Japan [Tag: Fucked]

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, I think Moses was the one getting that specific, I just referred to the steam bubbles being a bad thing because steam doesn't have the thermal density to keep the rods from overheating.

--Dave

[Jeff Kelly]

As part of the reporting on the Fukujima situation Al Jazeera and other news organizations offer 'insight' on just how fucked up the Japanese energy sector is. Like Enron bad.

Tepco for example is notorious for essentially blackmailing customers. They even insinuated that they could just switch off a few nuclear plants in the summer if the Japanese public wasn't comfortable with their security standards or business practices, which would 'unfortunately' lead to brown- and black-outs. They also fought the original switch off date (which would have been 2001) in court and got an extension till this year.

They have also a history of falsifying maintenance reports, skimping out on maintenance, shady bookkeeping and keeping severe incidents at their plants from the public.

[Arthur_Parker]

Calm down folks: Here is a calming piece written by a Nuke PHD over at MIT

https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

Excellent link, that was 1000 times more informative than *anything* that's come out of the news media so far.

The chances of another Chernobyl type incident are very low, however this is a political subject to some people and that piece is very biased.  I'm not going to spend ages picking it apart as I think a disaster is unlikely but take his comment

. The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.
...
The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel and concrete. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown

"one sturdy piece of a pot" that sounds a lot better than saying Low alloy steel, thickness 15cm, that becomes less effective with age due to Fatigue, Irradiatin embrittlement, Corrosion with the possiblity of cracking.

In a reactor that was designed to last 40 years, is 40 years old and was due to be decommisioned in February this year, life was extended for another 10 years.  Run by a company that's been in trouble for the falsification of inspection records of protection elements like the core shroud.  From my limited understanding core shroud cracking hinders cooling and nobody has been able to inspect the reactors since the earthquake.

Not to mention the issues of the reactors experiencing an earthquake larger than they were designed to withstand.  With a 70% chance of another large one on the way.

So yeah everyone should remain calm and once this is all over really start to ask searching questions about putting reactors on the coast and what magnitude of earthquake we would like them to withstand.  I was strongly pro-nuclear before this, not saying I'm against it now, but this has permanently changed things for the industry.

[jakonovski]

As part of the reporting on the Fukujima situation Al Jazeera and other news organizations offer 'insight' on just how fucked up the Japanese energy sector is. Like Enron bad.

Tepco for example is notorious for essentially blackmailing customers. They even insinuated that they could just switch off a few nuclear plants in the summer if the Japanese public wasn't comfortable with their security standards or business practices, which would 'unfortunately' lead to brown- and black-outs. They also fought the original switch off date (which would have been 2001) in court and got an extension till this year.

They have also a history of falsifying maintenance reports, skimping out on maintenance, shady bookkeeping and keeping severe incidents at their plants from the public.

Indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_japan#Accidents

Rumor has it that the US carrier in the area detected high radiation levels wherever it was sailing at the moment, so I hope we can get some independent numbers on the whole thing.

[schild]

You know what happens when offsite experts just assume things based on known quantities? People die.

I'm not playing chicken little here, but I think a large amount of concern is absolutely valid when it comes to growing a third arm.

I'm also for littering the entire mid-west with Nuclear power plants, though I'd prefer a "greener" solution. Not because I'm a hippie, but because sunlight is cheap.

Oh, and I assumed the actual death toll would be up near 30,000. Though they'll never be able to find all the bodies. This disaster was devastatingly bad.

[Sheepherder]

Low alloy is apropos of nothing, and 15cm thickness is actually a shitton of steel.

A source of lots of water is a good idea.  Even better would be a body of water above the reactor in elevation that doesn't simultaneously risk flooding it, so that you never are lacking some form of coolant unless your piping system is totally wrecked, but those conditions are hard.  That being said, I imagine that earthquake-proofing a cooling tower is also hard.

[SurfD]

One of the things i have to wonder about, aside from the Loss of Life and looming nuclear / radiation issues is the cultural impact.   How many culturally priceless historical sites along the coast may have been totally fucked by this?   I mean, I realise that Japan as a country has been through quakes and Tsunamis before, but you have to wonder if this one didnt scrub a 1000+ year old castle or shrine or landmark of great signifigance off the face of the earth.

[Arthur_Parker]

Low alloy is apropos of nothing, and 15cm thickness is actually a shitton of steel.

Low alloy steel, thickness 15cm is a quote from link, aka a fact, "sturdy piece" is an opinion devoid of fact, that's why I pointed it out, not because I don't think 15cm is good enough.   

[schild]

One of the things i have to wonder about, aside from the Loss of Life and looming nuclear / radiation issues is the cultural impact.   How many culturally priceless historical sites along the coast may have been totally fucked by this?   I mean, I realise that Japan as a country has been through quakes and Tsunamis before, but you have to wonder if this one didnt scrub a 1000+ year old castle or shrine or landmark of great signifigance off the face of the earth.

No more than Egypt just destroyed in their coup.

[Khaldun]

Insane footage of tsunami at ground level.

I saw this one earlier at BBC. Person who took it and the group with him are lucky as hell they got to as solid and high a place as they did, seeing what it does to everything else, even structures. I can't believe the cameraperson stays that far down on the stairs as long as they do, frankly.

[schild]

http://www.ted.com/talks/noreena_hertz_how_to_use_experts_and_when_not_to.html

Relevant.

[NowhereMan]

We can probably take some comfort that a 40 year old reactor got hit by one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded and a tsunami and is being operated by a company that seems to routinely downplay and/or ignore safety/maintenance with little effective governmental oversight and the result, so far, has been nothing too bad. There's still scope for total containment failure and meltdown disaster but at the moment it's probably been far less damaging environmentally speaking than all the chemical plants and stuff that got their shit wrecked. This has pretty much been a worst case scenario in a way Chernobyl wasn't (i.e. not actually stupid plant design and almost deliberate destruction) and it's been relatively good.

On the other hand like Arthur said this is going to change the debate, was hearing on the BBC today that Germany had massive anti-nuclear protests over the weekend since Merkel approved extending the life of most of their nuclear plants. Unfortunately it's changing the debate in the sense that people have gotten all riled up about nuclear power again because they keep hearing meltdown and containment failure, it isn't going to result in people campaigning for replacing the present power stations with newer, safer ones. Instead they'll vigorously oppose building any new ones (probably successfully) and to close existing ones (probably unsuccessfully since they're making money and would need to be replaced with something else).

[Surlyboi]

Technically it's not "Hydro" in Japan.  Yeah, they're probably going to see brownouts depending on their total output capacity.

Rolling blackouts are pretty much a given at this point.

[Arthur_Parker]

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031403-e.html

In response, water injection into Unit 2's reactor were being carried out by the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System. However, as the Reactor Core  Isolation Cooling System failed today, it was determined that a specific  incident (failure of reactor cooling function) stipulated in article 15,  clause 1 has occurred at 1:25 pm today.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=wrapup-13-japan-grapples-with-nucle

Jiji news agency said fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor had been entirely exposed and a fuel rod meltdown could not be ruled out. The plant operator confirmed there was little water left in the reactor. The explosion happened at the No. 3 reactor, two days after a blast at the No. 1 reactor.

A meltdown raises the risk of damage to the reactor vessel and a possible radioactive leak. Levels of cooling sea water around the reactor core had been reported as falling earlier in the day. Jiji said the pump had run out of fuel.

This one had the reports of a stuck valve I think.  So that's three partial reactor meltdowns and maybe they can't vent this one.  Sea water being reported for all three now.

Edit yeah http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12726628

Later, officials said seawater and boric acid were also being pumped into reactor 2.

They were still encountering problems - among them, a stuck valve. Its exact purpose was not revealed.

Yeah if they can't release the pressure on 2, then 

[Jeff Kelly]

The protests in Germany were planned for months and actually had nothing to do with Japan. Slight derail follows.

It is more of a domestic policy issue. Basically the previous administration decided to decomission all of Germany's 12 nuclear power plants because most of them had a history of serious issues and half of them are continually out of order anyway because of maintenance and safety issues due to their age (all of them are 30 to 40 years old) 7 of those 12 plants are BWR type designs of the Fukujima variety (even as old as them) only not designed to withstand any earthquakes.

The process has been the same over here as it has been anywhere else. Private corporations that played down serious issues (including a partial core meltdown of Biblis A in the nineties that only came to light a year later), falsified maintenace records, didn't perform repairs and maintenance operations according to codes (including weldings that weren't suitable for the pressure subjected to the pipes and other shit) and nowhere to actually store all of the nuclear waste.

The experimental long term storage facility "Asse" that was deemed by experts to be safe for "thousands of years" only managed to be safe for 15 years until the salt mine got submerged after an "impossible" water break in due to structural collapse. Clean up of the waste is estimated to cost 10 billion Euro. Also all next-generation efforts were huge money sinks without showing any results.

So after 60 years without a long term waste storage solution, a history of serious accidents including something that was close to being a second TMI, power companies that defrauded the german public with maintenace work that wasn't up to speed and plants that were so old that they were usually out of service for half of the year anyway, to fix things that were broken due to age, it was decided to decomission all of them by 2012.

This was actually part of the program the previous administration was voted into power for.

So Germany has spent the last 15 years to invest heavily (> 20 billion) in regenerative power and we can now provide more than 20% of our power needs just by wind and solar power and other regenerative energy generation solutions. Twice that of the 12 nuclear plants. We're also replacing most old coal and gas plants by new ones that offer cogeneration of heat and power and we have an extensive teleheating network already in place. Also Germany has invested heavily in methods to save on power consumption and heating. The "only" remaining problem so far would be efficient distribution of power that's generated decentralized and power storage.

Unfortunately those plants are huge cash cows for the power companies, they are completely written off, most of the actual costs have been externalized to the public anyway, so generating power is cheap and the new regenerative power strategy threatens their business model (decentralized vs. centralized generation, lots of smaller plants vs. a few big ones etc.).

So the current administration - in a cloak and dagger operation - made a top secret deal with the power companies (it actually is top secret, all of the contracts have been classified and not even the parliament got to see them) to "extend" the lifetimes of the plants by 6 to 12 years because we supposedly need nuclear power as a "stop-gap" until regenerative power sources become "entirely feasible" even though half of them are actually offline at a time and we're actually selling power to our EU neighbors because we don't need all of it.

So the public is basically completely pissed off. The protests on saturday were initially planned to protest the 12 year extensions.

[Merusk]

So I keep hearing that the water levels in the reactors aren't rising.  Is this because the fuel is so hot it's evaporating it all near-instantly or something more dire, like the quake cracked the reactor floor and it's all just spilling out?

[Arthur_Parker]

They might not tell us for months or years.

Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say

But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.
...
Japanese reactor operators now have little choice but to periodically release radioactive steam as part of an emergency cooling process for the fuel of the stricken reactors that may continue for a year or more even after fission has stopped. The plant’s operator must constantly try to flood the reactors with seawater, then release the resulting radioactive steam into the atmosphere, several experts familiar with the design of the Daiichi facility said.

That suggests that the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated may not be able to return to their homes for a considerable period, and that shifts in the wind could blow radioactive materials toward Japanese cities rather than out to sea.

Re-establishing normal cooling of the reactors would require restoring electric power — which was cut in the earthquake and tsunami — and now may require plant technicians working in areas that have become highly contaminated with radioactivity.

If this was one reactor I think it would be worse than TMI, they have three.

Inside the plant, according to industry executives and American experts who received briefings over the weekend, there was deep concern that spent nuclear fuel that was kept in a “cooling pond” inside one of the plants had been exposed and begun letting off potentially deadly gamma radiation. Then water levels inside the reactor cores began to fall. While estimates vary, several officials and industry experts said Sunday that the top four to nine feet of the nuclear fuel in the core and control rods appear to have been exposed to the air — a condition that that can quickly lead to melting, and ultimately to full meltdown.
...
To pump in the water, the Japanese have apparently tried used firefighting equipment — hardly the usual procedure. But forcing the seawater inside the containment vessel has been difficult because the pressure in the vessel has become so great.

One American official likened the process to “trying to pour water into an inflated balloon,” and said that on Sunday it was “not clear how much water they are getting in, or whether they are covering the cores.”

The problem was compounded because gauges in the reactor seemed to have been damaged in the earthquake or tsunami, making it impossible to know just how much water is in the core.

And workers at the pumping operation are presumed to be exposed to radiation; several workers, according to Japanese reports, have been treated for radiation poisoning. It is not clear how severe their exposure was.

If that's accurate, it's by no means certain it is accurate, but if it is then there are four problems, three reactors and at least one cooling pool.  They really need to focus everything they have to sorting this out fast otherwise the earthquake and tsunami are going to seem like minor problems.

[NowhereMan]

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

Apologies for being snarky but it's kind of disappointing that the media is utterly focused on "nuclear power plant meltdown!!11!1" when the rest of the country is utterly devastated. This is a big problem but it would have to get much, much worse to start being comparable to what just happened by itself.

[Cyrrex]

Man, what a tragedy on a grand scale.

Sand:  They always do death tolls like this.  They don't consider them dead until they have corpses, and they don't consider them missing until they are formally reported as such.  Knowing a train got swept away is one thing, having it officially reported that there were 500 people on it by the proper authorities is another.  I think everyone knows that we are talking tens of thousands, though.  Like you, I often wonder why the media dance around it so much.

[Mrbloodworth]

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

Apologies for being snarky but it's kind of disappointing that the media is utterly focused on "nuclear power plant meltdown!!11!1" when the rest of the country is utterly devastated. This is a big problem but it would have to get much, much worse to start being comparable to what just happened by itself.

In a way, its a chant for it to become worse.

[Arthur_Parker]

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

http://www.microsimtech.com/sfpquiz/default.htm

There are 4 pools.

Compared to a worst case power plant accident, the consequences of a worst case SFP accident are likely to be
C. comparable.

The instant death estimate for the worst case SFP release is in the order of
A. 10's.

The late (cancer) death estimate for the worst case SFP release is in the order of
 D. 10,000's.

[Arthur_Parker]

In a way, its a chant for it to become worse.

Don't blame me because I can read.

Micro-Simulation Technology (MST) is a software development and consulting group. The company is engaged in designing windows PC based applications to nuclear industry. It has designed PC-based reactor simulation software Personal Computer Transient Analyzer (PCTRAN) to model nuclear power plant and radiological dispersal device events for emergency response planning. MST is specialized in designing TPCTRAN which was selected as the training material by IAEA for its annual Advanced Reactor Simulation workshop. The plant models of the company include GE/Hitachi Economic Simplified BWR (ESBWR), Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), Westinghouse AP1000 (AP1000), Generation III-Plus PWR EPR (Areva). The company installed plant specific models at nuclear power plants and institutions all over the world for practical application in training, analysis, probabilistic safety assessment and emergency exercises. The company distributes its products through its distributors such as AF-Colenco Ltd. and CSA of Japan. AF-Colenco has also entered into agreements with a number of universities to license PCTRAN for their educational use. It operates principally in the US, Switzerland, and Japan

[Mrbloodworth]

In a way, its a chant for it to become worse.

Don't blame me because I can read.

What? 

[Murgos]

Don't blame me because I can read.

All you're doing is regurgitating words.  You have little to no context for anything you're saying but you're emphasizing things as though they mean something relevant.

That they sell training software means what?  Training software is training software and doesn't mean they have any information or insight into any current issue.  Which they haven't commented on.

OMG THE PRESSURE VESSEL IS MADE OF LOW ALLOY STEEL!!!  LOW ALLOW IS BAD!!!  BECAUSE IT'S LOW!!!

A BAD accident WOULD BE BAD!!!

Dude, get outside and breathe.

[Lantyssa]

The late (cancer) death estimate for the worst case SFP release is in the order of
 D. 10,000's.

Worst case is that it begins to make a dent in the order of magnitude of the death toll of the tsunami itself.  While completely horrible, that will take decades, whereas we already lost those tens of thousands, if not into the hundreds of thousands, in a few minutes.

Let the nuclear people worry about stopping this disaster.  Let emergency crews help evacuate anyone near the reactors so they don't suffer that fate.  Everyone else should be focused on the current survivors.  They've got bigger problems now than potentially receiving unhealthy doses of radiation in the near future.

And it's not like we can do jack shit if the reactors do blow up.  However, we can do things to help tsunami survivors.

[Ghambit]

So I keep hearing that the water levels in the reactors aren't rising.  Is this because the fuel is so hot it's evaporating it all near-instantly or something more dire, like the quake cracked the reactor floor and it's all just spilling out?

This was my thinking the moment the quake happened.  If the water levels are consistently dropping and they dont know why, the only explanation is a crack in the flooring allowing seepage into the groundwater.
It's no different then when you've got a leak in the vinyl lining of a pool.

Also, the condition of the steel containment is a big "?" in my eyes.  Anyone who works with steel knows that as strong as it may seem, it's a pretty fragile metal.  This is a Japanese plant, likely using japanese steel (which sux btw), from 40 yrs. ago, along a seawater coastline, just went through a 9.0 quake, tsunami, two hydro. explosions, radiative degradation, crooked management, molten temps, and on and on.  Sure, a meltdown wont do nothin' at all.  Yah... nothin to see here, move along now. 

[Arthur_Parker]

All you're doing is regurgitating words.  You have little to no context for anything you're saying but you're emphasizing things as though they mean something relevant.

That they sell training software means what?  Training software is training software and doesn't mean they have any information or insight into any current issue.  Which they haven't commented on.

OMG THE PRESSURE VESSEL IS MADE OF LOW ALLOY STEEL!!!  LOW ALLOW IS BAD!!!  BECAUSE IT'S LOW!!!

A BAD accident WOULD BE BAD!!!

Dude, get outside and breathe.

It's the same material that the people working the problem are trained on, it was a response to being told that there's no way the nuclear problems could be anywhere near as bad as what has already happened.

Low alloy steel wasn't a criticism, it was a quote to show the actual factual information is easily available, hydrogen gas being produced by cooling pools is also a fact.

I've no desire to piss anyone off so I'll just stop commenting.

[Murgos]

Also, the condition of the steel containment is a big "?" in my eyes.  Anyone who works with steel knows that as strong as it may seem, it's a pretty fragile metal.  This is a Japanese plant, likely using japanese steel (which sux btw), from 40 yrs. ago, along a seawater coastline, just went through a 9.0 quake, tsunami, two hydro. explosions, radiative degradation, crooked management, molten temps, and on and on.  Sure, a meltdown wont do nothin' at all.  Yah... nothin to see here, move along now.  

Keep your pants on.  The steel container being discussed is the second of three vessels.

[Sheepherder]

Low alloy steel, thickness 15cm is a quote from link, aka a fact, "sturdy piece" is an opinion devoid of fact, that's why I pointed it out, not because I don't think 15cm is good enough.  

I'm sorry, I tried to read the article, but for some reason I always found myself distracted.


"Low alloy steel" is a fact bereft of context.  Here's some context: low alloy steels are ideal for the construction of pressure vessels, springs, and quality blades.  The article you provided reads like it was written by someone who's primary sources are nuclear fearmongers and Wikipedia, desperately trying to find some big words so that he didn't look like a putz in front of a room full of PhD's.

This ill-reputed diploma mill has something to say on the subject.

EDIT: Also, there is quite a bit of variance in what low alloy steel may mean, anything with less that 8% other shit is nominally low alloy steel.

[K9]

This thread is approaching neckbeard critical mass

[Sheepherder]

This thread is approaching neckbeard supercritical mass

Fixed.

[Paelos]

I love it how people become armchair experts in a crisis.

[Arthur_Parker]

Christ, the steel thing, if it had said pink furry steel, I'd have quoted that, just cause it has "low" in the title doesn't necessarily mean that's a bad thing.  I do imagine they thought about it some.

edit sorry missed this the first time.

The article you provided reads like it was written by someone who's primary sources are nuclear fearmongers and Wikipedia, desperately trying to find some big words so that he didn't look like a putz in front of a room full of PhD's.

It's actually a translated document from Japanese Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, so 

[Sand]

To pump in the water, the Japanese have apparently tried used firefighting equipment — hardly the usual procedure. But forcing the seawater inside the containment vessel has been difficult because the pressure in the vessel has become so great.

One American official likened the process to “trying to pour water into an inflated balloon,” and said that on Sunday it was “not clear how much water they are getting in, or whether they are covering the cores.”

So earlier last night when I asked "are they trying to pump in water with a guy in a lead suit and a fire hose?" and was assured that "no there are many redundant systems" I was right?

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

Apologies for being snarky but it's kind of disappointing that the media is utterly focused on "nuclear power plant meltdown!!11!1" when the rest of the country is utterly devastated. This is a big problem but it would have to get much, much worse to start being comparable to what just happened by itself.

Except there are now four systems in meltdown mode and if that shit gets into the islands aquifer I would assume it could potentially poison/make the entire island uninhabitable?
And keep in mind the rest of the country isnt utterly devastated. No more than Katrina devastated the  entire United States.

[Sand]

Updates:

The AP reports:

Japanese officials say the nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday: "Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening."

Direct quote from engineer who helped design and build containment vessel:

#
1422: Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima's reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis and the plant's builders, Toshiba, knew this. More on Mr Goto's remarks to follow.

#
1431: More from Japanese nuclear engineer Masashi Goto: He say that as the reactor uses mox (mixed oxide) fuel, the melting point is lower than that of conventional fuel. Should a meltdown and an explosion occur, he says, plutonium could be spread over an area up to twice as far as estimated for a conventional nuclear fuel explosion. The next 24 hours are critical, he says.

Which is in direct opposition to all the company/government reports saying "Oh yah, they were totally designed to withstand that shit."