Nuke Reboot: Physicists List Lessons to Be Learned from Japan's Nuclear Crisis

[SkyDaddy7]

Source: Scientific American

DALLAS—It can't happen here. Or can it?

Many reactors in the U.S. have a similar design to the General Electric units that are spewing radioactive clouds into Japan's skies and keeping the world on edge. So, the U.S. should learn lessons from that ongoing disaster and seriously consider retrofitting at least some of its reactors, Raymond L. Orbach, former undersecretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, said here this week at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

"We're trying to learn from Fukushima," said Orbach, who now directs the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute.

Orbach and other physicists warned about the current "hysteria"—caused in part by human errors and a lack of transparency on the part of plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company—and the possible consequences of abandoning nuclear power, such as the environmental impact that would result from producing the same electricity with fossil fuels. Instead, more research and better engineering are called for, he says, adding: "I'm hopeful that cooler heads, wiser heads, will prevail."

Nuclear engineers have long promoted intrinsic safety features that could make future reactors safer, but retrofits at existing nuclear power plants could make intrinsic safety features available at old reactors, too, Orbach said. Such improvements would particularly pertain at 23 reactors in the U.S. that are based on the same 1970s General Electric design as the Fukushima reactors.


Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=improving-nuclear-safety&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20110401

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Hate nuclear power or not this is a very good article(s) (Follow links within article) on the lessons that can be from the disaster in Japan...A very good read on what we should do going forward to make existing plants safer & more. Nuclear power is here so if you are truly interested in learning more about the technology & the hazards this is a good read.

[caseymoz]

1. K&R Problem is, we're using bad reactor designs.

We really should be using reactors that aren't based on military designs and don't have to be doused with water even when off.

And we need a viable solution to the waste problem.

Yes, and I'll admit it's here. And no, I haven't yet read the article, but I've K&R'd

[liberation]

5. Indeed, the problem is not that sticking rusty knives in our chest is a bad idea

the problem is with the amount of rust in the knife. Obviously.

;-)

[leveymg]

2. Always the same false dichotomy: more nukes or more coal.

Always stuck in the same denials and false choices.

We keep hearing the same idiotic rationalizations:

* The damage was all due to the Tsunami;

* The industry will learn from this accident and will be safer;

* This accident was good because it will lead to accelerated construction of new (presumably) safer plants.

* etc.

Like someone who walked away from a fatal car wreck they, themselves, caused, whose first thought is about what kind of new vehicle they'll buy next. These people have a long way to go before they actually learn anything from this.

[AllTooEasy]

6. I'm not a Nuke fan, but the damage WAS all due to the Tsunami

No tsunami and no crisis. I guess the peope who had their homes washed away can't blame the tsunami either.

But seriously though, why would you build a Nuke plant IN A FUCKING TSUNAMI ZONE?!?!?! That's like building category 3 levies in a place where category 4 hurricanes are know to hit. Who would be that stup...

Oh.

[leveymg]

8. The buildings stood up well to the water, but not to the melt-down and hydrogen explosions

that (predictably) resulted after some idiot put the electrical power source needed to run the cooling pumps outside. No, the problem was the reactors -- primary and secondary safety features -- not the Tsunami that took out the power lines and back-up generators.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. Actually, that doesn't appear to have been the cause.

The diesel generators needed coolant water to function. (there were a couple smaller air-cooled backup generators, but they were not sufficient for the job)

The coolant systems failed, when portions of the plant plumbing were damaged by the tsunami. The generators then overheated and failed.

[leveymg]

11. Redundant safety systems failed for foreseeable reasons. That's the point.

Were the main water feeds damaged by the tsunami? If you have a cite, please link. Thnx.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. They covered it with some special commentator on CNN

a day or so ago. I'm not able to find it, probably because I can't get craft a search that would only talk about the generator coolant systems and not the plant itself.

[leveymg]

15. Forbes blog blames it on "idiotic placement" of diesel fuel tanks. Point stands - excuses

don't pay the rent. http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/03/16/idiotic-placement-of-back-up-power-doomed-fukushima/

Regardless, human beings aren't smart enough to cover all the contingencies with something so infernally dangerous. I trust GE's Gen-III reactor designs not a whiff more. The French have their own Maginot Line. The Russians, Chernobel. We got off with a warning at TMI. Our turn or China's next?

[AtheistCrusader]

17. Depends on where mother nature decides to let rip.

(not that I suggest MN is a conscious entity, just a euphamism)

I don't understand why those generators weren't on a nearby hill. Bury the power lines in steel pipes with flexible joints. Done. If something bad happens and the lines are severed, no problem, you can string new ones above ground after the earthquake in a matter of hours. AND the foundation upon which the entire plant sat should have been shaped like the prow of a ship, etc...

There were so many common sense failures in the plant design. But as you say, it's an excuse, especially since we both know, nobody is going to spend the money, even after this example, to do the right thing with the other power plants nearby or elsewhere in the world.

NODOBDY is going to 'worst case scenario proof' their reactors. It's just not going to happen.

[jmowreader]

13. Who in FUCK designed the generators that way?

Haven't these fuckers ever heard of a radiator?

Consider: these generators are probably 500 kilowatt diesel plants. I'm betting they have six or seven of them. You can go to your local Caterpillar dealer, give him a very large check, and a few weeks after you ordered it a truck driver will be in your office asking you where you want it. It will have a radiator on it...and a 500kw generator isn't all that big compared to some of the ones they make. (The big one is over 17,000 kilowatts--and it has a radiator too.)

[Chef Eric]

16. So, I guess we should blame "Katrina" for the deaths in N.O. in August 2005?

We shouldn't blame the USACE, who built and maintained the levee system.

And we shouldn't blame the government for failing to ensure that all people, even poor people, would be evacuated.

And we shouldn't blame the cops who went crazy and shot innocent people.

We should just blame the hurricane. No hurricane, no crisis.

:sarcasm:

[tahrir]

20. the main issue is that no matter the cause, when this deadly stuff slips out of our fragile control

the consequences are more long lasting, widespread, and deadly to human life than any other disaster.

[liberation]

10. The dichotomy comes from the assumption that energy is a property

that it can't have democratic qualities in its control and distribution, and that its production can only be viable if it can guarantee massive profit for a few.

The dirty secret is that on a single day the earth is literally "showered" with more energy by the sun that we humans can produce in eons. Never mind that the planet itself is a reactor of sorts. But since we can only construe our relations, with both other people/species and the planet itself, in terms of usage/exploitation (esp. in the Western world, and honestly in the Easter World too). We can't cope with development concepts which are not based around profit first and foremost.

This is the lunacy, as I said: we have access at almost limitless energy which can be transformed into usable "electric" form relatively easily. But instead of implementing those approaches, which benefit the many in a real tangible way. We simply decide to comply with what an abstract concept like capital, which has little to no correlation with the physical world/reality, because profit is the only filter for our actions as a species (obviously not to most people, but it is the driving force for almost the entirety of our social structures worldwide).

Speaking as a physicist (and granted arguments to authority in anonymous forums are silly), my personal opinion is that Uranium and Plutonium is a hell of a idiotic way to basically boil water. In the same way that digging for coal and oil is a monumentally stupid and shortsighted form of recovering stored solar energy. It is ironic that the most convoluted, toxic, and involving highest degrees of overhead energy production mechanism are the only ones deemed "viable." Yet the more direct, scalable, and clean approaches are the ones deemed "unrealistic."

We need to have our head checked as a species. I can only think of the embarrassment once/if other alien species contact us and we have to explain ourselves. "Yes sir, we sure had a nice gigantic fusion reactor for free outside our planet, but we instead decided to shoot ourselves in the foot with these toxic, primitively, and pathetically microscopic in comparison energy sources."

[Karenina]

21. I sometimes wonder if critical knowledge about solar power

was somehow "lost" by previous generations and/or suppressed by earlier economic interests who realized that NO ONE "owns" the sun. The energy source is so obvious. Kinda like weed. I have concluded in my 6 decades that yes, we as a species are indeed, collectively, fatally stupid. WAY TOO STUPID to survive. I do recall quipping in my 5th grade class, "There are enough smart people to find solutions and enough stupid people to prevent them from getting anywhere." That was a tough year for me with Mrs. Houston.

The techno hubris has always galled me as a firm believer in Murphy's Law. We saw it when the pagers crashed so many years ago. What's a pager? :rofl: We're seeing it played out now in Japan. Call me "hysterical" but my limited understanding tells me much of Japan will become uninhabitable just the way the Gulf will become uninhabited. WHAT will it take? :banghead:

There was this big announcement about "decomissioning" 1-4 yesterday. I'm thinking, as a fine tool and 5 liter water heater user, 'can y'all PLEASE STOP trying to blow smoke up my ass?' The very second you sprayed salt water on that burning heap it was GAME OVER. Fine tools are like the rose in Le Petit Prince and water heaters HATE chalky water.


All that to say, I LOVED YOUR POST! +1

Tante K.

[Journeyman]

3. It is "hysteria" to be cognizant of human error and critical of hidden mistakes?. . .

That there proves my contention there isn't a nuclear garbologist on this planet worth spit.

[buddysmellgood]

4. Our old reactor vessels must be getting brittle. I wouldn't think it worthwhile

to retrofit and old reactor. We need to build new designs. I think solar will rule by the time any new reactors are built.

[SkyDaddy7]

7. Yes, I agree there are new designs that...

would be much safer. And YES YES YES I agree about SOLAR! However, the fact that makes me sick is the Republicans want so bad to gut the funding for Alternative Energy & that would by default take the USA out the race to create the new technologies that will provide jobs here in the USA.

You may have already seen this but in case you have not...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC3teofDqSs

If you have any info to share on alt energy or nuke please share I love reading about it.

[liberation]

12. Furthermore

the filthy secret is that nuclear power is incredibly expensive. People don't realize the amount of money that has gone into nuclear development: from things like the Manhattan Project, and other military developments, to the annual budget in nuclear research, and the fact that most nuclear plants are financed (initially) with public money because they are not only incredibly risky, but massively expensive. And lets not forget the actual cost associated with the "externalities" because I am sure as hell the operator of Fukushima reactor is not going to pay out of their pocket for the economic and human effects of this catastrophe as a whole. And of course there is the matter of storing the nuclear waste, and the costs and overheads associated with it.

Whereas clean energy, has to fight tooth an nail for meager research investments. And has to provide levels of profitability that were never ever requested from other forms of energy when they were coming on line.

Truth is that we have energy all around us, and transforming it into usable electricity is a matter of mechanical conversion (from the most part). We can have access to photovoltaic panels (granted solid state, not mechanical per se), or use solar energy to produce steam to move turbines. Or we can use wind to also move those turbines (wind can be considered also a for of solar energy). Or we can exploit tidal energy in the coasts. And if we must really really boil water, we can dig deep holes into the ground and use the earth's heat (most of our planet is molten hot lava not solid cold crust) to create steam to move our turbines.

And that is just the beginning. Fairly simple and mechanical. People do not grasp that the level of ingenuity that was necessary to understand and exploit the atom, for example, was orders of magnitude what is required to enhance the already existing mechanical approaches for clean energy production. So we're more than capable of meeting the challenge (if we can run a marathon, we sure as hell can do a 5K). Sure, they may not provide the same level of energy density as a nuclear core... but who the hell cares? When you take into account the area needed to extract the uranium ore, the processing facilities, and the storage space for the spent fuel... that "energy density" disappears rather quickly.

[buddysmellgood]

19. That's what will kill nuclear. Nobody will finance it.

[crickets]

22. You make excellent points.

I was just talking with a family member about this last night. He's very conservative and found my anti-nuclear stance amusing, until I started explaining the level of subsidies and told him about the Price-Anderson Act. The public is asked to shoulder a large portion of the costs for plant construction, industry oversight, plant decommissioning, and oversight of waste which lingers for thousands of years. If there's an accident, who really gets socked with the lion's share of the cleanup cost? The taxpayer. In essence, taxpayers are compelled to invest massive amounts of money in propping up a business which then meters and charges us AGAIN for the product, walking away with the profit. All of this to prop up an industry that uses the heat from nuclear fission to boil water, to create steam, to turn a turbine. Not factoring in ANY of the human cost involved in safety issues, it is a huge boondoggle.

Once he felt the hit in his wallet, he stopped laughing and quietly started asking for more information, which I e-mailed him. It's sad that my argument had to be economic in order to open his eyes, but whatever works to start changing people's minds about the nuclear industry needs to be spread far and wide.

[Aerows]

18. We can be faster, stronger and more intelligent..

..in our cover-up.

Anything that involves nuclear power or oil is SAFE, citizen, and it is blasphemy to say otherwise. These are NOT the droids you were looking for.