nuclear power

[SteveP]

saw a piece today about nuclear power in japan.
every nuclear reactor in the country is now shut down.

it has been 1 yr since the tsunami disaster and the reactors there require local certification annually.
none of the locales will certify the plants.

this should become interesting...

[Britishbane]

What channel?

I was working energy policy when the incident occurred and remember it like yesterday. Power, energy, and the environment are huge issues for the very near term, not just for the Japanese.

[VA_MEL]

Yep, all 50 of their reactors are off line. From what I've read, that is about a third of their overall capacity. Perhaps doable in mild weather but doesn't seem sustainable during peak demand periods. That's a lot of jobs, too, and switching sources isn't something you can do over night.

[sonny]

there's plenty of the offending ge markI reactors here in the us

just flew over hanford reach the other day..

[jitahs]

They're calculating .1-.4% energy surplus for the hot months - talk about thing margins. The entire history of nuclear energy development there is loaded post-Hirsoshima/Nagasaki, plus governmental collusion to promote it have made it an easy target.
It would have to be this way for them to build so many facilities facing the Pacific - leeward tsunami side anyone?

[Saab2000]

1. Nuclear science is misunderstood by most people.
2. Nuclear plant construction is awarded to the lowest bidder.
3. Science and physics don't care who is the lowest bidder.

How much sense does that really make?

FWIW, I believe in the atom and using the decay of refined material to harness energy. But it can't be awarded to the lowest bidder. Seriously. This is serious shit.

[VA_MEL]

FWIW, I believe in the atom and using the decay of refined material to harness energy. But it can't be awarded to the lowest bidder. Seriously. This is serious shit.

Hopefully that would be the lowest QUALIFIED bidder. To decide, I'd just send email to three reactor builders: one old, one contemporary and one up-and-coming, then blog about it.

[bigbill]

Nuclear power is what I do for the navy. Been doing it for almost 27 years. I got the full brief on the Japanese reactors from the navy guys who went over to help. The problem in Japan had nothing to do with low bid builders, it was a poor design and site layout. The earthquake caused the reactors to shutdown which caused the emergency diesel generators to start. The diesels were mounted at ground level and were running when the tsunami flooded them causing the engines to be damaged and unusable. Without cooling, the cores overheated until the were eventually covered with seawater which initially solved the heat problem until the water boiled off leaving a thick layer of salt. The USN filled a barge with fresh water and towed it to Fukushima where it was used to finally cool the reactors. We let them keep the barge.

[Jonathan]

Think of the benefits of being power constrained. It won't take long for the efficiency gains to be realized. Ill bet in my house we could cut our power consumption by 10% and Id wager most of us could too.

[busdriver1959]

I was in Japan last week. I think it was the day after the last plant was shut down. The reports I heard suggested that there wouldn't be any power surplus but rather a deficit that could interrupt power to their manufacturing plants. After everything they've gone through, that's going to hurt.

[jitahs]

Think of the benefits of being power constrained. It won't take long for the efficiency gains to be realized. Ill bet in my house we could cut our power consumption by 10% and Id wager most of us could too.

A friend has two ecars, just put up a solar array. City pays him 3x for power put into the grid vs. power taken out, effectively zero sum. Means no gas bill, no ebill. Throw out the cost of the cars and panels - it takes money to not spend money.

[vertical_doug]

Everyone needs to check some facts:

1. Nuclear Plants - There are 17 Nuclear Power Plants in Japan with 54 reactors. 7 are on Pacific Side and 10 on Sea of Japan side. The sea of Japan has earthquakes too.
File:Japan Nuclear power plants map.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. Avg power deficit can be misleading. The Japanese power grid is split into two. The western half operates at 60 hertz. The eastern at 50 hertz. There is limit capacity for conversion from one to the other. The Kansai region (the industrial heartland ) is forecasting between 14 - 19% deficit in August which is peak demand. The government recommends business and homes to set air conditioning at 82 F (28C) . Some manufacturing to work weekends taking mid-week off etc. There will probably be rolling brownouts.
3. NatGas in the U.S. is 2.20. Japan imports NatGas at an average cost of 19. This is what is driving the change in their balance of payments.
4. Aug 6 the Japanese have a memorial ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Park to mark the Atomic bomb. It is televised nationally on NHK. So 67 years later, anti-nuclear feelings still strong.
5. On a per capita basis, the Japanese already use 52% of the U.S. per capita. So if you want to know what it is like to be Japanese, cut your energy use in half.

[Britishbane]

Nuclear power is what I do for the navy. Been doing it for almost 27 years. I got the full brief on the Japanese reactors from the navy guys who went over to help. The problem in Japan had nothing to do with low bid builders, it was a poor design and site layout. The earthquake caused the reactors to shutdown which caused the emergency diesel generators to start. The diesels were mounted at ground level and were running when the tsunami flooded them causing the engines to be damaged and unusable. Without cooling, the cores overheated until the were eventually covered with seawater which initially solved the heat problem until the water boiled off leaving a thick layer of salt. The USN filled a barge with fresh water and towed it to Fukushima where it was used to finally cool the reactors. We let them keep the barge.

Very well summed.

What ever happened to the aspersion that the Japanese failed to update Fukushima's reactors 1-4 with the GE mandated upgrade to the venting system? Or was that simply a cover story, not a real cause.

[WadePatton]

'tis very difficult to "check facts" with this subject. couple that our sources of "facts" are generally always concerned with public opinion (and "shape" thereto) with the _fact_ that "radiation" is a big scary misunderstood word in our society.

example-folks still "nuke" things in the microwave oven-which heats with molecular agitation transferred via UHF radio-waves. nothing nookular about it.

i trust the japanese to be as good or better with nuclear safety as anyone on the planet.



hell, i'll be off-grid in a few years.

[davids]

1. Nuclear science is misunderstood by most people.
2. Nuclear plant construction is awarded to the lowest bidder.
3. Science and physics don't care who is the lowest bidder.

How much sense does that really make?

FWIW, I believe in the atom and using the decay of refined material to harness energy. But it can't be awarded to the lowest bidder. Seriously. This is serious shit.

First of all, do you really know #2 to be true? I'd like to think that you're not just assuming it's a fact.

Secondly, if the procurement and project is well conceived, spec'ed and designed, there will be nothing wrong with awarding the project to the entity that can deliver the product - meeting proper design specs - for the lowest dollar value. I spend a decent proportion of my professional life making spending decisions as a custodian of public funds, and I owe it to my fellow citizens to get the highest value for their dollar.

[jitahs]

1. Nuclear Plants - There are 17 Nuclear Power Plants in Japan with 54 reactors. 7 are on Pacific Side and 10 on Sea of Japan side. The sea of Japan has earthquakes too.
File:Japan Nuclear power plants map.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. Avg power deficit can be misleading. The Japanese power grid is split into two. The western half operates at 60 hertz. The eastern at 50 hertz. There is limit capacity for conversion from one to the other.

Given this, in retrospect and with smoking jacket and pipe in hand, though earthquakes perhaps can be epicentered on the Sea of Japan side, tsunamis do not form to flood diesel-powered cooling, per bigbill's post. I live in a very earthquake-rich area; some of the solutions for vibration damping include picking up City Hall and putting it on rubber bumpers. Basically a YBB. Another is to put a building on rollers.

If anyone can make a case for tsunami-side building of nukes of faulty design, aside from the ability to draw power locally and political machinations, I would be interested in hearing it.

[vertical_doug]

Given this, in retrospect and with smoking jacket and pipe in hand, though earthquakes perhaps can be epicentered on the Sea of Japan side, tsunamis do not form to flood diesel-powered cooling, per bigbill's post. I live in a very earthquake-rich area; some of the solutions for vibration damping include picking up City Hall and putting it on rubber bumpers. Basically a YBB. Another is to put a building on rollers.

If anyone can make a case for tsunami-side building of nukes of faulty design, aside from the ability to draw power locally and political machinations, I would be interested in hearing it.

There have also been tsunamis on the Japan Sea side. I lived in Japan when one rolled over a village in Hokkaido. The Tsunami is complicated wave and ultimately the shape of the shoreline will greatly change it's height. I think the highest crest of the wave the Japanese have found is 28m in a narrow inlet. Tsunami means Harbor wave.

One of the chief reasons the Japanese the Nuclear Plants are located near the coast is to bring in the nuclear fuel by ship because they don't want to truck it around the country. For the most part, the japanese population is anti-nuclear. Because the country is resource poor, the government always wants to try for energy independence (the reason they built a breeder reactor Monju).

The Japanese have very good earthquake technology. The original error was assuming an earthquake of 9.0 isn't going to happen and the size of the tsunami. I think if you look at the film footage, buildings aren't falling down structurally from the shaking, the buildings get washed away.

[Saab2000]

First of all, do you really know #2 to be true? I'd like to think that you're not just assuming it's a fact.

Secondly, if the procurement and project is well conceived, spec'ed and designed, there will be nothing wrong with awarding the project to the entity that can deliver the product - meeting proper design specs - for the lowest dollar value. I spend a decent proportion of my professional life making spending decisions as a custodian of public funds, and I owe it to my fellow citizens to get the highest value for their dollar.

I am not part of the bidding process so I can't say it is absolute fact. But after the Japan accident I heard a lot of seemingly reliable news reports and there were a lot of talking heads from various departments who kind of backed this up. There are designs for plants which are very 'fail safe' in their designs but which do cost more. The Japan plant was not one of these plants.

There is no such thing as absolute safety in anything so this must be a point made.

But it was my understanding that the plant design with the safety systems in the Japan plant was in fact a less expensive design than the one which was 'safer' and the design of which would have likely prevented the accident in Japan.

So while I don't know for absolute fact, this was the gist of many folks who know a lot more about this subject than I do who spoke after the Japan accident. I take their word for it. The better question is what is "safe enough"? In the absence of absolute safety, this is a question which must be asked.

I fly airplanes for a living and every aspect of our job is a cost/benefit calculation. We have redundant, double redundant and even some triple redundant systems and procedures in our business and accidents still happen. But cost is also a major factor and yes, often things do go to the lowest bidder in our business. Maintenance is one of these things. People don't want to know this, but it is true. They still have to meet FAA standards but after that it's all about cost.

I am guessing that nuclear plant design must meet certain standards but competing companies will bid on cost and in practically every aspect of life, lowest cost wins when the public is financing it.

[Jaq]

They still have to meet FAA standards but after that it's all about cost.

Therein lies the key, though. They have to meet standards. If the standards are appropriate and well-enforced, if the regulatory bodies are doing their jobs, then even the lowest bidder's price probably isn't going to be vastly lower than the high bidder; they're probably going to be fairly close. I think part of the problem is that the phrase "lowest bidder" conjures up images of some shady operator building a nuke plant from old plumbing parts he's got in the back of his pick-up. The cost savings in differing bids in something like a nuke plant probably stem more from differences in management/overhead than quality of workmanship & parts.

If, say, GE, Rolls, and Pratt & Whitney were all competing to supply power plants for the same Boeing airliner, the performance of those engines would be near-identical, the engineering more or less superlative - though I defer to your experience on those matters. The bigger problem, as I see it, is the nature of the regulatory bodies, the standards they set, and their ability to effectively police/enforce those standards. That's not a "big government" vs. "little government" argument, but an "effective" vs. "ineffective" argument.

Anyway - and I can't find it, unfortunately - NPR had a great interview with a nuclear engineer not long after the incident. He really delved into the cost of safety, the cost of proofing a plant against a 9-point quake vs. a 10-point quake, how they quantify "what's reasonable," etc. I look around some more.

[Saab2000]

Therein lies the key, though. They have to meet standards. If the standards are appropriate and well-enforced, if the regulatory bodies are doing their jobs, then even the lowest bidder's price probably isn't going to be vastly lower than the high bidder; they're probably going to be fairly close. I think part of the problem is that the phrase "lowest bidder" conjures up images of some shady operator building a nuke plant from old plumbing parts he's got in the back of his pick-up. The cost savings in differing bids in something like a nuke plant probably stem more from differences in management/overhead than quality of workmanship & parts.

If, say, GE, Rolls, and Pratt & Whitney were all competing to supply power plants for the same Boeing airliner, the performance of those engines would be near-identical, the engineering more or less superlative - though I defer to your experience on those matters. The bigger problem, as I see it, is the nature of the regulatory bodies, the standards they set, and their ability to effectively police/enforce those standards. That's not a "big government" vs. "little government" argument, but an "effective" vs. "ineffective" argument.

Anyway - and I can't find it, unfortunately - NPR had a great interview with a nuclear engineer not long after the incident. He really delved into the cost of safety, the cost of proofing a plant against a 9-point quake vs. a 10-point quake, how they quantify "what's reasonable," etc. I look around some more.

Excellent points. I also don't wish to go 'big gov't vs. little gov't' on a discussion of this nature. This is above that in my opinion.

I wish I could cite more specific examples of my case. To be sure, I am a proponent of nuclear power. Within limits. The facts remain though that absolute safety isn't possible with anything. Even so, I would be curious to hear about modern designs for nuclear power plants vs older ones like the plant in Japan. It seems almost inevitable that nuclear power today is safer than it was, say, 40 years ago. Advancements have been made in most technologies in that time.

I have also read that the French are basically the world leaders in a lot of this technology. They get an enormous percentage of their total electrical supply from nuclear sources and have a good safety record with it. The US has only approved a handful of new construction plants in the past few decades where from what I understand the French have been consistently raising the bar with regards to nuclear waste. It would be interesting to find out how they source their plants and if their requirements for safety differ from those in other parts of the world.

An interesting subject, that's for sure!