunami strikes, but we have had hurricanes hit a few plants. Hurricane Andrew hit one in Florida, it went down for 5 days running on diesel power, and came back up without incident. There is a plant about 20 miles west of New Orleans that got hit by Katrina, it shut down for 2 days under diesel power and came back up with no problem, and 2 other reactors further away but in Katrina's path didn't even shut down, they just kept on running. Now sure, a hurricane is something you can see coming so it's easier to prepare for it, but it seems like they were really caught off guard there. It might be a cultural difference but in a different way, in the US every plant gets sued by environmentalists to the point where they have to dot the i's and cross the t's. For instance, the Diablo Canyon plant out here in CA got sued about halfway through construction and wound up having to make a bunch of earthquake zone retrofits that doubled the cost of the plant. I'm not sure that kind of thing happens in Japan, so they may get to cut more corners.

But there does seem to be this stigma associated with radioactivity. While watching footage of that refinery burn, I wondered how many carcinogens that put in the air. The reactor issues are troubling, but there is so much destruction there, any damage from radioactivity will probably wind up getting dwarfed by the scale of the deaths from the tsunami itself.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by tim851 » Fri Mar 18, 2011 12:28 pm

cordis wrote:But there does seem to be this stigma associated with radioactivity. While watching footage of that refinery burn, I wondered how many carcinogens that put in the air. The reactor issues are troubling, but there is so much destruction there, any damage from radioactivity will probably wind up getting dwarfed by the scale of the deaths from the tsunami itself.
Very true.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by Tzupy » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:06 pm

I believe m0002a made an important point on the 'losing face' issue by the Japanese TEPCO executives.
I suspect this played a major role in their clumsy response and unwillingness to ask for help early.
While the 'sepukku option' so dear to CES may not be a realistic solution for the TEPCO executives,
I believe they should be and I hope they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the Japanese law.

I am referring to the Fukushima I plant in the next lines, I believe it's the worst case.
The plant ran on backup batteries after the backup diesel generators were disabled by the tsunami.
These batteries maintained control functions and limited cooling for about 8 hours.
But the repair crews FAILED to connect portable generators within 8 hours, WHY?
Apparently they had backup to backup generators, but they couldn't connect them?

Now about an idea I had about providing emergency power to a nuclear plant, for the pumps which need a lot.
I believe a modified heavy-lift helicopter could be used as base for such a specialty device.
Setting a target of 10 MW of power (maybe less would be needed?), the Mi-26 with a special gear and
a generator could generate 10 MW when not flying - the power would go to the generator instead of the blades.
It has a maximum 17 MW of turbine power, and running the (old design) engines at 70% and a generator efficiency
of 90% would yield at least 10 MW of electrical power. The extra gear, generator and a lot of fuel should fit into the
20 tonnes of cargo specification of the Mi-26. If less than 10 MW of power is needed, a lesser helicopter will do.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 2:53 pm

Tzupy wrote:I believe m0002a made an important point on the 'losing face' issue by the Japanese TEPCO executives.
I suspect this played a major role in their clumsy response and unwillingness to ask for help early.
While the 'sepukku option' so dear to CES may not be a realistic solution for the TEPCO executives,
I believe they should be and I hope they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the Japanese law.

I am referring to the Fukushima I plant in the next lines, I believe it's the worst case.
The plant ran on backup batteries after the backup diesel generators were disabled by the tsunami.
These batteries maintained control functions and limited cooling for about 8 hours.
But the repair crews FAILED to connect portable generators within 8 hours, WHY?
Apparently they had backup to backup generators, but they couldn't connect them?

Now about an idea I had about providing emergency power to a nuclear plant, for the pumps which need a lot.
I believe a modified heavy-lift helicopter could be used as base for such a specialty device.
Setting a target of 10 MW of power (maybe less would be needed?), the Mi-26 with a special gear and
a generator could generate 10 MW when not flying - the power would go to the generator instead of the blades.
It has a maximum 17 MW of turbine power, and running the (old design) engines at 70% and a generator efficiency
of 90% would yield at least 10 MW of electrical power. The extra gear, generator and a lot of fuel should fit into the
20 tonnes of cargo specification of the Mi-26. If less than 10 MW of power is needed, a lesser helicopter will do.
Thank You

Yeah I probably overplayed the 'sepukku option' but without consequences you can only expect a replay of the same meltdown (financial or nuclear).

Unfortunately the US Republican party leadership, along with their unwitting teabagger allies, has done such a good job of neutralizing any consequences to the financial industry in the US, there is almost certainly likely to be a repeat of similar (though not likely the same) financial harm to the American people in the US after we get a new generation of people in the industry (10 to 20 years), maybe even sooner if they can get a republican president elected in 2012.

Hopefully the Japanese political system will impose consequences and effect changes in a manner that takes a look at any corner cutting that has been done in the past and who did it.
Last edited by ces on Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:04 pm

tim851 wrote:
cordis wrote:But there does seem to be this stigma associated with radioactivity. While watching footage of that refinery burn, I wondered how many carcinogens that put in the air. The reactor issues are troubling, but there is so much destruction there, any damage from radioactivity will probably wind up getting dwarfed by the scale of the deaths from the tsunami itself.
Hopefully Cordis is right. But if a true meltdown occurs Chernobyl would indicate the damage to be extensive, long term and affecting multiple generations. A different type of damage, but in some ways reaching out to harm more people over a longer period of time.

If, for reasons of pride, or for other reasons, tepco inappropriately delays encasing any one of the damaged reactors until after it is too late to prevent a melt down... that is the kind of disaster we may be looking at.

Maybe they will pull it back from the precipice before it gets that bad. Maybe not.

They may or may not have learned their lesson yet. What do you think?

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by Reachable » Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:48 pm

The trouble, ces, with picking out heads to roll, is that that seems to satisfy the public. Whenever there is any kind of disaster, people are always looking to assign personal blame, even when the causality for the event is beyond the scope of any individual's actions. This placates the hordes calling for blood, but it usually results in only relatively shallow reforms being made when the situation could have been better handled by putting something in place that was deeper in concept. Looks like TEPCO was lazy (i.e., cheap) because they had the bottom line incentive for being so, just like everyone else.

As for the financial industry reforms in the U.S., that is indeed sad. That sector is so integrated with the government (Republicans more so than Democrats, it appears) that not only were no individuals punished, but few changes with any real lasting teeth were put in place.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by tim851 » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:04 pm

Tzupy wrote:WHY? Apparently they had backup to backup generators, but they couldn't connect them?
The power plant was pretty much Ground Zero of the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded and was afterwards hit by a tsunami. I would expect that it is no longer in "optimal" condition. And the people working there are not doing this under "ideal" conditions.
Of course foreign allies offered help, generically. But with what? Say - Power is needed. It's frickin' Japan, does anyone think they don't have power generators? Maybe the generators they got there are just not directly compatible. I also heard (rumor?) that they were simply missing power cords. What good would it do if these things were airlifted across the Pacific Ocean from the US?
Maybe they did actually connect the generators, but whatever they were supposed to power doesn't work anymore. Again - earthquake magnitude 9.

That's the point I was trying to make. Japan surely has all the resources necessary to deal with the situation on paper, but the state of the plant and it's environment probably makes it hard to deploy and operate everything the way you'd wish.

Hence the Katrina-comparison. Surely the United States had all the resources necessary to deal with the situation on paper...

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:48 pm

Tzupy wrote:WHY? Apparently they had backup to backup generators, but they couldn't connect them?
I have been thinking about this so called "Japanese pride" excuse that Tepco's many apologists on the board keep bringing up.

First I don't find that to be an excuse. Theoretically it is an arguable explanation... maybe, but certainly not an excuse.

Second I just don't buy it as an explanation or as an excuse.

You have a problem. You determine what you need to fix the problem and how much time you have to fix it. Then you go out and procure what you need. It is a purchasing decision. If you want it quickly, you pay more. If the CEO of tepco told his direct reports to go procure it immediately at any cost they would have done so. Since when is a purchasing decision a pride issue?

Seems to me its good old fashioned human mediocrity.

If I were to guess, most likely it was the CEO's failure to do the one thing he is charged to do well - develop good reliable information feedback networks between him and his organization that enable him to make good timely well informed decisions.

One More Thing What is this about: that because of George Bush's poor handling of Katrina, somehow the standard to which Tepco executives should be judged is lowered? Come again? I think this evidences some kind of twisted self referential thinking this is.... well I will let you finish that thought.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 5:06 pm

Reachable wrote:The trouble, ces, with picking out heads to roll, is that that seems to satisfy the public. Whenever there is any kind of disaster, people are always looking to assign personal blame, even when the causality for the event is beyond the scope of any individual's actions. This placates the hordes calling for blood, but it usually results in only relatively shallow reforms being made when the situation could have been better handled by putting something in place that was deeper in concept.
I disagree with the cause and effect that you propose. Without heads rolling there will be no reform. The rolling of heads doesn't prevent reform. In many if not most situations it is a condition precedent to any meaningful reform.

Unfortunately it is irrelevant to the effecting of those reforms, or to the modification of future behavior, whether or not the right heads rolled. It is the rolled heads that alter the behavior of the generation of leaders coming of age during the period in which those heads rolled.

I remember an old wizened executive pulling me aside and explaining to me how he would go in and fix up a dysfunctional organization. He would just go in and fire someone. Now here is what took me a while to absorb. He made sure the person he fired was an innocent. It wouldn't work as well if the person he fired deserved to be fired. (it took me a long time to absorb that one - and some years and experiences to fully understand all of the subtleties at play)

I guess life just isn't fair. Just ask the many victims of Tepcos reactors to date. Seems there is more concern in this thread over being "fair" to a handful of empowered Tepco executives than to a huge number of current and future unempowered victims. As unimportant as this thread is... it still saddens me that this is so.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by m0002a » Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:38 pm

ces wrote:Unfortunately the US Republican party leadership, along with their unwitting teabagger allies, has done such a good job of neutralizing any consequences to the financial industry in the US, there is almost certainly likely to be a repeat of similar (though not likely the same) financial harm to the American people in the US after we get a new generation of people in the industry (10 to 20 years), maybe even sooner if they can get a republican president elected in 2012.
Really? The Democrats controlled the Presidency, the House, and the Senate for the first 2 years of the Obama administration, and the Senate was filibuster proof for at least a year of that time. So what did the Democrats do to hold the financial industry accountable? Almost nothing, even though they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted.

You have proven one point, however. It is very hard to hold people accountable. They usually want to blame someone else.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by m0002a » Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:44 pm

ces wrote:I disagree with the cause and effect that you propose. Without heads rolling there will be no reform. The rolling of heads doesn't prevent reform. In many if not most situations it is a condition precedent to any meaningful reform.
You don't have to worry about heads rolling in Japan. The Japanese actually have a sense of responsibility to their country when they have done wrong, and a sense of personal responsibility for their actions. It is way too early to assess blame yet. But if anyone in Japan is found to have acted improperly during the nuclear plant crisis, they will voluntarily resign their positions (if they don't commit suicide first). But let's wait for some facts (instead of demagoguery) before that happens.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:54 pm

m0002a wrote:
ces wrote:I disagree with the cause and effect that you propose. Without heads rolling there will be no reform. The rolling of heads doesn't prevent reform. In many if not most situations it is a condition precedent to any meaningful reform.
You don't have to worry about heads rolling in Japan. The Japanese actually have a sense of responsibility to their country when they have done wrong, and a sense of personal responsibility for their actions. It is way too early to assess blame yet. But if anyone in Japan is found to have acted improperly during the nuclear plant crisis, they will voluntarily resign their positions (if they don't commit suicide first). But let's wait for some facts (instead of demagoguery) before that happens.
Demagoguery?
Adolf Hitler was a demagog
Joseph McCarthy was a demagog
I disagree that I am one.

I certainly don't see people lining up behind me to go do something irrational or foolish. I in fact represent a minority opinion here... whose opinions, from my perspective, appear to be being subject to irrational or foolish attack by a crowd. How exactly does that make me a demagog?

With the exception of dhanson865 most of the content of this thread is opinion no better informed than mine (in my personal opinion some of it seems to be fairly uninformed... and a portion of that is comprised of fairly patronizing, and in some respects condescending, comments about Japanese people). In fact it sure seems to me that a few individuals have fabricated facts, some of which are not plausible when you slow down to think about them, that just happen to support their then current proposition. They aren't even good at fabricating plausible facts.

However...That you don't agree with, or like, what someone is saying, or how they are saying it, doesn't make them a demagog.

Perhaps I am being too assertive in expressing my opinion to your liking. Or not showing proper respect to majority opinion. But attacking me ad hominem by labeling me with an exceedingly nasty pejorative as you have done... is far more aggressive than anything I have said, at least in my opinion. Though admittedly your act is more in the nature of passive aggression.

In fact, if I represented the majority opinion here, would you have been so bold as to label me with such a despicable term? There is strength in numbers, but not always:
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/18/youtu ... his-bully/
Take a good look at that video. A crowd on your side may embolden you, but it doesn't make you right, other than in their eyes.

That you don't like what I say or how I say it isn't a justified or justifiable excuse for name calling, especially a vile name associated with Hitler and McCarthy.

Either what I have said is right or wrong. And I am operating under no more or less facts than anyone else here (except dhanson865 with his charts and all and I think there was one other person like him). Say what you want, but consider standing on the merits of what you have to say instead of resorting to the name calling... or at least admit that is what you are doing. Consider letting your ideas stand on their own without any hooking or eye gouging assistance while the referee is looking the other way.

Just to make clear: You are welcome to call me any name you want, but please don't then pretend that you are too honorable to so, or that you aren't doing so, or anything similar. Play dirty if you want, but be honest about it at least.
Last edited by ces on Sat Mar 19, 2011 6:34 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Fri Mar 18, 2011 10:31 pm

m0002a wrote:So what did the Democrats do to hold the financial industry accountable? Almost nothing, even though they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted
They didn't really have carte blanche. It was still a balancing act. Certainly the left wing of the Democratic party was ready and willing to kick butt.

Money talks on both sides of the aisle, but more so on one side than the other. Reachable put it fairly well:
Reachable wrote:As for the financial industry reforms in the U.S., that is indeed sad. That sector is so integrated with the government (Republicans more so than Democrats, it appears) that not only were no individuals punished, but few changes with any real lasting teeth were put in place.
Basically the Republican leadership coupled with unwitting allies such as teabaggers and perhaps even you, provided sufficient counterbalance to prevent any attempt at accountability. If the Repubs would have supported it, or even been willing to not exploit it to their political benefit, it would have happened.

Money always gets a seat at the table, though a recent decision by a Republican packed Supreme Court has ratcheted up the number of seats (votes) money gets at the table. The nature of the opinion would reasonably lead one to believe that either Justice Roberts lied to congress at his nomination hearings or he has made very fundamental changes in his judicial philosophy in an unbelievably short period of time.

This same balancing act prevents even the consideration of impeachment proceedings against Justice Roberts as it has with respect for Justice Scalia's one time conversion away from states rights when he voted to abnegate Florida's states rights, only so long as it would throw an election to his presidential candidate... after which he promptly reconverted back to support for states rights. The Supreme Court, another place I would like to see some accountability for intellectual honesty. You will know the Democrats are truly in control when representative Kucinich starts surfacing the subject to impeachment proceedings for Roberts and/or Scalia.

And it took both parties joint efforts over 20 years to export most of the high paying manufacturing sector jobs out of the US... and to provide tax advantages to encourage corporations to do more of it.

Nothing binary here.

Messy and ugly stuff this politics. You just keep looking the other way, claim to be independent, and vote Republican. Rest assured they will continue to treat your interests the way they deserve to be treated... along with those of all the other little people who can't afford lobbyists and $10,000 a plate dinners.
Reachable wrote:As for the financial industry reforms in the U.S., that is indeed sad. That sector is so integrated with the government (Republicans more so than Democrats, it appears) that not only were no individuals punished, but few changes with any real lasting teeth were put in place.
EDIT

m0002a, I just happened on a perfect example of the Repub's ceaseless efforts to look out for the interests of voters such as yourself:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21161
Bless their sweet hearts.
Last edited by ces on Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:11 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by edh » Sat Mar 19, 2011 4:12 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Nuclear power is a very dangerous way to boil water
As I stated before, this is a BWR. Hence the primary coolant loop does boil. This is inherently more dangerous than a modern PWR where the primary coolant is not allowed to boil. In a BWR you have to actively cool the core after shutdown, something that is not the case with a PWR. If these stations were PWR there would be no problem.

Yes, boiling water in your primary coolant is dangerous but nowadays we don't do it. Japan in particular has had a big thing for BWRs and since 1994 the only BWRs opened in the world have been in Japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BWRs

BWR does however have some advantages too:
Advantages
- The reactor vessel and associated components operate at a substantially lower pressure (about 75 times atmospheric pressure) compared to a PWR (about 158 times atmospheric pressure).
- Pressure vessel is subject to significantly less irradiation compared to a PWR, and so does not become as brittle with age.
- Operates at a lower nuclear fuel temperature.
- Fewer components due to no steam generators and no pressurizer vessel. (Older BWRs have external recirculation loops, but even this piping is eliminated in modern BWRs, such as the ABWR.)
- Lower risk (probability) of a rupture causing loss of coolant compared to a PWR, and lower risk of core damage should such a rupture occur. This is due to fewer pipes, fewer large diameter pipes, fewer welds and no steam generator tubes.
- NRC assessments of limiting fault potentials indicate if such a fault occurred, the average BWR would be less likely to sustain core damage than the average PWR due to the robustness and redundancy of the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS).
- Unlike PWRs, BWRs have at least a few steam-turbine driven ECCS systems that can be directly operated by steam produced after a reactor shutdown, and require no electrical power. This results in less dependence on emergency diesel generators—of which there are four—in any event.
- Measuring the water level in the pressure vessel is the same for both normal and emergency operations, which results in easy and intuitive assessment of emergency conditions.
- Can operate at lower core power density levels using natural circulation without forced flow.
- A BWR may be designed to operate using only natural circulation so that recirculation pumps are eliminated entirely. (The new ESBWR design uses natural circulation.)
- BWRs do not use boric acid to control fission burn-up, leading to less possibility of corrosion within the reactor vessel and piping. (Corrosion from boric acid must be carefully monitored in PWRs; it has been demonstrated that reactor vessel head corrosion can occur if the reactor vessel head is not properly maintained. See Davis-Besse. Since BWRs do not utilize boric acid, these contingencies are eliminated.)
- BWRs generally have N-2 redundancy on their major safety-related systems, which normally consist of four "trains" of components. This generally means that up to two of the four components of a safety system can fail and the system will still perform if called upon.
- Due to their single major vendor (GE/Hitachi), the current fleet of BWRs have predictable, uniform designs that, while not completely standardized, generally are very similar to one another. The ABWR/ESBWR designs are completely standardized. Lack of standardization remains a problem with PWRs, as, at least in the United States, there are three design families represented among the current PWR fleet (Combustion Engineering, Westinghouse, and Babcock & Wilcox), within these families, there are quite divergent designs.
- Additional families of PWRs are being introduced. For example, Mitsubishi's APWR, Areva's US-EPR, and Westinghouse's AP1000/AP600 will add diversity and complexity to an already diverse crowd, and possibly cause customers seeking stability and predictability to seek other designs, such as the BWR.
- BWRs are overrepresented in imports, if the importing nation doesn't have a nuclear navy (PWRs are favored by nuclear naval states due to their compact, high-power design used on nuclear-powered vessels; since naval reactors are generally not exported, they cause national skill to be developed in PWR design, construction, and operation), or special national aspirations (special national aspirations lead to a marked preference for the CANDU reactor type due to special features of that type). This may be due to the fact that BWRs are ideally suited for peaceful uses like power generation, process/industrial/district heating, and desalinization, due to low cost, simplicity, and safety focus, which come at the expense of larger size and slightly lower thermal efficiency.
Sweden is standardized mainly on BWRs.
Germany has a large number of BWRs, which are overrepresented in their national fleet compared to the US.
Mexico's only two reactors are BWRs.
Japan experimented with both PWRs and BWRs, but most builds as of late have been of BWRs, specifically ABWRs.
In the CEGB open competition in the early 1960s for a standard design for UK 2nd-generation power reactors, the PWR didn't even make it to the final round, which was a showdown between the BWR (preferred for its easily understood design as well as for being predictable and "boring") and the AGCR, a uniquely British design; the indigenous design won, possibly on technical merits, possibly due to the proximity of a general election.
Disadvantages
- Complex calculations for managing consumption of nuclear fuel during operation due to "two phase (water and steam) fluid flow" in the upper part of the core. This requires more instrumentation in the reactor core. The innovation of computers, however, makes this less of an issue.
- Much larger pressure vessel than for a PWR of similar power, with correspondingly higher cost. (However, the overall cost is reduced because a modern BWR has no main steam generators and associated piping.)
- Contamination of the turbine by short-lived activation products. This means that shielding and access control around the steam turbine are required during normal operations due to the radiation levels arising from the steam entering directly from the reactor core. This is a moderately minor concern, as most of the radiation flux is due to Nitrogen-16, which has a half-life measured in seconds, allowing the turbine chamber to be entered into within minutes of shutdown.
- Though the present fleet of BWRs are said to be less likely to suffer core damage from the "1 in 100,000 reactor-year" limiting fault than the present fleet of PWRs are (due to increased ECCS robustness and redundancy) there have been concerns raised about the pressure containment ability of the as-built, unmodified Mark I containment – that such may be insufficient to contain pressures generated by a limiting fault combined with complete ECCS failure that results in extremely severe core damage. In this double failure scenario, assumed to be extremely unlikely prior to the Fukushima I nuclear accidents, an unmodified Mark I containment can allow some degree of radioactive release to occur. This is supposed to be mitigated by the modification of the Mark I containment; namely, the addition of an outgas stack system that, if containment pressure exceeds critical setpoints, is supposed to allow the orderly discharge of pressurizing gases after the gases pass through activated carbon filters designed to trap radionuclides[3].
- A BWR requires active cooling for a period of several hours to several days following shutdown, depending on its power history. Full insertion of BWRs control rods safely shuts down the primary nuclear reaction. However, radioactive decay of the fission products in the fuel will continue to actively generate decay heat at a gradually decreasing rate, requiring pumping of cooling water for an initial period to prevent overheating of the fuel. If active cooling fails during this post-shutdown period, the reactor can still overheat to a temperature high enough that zirconium in the fuel cladding will react with water and steam, producing hydrogen gas. In this event there is a high danger of hydrogen explosions, threatening structural damage to the reactor and/or associated safety systems and/or the exposure of highly radioactive spent fuel rods that may be stored in the reactor building (approx 15 tons of fuel is replenished each year to maintain normal BWR operation) as happened with the Fukushima I nuclear accidents.
- Control rods are inserted from below for current BWR designs. There are two available hydraulic power sources that can drive the control rods into the core for a BWR under emergency conditions. There is a dedicated high pressure hydraulic accumulator and also the pressure inside of the reactor pressure vessel available to each control rod. Either the dedicated accumulator (one per rod) or reactor pressure is capable of fully inserting each rod. Most other reactor types use top entry control rods that are held up in the withdrawn position by electromagnets, causing them to fall into the reactor by gravity if power is lost.
I do however doubt that the Japenese installations have the level of redundancy that BWRs elsewhere have.

More efficient still (and safer) is the AGR design by some margin.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Sat Mar 19, 2011 6:45 am

edh wrote:I do however doubt that the Japenese installations have the level of redundancy that BWRs elsewhere have.
Given your thoughtful analysis, you must have some reason or basis for that belief. Why is it that you believe or suspect that the Tepco BWRs have less redundancy than other BWRs?

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Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Response to Reactor Meltdown

Post by ces » Sat Mar 19, 2011 8:39 am

1. Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Reactor disaster on Mar 12, 2011 - fairly laid back with a thorough explanation of the situation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySPe0rQaPx4

2. I am still searching for the interview between these two dates where he was really really angry at the harm that the Japanese leadership was visiting on Japan and the people living near the reactor. It is the only time I have ever seen him angry. The smile was still there... but it was clenched teeth... and seething anger.

3. Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Reactor disaster on Mar 18, 2011 - calmed back down... but with no less contempt for Japanese leadership.
He seems to share my views on the need to stage things to be ready before you need, even if you don't know if you will need it, so you have it at hand just in case... and the continuing and cascading "to little, too late response" of applying tactics that might work, but only after waiting until it is too late for them to work.
Regarding Japanese Leadership: "They don't want to acknowledge how bad the situation is." "The leadership there is disconnected from reality" "They think its just going to go away" "They live in a fantasy world" (some of that anger is seeping back in around the edges)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DkCD5IInMY

I guess I am not alone. At least Dr. Kaku agrees with me. I somehow doubt he is less informed than the experts of this thread on nuclear energy, radiation and Japanese culture. His message is by and large similar to mine... only substantiated with much more detail. The only material difference, other than his detail, is that his message is getting out to millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people.

If anyone wants to straighten him out, or share a kind word of caution with him about the perils of demagoguery and fear mongering, he can be reached at New York University, 50 West Fourth Street, New York, 212.998.4550. Physics department fax 212.995-4016.

FYI: From Wikipedia: Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. His grandfather came to the United States to take part in the clean-up operation after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. His father was born in California but was educated in Japan and spoke little English. Both his parents were put in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where they met and where his brother was born.
Kaku attended Cubberley High School in Palo Alto in the early 1960s and played first board on their chess team. At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a B.S. degree in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California,Berkeley
Last edited by ces on Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by edh » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:02 am

An emergency generator failure like this did occur before at a BWR in Sweden a few years ago. That was rated INES level 2 but could have been much worse had they not had redundant generators as part of the installation. The damage done at Fukushima was flooding of ancillary buildings due to the Tsunami, not earthquake damage. As yet the damage has not been disclosed but I'm sure this will come out in the final report.

The Japanese nuclear industry has had many problems in the past, not specifically just TEPCO. You may remember TEPCO got in trouble for falsifying test data around 10 years ago. The resulting investigation found false reporting was endemic for decades. Technicians were LITERALLY photocopying test data from other days and this included at Fukushima which was temporarily closed when the scandal came out. They have also previously had numerous non-nuclear accidents involving ancillary plant that has not been correctly maintained or inspected and some workers have died in these accidents. I would not be confident in the state of their diesel generators and pumps given these issues.

Getting emergency power in has been made difficult because of the tsunami damage but no external resource should be being depended upon in such an instance anyway, that shows a lack of planning. Transport infrastructure is just as badly damaged as the station itself. We should however be thankful that units 5 and 6 were on outage as this could have been 50% worse. Units 7 and 8 are still due to be built.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:12 am

m0002a wrote:
ces wrote:I disagree with the cause and effect that you propose. Without heads rolling there will be no reform. The rolling of heads doesn't prevent reform. In many if not most situations it is a condition precedent to any meaningful reform.
You don't have to worry about heads rolling in Japan. The Japanese actually have a sense of responsibility to their country when they have done wrong, and a sense of personal responsibility for their actions. It is way too early to assess blame yet. But if anyone in Japan is found to have acted improperly during the nuclear plant crisis, they will voluntarily resign their positions (if they don't commit suicide first). But let's wait for some facts (instead of demagoguery) before that happens.
m0002a I agree with you that heads will roll this time. How can they not? Though it is amazing they have never rolled before. Perhaps if they had rolled back then, we wouldn't be seeing so much damage and human suffering today.

See edh's brief summary of some of their past failures and transgressions:
edh wrote:You may remember TEPCO got in trouble for falsifying test data around 10 years ago. The resulting investigation found false reporting was endemic for decades. Technicians were LITERALLY photocopying test data from other days and this included at Fukushima which was temporarily closed when the scandal came out.

They have also previously had numerous non-nuclear accidents involving ancillary plant that has not been correctly maintained or inspected and some workers have died in these accidents. I would not be confident in the state of their diesel generators and pumps given these issues.

Getting emergency power in has been made difficult because of the tsunami damage but no external resource should be being depended upon in such an instance anyway, that shows a lack of planning.

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Re: Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Response to Reactor Meltdown

Post by edh » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:47 am

ces wrote:1. Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Reactor disaster on Mar 12, 2011 - fairly laid back with a thorough explanation of the situation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySPe0rQaPx4
I have to disagree with Dr Kaku's understanding of 'China Syndrome'. China Syndrome is a bit of a joke term as it is the idea that a core meltdown would continue through the earth. It is an American joke and takes up on the idea that the core would eventually end up in China being antipodeal to the US. China Syndrome in practice would be meltdown of fillise material reaching as deep as the water table would would have widespread radiological consequences. Experience at Chenobyl showed that this can not happen as the core starts to disperse during meltdown to the point that it looses critical mass. In Chenobyl the meltdown stopped in the basement.

I do not disagree with him on lack of disaster preparedness. However I am somewhat concerned that he sees this as an opportunity to sell his book....

Boron is a good idea. Good enough that in the UK we were building boron bead injection systems into reactors at the same time that Fukushima was being built. This operates as a last line of defence in a Trip and writes off the reactor. Control rods and gas injection come before that.

Burying a reactor is a good approach to stopping it but is not a long term approach. With Chenobyl they used remote control bulldozers to pile earth and hurridly cast concrete blocks to assemble around the core however this exists entirely as a compression structure and rests on top of the damaged pressure vessel. The blocks are not held together at all and any internal collapse could result in a 2nd Chenobyl accident. To this end a permanent tomb is still being built.

In the case of Fukushima you would have to deal with the short term issues prior to entombment as otherwise you would have a big pile of sand sitting on top of a fragile structure that still had an out of control reaction in the middle of it.

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Re: Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Response to Reactor Meltdown

Post by ces » Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:08 am

edh wrote:It is an American joke
Yeah.... I guess that doesn't apply so well to Japan.

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by ces » Sat Mar 19, 2011 11:48 am

"... the government has conceded that it was too slow in dealing with the crisis at Fukushima. Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said that "in hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and co-ordinating all that information, and provided it faster".

"In addition, the failure to build defences that could withstand the huge tsunami that struck Japan has also been attacked. "The geological evidence in Japan indicates a history of giant tsunamis over the past several thousand years," said Professor Rolf Aalto, an Exeter University expert on tsunamis. "Unfortunately, an engineering and political decision was made to design protection and plan cities around a hypothesized five-metre tsunami – about the size of those experienced in Japan over the last century. However, it was not a surprise to geologists that a tsunami two to three times larger appeared. Both the earthquake and tsunami were exceptional, but were both well within the realm of what can occur within that tectonic setting."

"Last week, the German government suspended its approval process for new nuclear construction projects. More significantly, China – the world's leader in nuclear expansion, with 28 plants under construction – followed suit."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... lear-plant

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by cordis » Sat Mar 19, 2011 12:47 pm

Hey, here's just something I found on the radiation releases they've seen in Japan, written up by a UCSB professor. Seems like a pretty accurate overview, cutting through some of the peak release value data and getting to more of the data on how much radiation the population can really expect, and it explains a lot of the science pretty well.

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/plecture/bmonreal11/

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Re: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster

Post by NeilBlanchard » Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:42 am

All nuclear reactors are used to heat water to drive steam turbines.

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Re: Dr. Michio Kaku on Japanese Response to Reactor Meltdown

Post by ces » Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:11 am

edh wrote:Boron is a good idea. Good enough that in the UK we were building boron bead injection systems into reactors at the same time that Fukushima was being built. This operates as a last line of defence in a Trip and writes off the reactor. Control rods and gas injection come before that.

Burying a reactor is a good approach to stopping it but is not a long term approach. With Chenobyl they used remote control bulldozers to pile earth and hurridly cast concrete blocks to assemble around the core however this exists entirely as a compression structure and rests on top of the damaged pressure vessel. The blocks are not held together at all and any internal collapse could result in a 2nd Chenobyl accident. To this end a permanent tomb is still being built.

In the case of Fukushima you would have to deal with the short term issues prior to entombment as otherwise you would have a big pile of sand sitting on top of a fragile structure that still had an out of control reaction in the middle of it.
Edh, you seem to have a command of knowledge and detail that one could only get from military or civilian training and/or nuclear industry experience. May I ask what your training or experience was?

1. If a melt down (some form of self sustaining nuclear reaction?) were to look imminent, would some form of entombment be the right solution?

2. If so what kind of entombment could be done quickly enough?

3. If not, what would be the proper response?

4. If a melt down started before action were taken to prevent it, what would be the appropriate action to stop it or to otherwise diminish the harm that it does?

5. Is there a form of short term entombment that can be done quickly.... but which would also, at the same time, serve the role of a more permanent form of entombment as well, such as you indicate they are still working on at Chernobyl? Something you could just do once and not have to deal with again for another 50 years?
Last edited by ces on Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

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