Nuclear Power

[Bryn]

One does not need to work in the nuclear industry in order to have more than the barest smattering of a grasp of the technology, L1. Regarding emergency aid for Japan re. the problems at Fukishima, that country is not exactly short of nuclear engineers. I rather doubt that adding a few more cooks would do much to improve the over-cooked broth.

As to Didcot, while it is certainly far from any coal mine, it has long been a major locus coal storage and distribution, as I clearly recall from childhood train journeys between Swindon (to which my family moved in 1956) and London (from which we had moved).

[Lateralthinking1]

Hmm. So it is even worse than I thought. The collective team effort there represents the absolute pinnacle of the world's nuclear expertise.

How it all works when it works is one of the ongoing red herrings. What we need to know is how it all can work when it doesn't work.

Anyhow, here's the latest from the IAEA. In fairness, they are not doing a bad job with the updates. Love the way they are calling it "Tsunamiupdate" though.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

[johnb]

The following links are informative and seem to give a good idea of what has happened, etc:

A rough summary of the events leading to the explosions and the situation as at 24/03/10. Note the important second explanation for the explosion at Reactor 3. (New York Times)

How the lack of information from TEPCO and the Japanese authorities is frustrating the experts outside Japan and how it is a product of Japanese culture (Los Angeles Times)



(The man in the white coat 'bravely' standing inside the torus gives some idea of the scale.)

Of course, there is a lot of other speculation elsewhere, especially centred on Reactor 3.

[Lateralthinking1]

johnb - Thank you for this information. Very interesting indeed. I feel that something like the main article/diagram should be on the school curriculum and monthly reports of maintenance work at plants provided on tv and radio much like we have daily traffic bulletins and weather forecasts.

Having worked in international committees, I have some sympathy with the IAEA. I fully recognise that they only have the scope for action provided to them legally. On reading the other articles, I sense that there is frustration there too about the flow of information, or the lack of it. This really does need to be revisited internationally. It is too important to be left to Governments and their bureaucrats, particularly when they seem to be partially at the mercy of politically unaccountable companies.

You tempt me to wade in to the science of it, albeit tentatively. I recognise that I risk displaying naivety here and am aware that in this world there is rarely a wholly original line of questioning. I am, though, a believer in people with limited knowledge asking questions in areas where I personally have some expertise as arguably they may be more likely to be thinking outside the box.

I wonder how close electrical power needs to be to a nuclear plant and whether it can be located a considerable distance away from it with any routeing made fully watertight?

Should there be more power sources? It does seem to me that a lot of the power to components - for the everyday cooling systems, the emergency fans/filters, and the exhaust systems - may have been very interconnected and that the same might be said of the power supply to the individual units. Is this accurate and if so does it have to be this way?

The fact that it is not known, or being revealed, whether the venting system was strengthened, is quite extraordinary. Has no one outside the company any access to papers showing the basic technical design and any subsequent improvements?

Logically, it seems right that "to prevent a catastrophic primary containment system failure the operators vented the primary containment through the safety venting system trying to reject heat and excess gases up the 100 meter tall stacks at the plants" even if this had to be done without the support of safety systems.

The pumping of sea water was clearly a desperate measure and not necessarily wrong given the limited options available but the fact that no one will say publicly whether it was fed in directly through pipes is a worry.They now say that "salt deposits are likely building up in locations in the thermally heterogeneous core rubble pile. This configuration is completely unknown".

Can we feel sure, as we would hope, that along with the practical efforts on the ground there are teams in offices working day and night thinking through all of the possible outcomes and what should be done in each event?

[Lateralthinking1]

....Strange. No replies. Maybe a direct answer from a scientist with an interest could imply culpability in the industry. The legal situation and so on? BBC, today - "Reports from Japan say radioactivity in water at reactor 2 at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant is 10 million times the usual level. Workers trying to cool the reactor core to avoid a meltdown have been evacuated"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12872707

And, here, just behind that bus is another, which shows a shift in the propaganda. No longer is this "the situation can be managed, it is not going to be as bad as previous incidents, the press are over-emphasising it, everything is completely safe away from tsunami zones and the public doesn't understand the impacts of radiation levels so small". Today we have "you can have huge doses of radiation releases from time to time, we will just have to get used to it, and really those aren't a danger to human health".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12860842

Really? Does this then mean that we should spare the industry the embarrassment of throwing a lot of concrete over the plant and "entombing" it? Can we save ourselves all the efforts and expense of building thick double wall defences here and start to use cheaper, flimsier, materials? Can we rest easily over the developing programmes in North Korea and the advanced aspirations in Iran? Maybe think about trading with Al Qaeda in this area, help them to build a nuclear capability "purely for domestic purposes"?

I respect the workers who have tried to deal with the problems at the plant. However, the longer this goes on, the apologists reveal that this is all about being unchallengeable and uncaring. If the safety defences at nuclear plants fail, they simply employ thicker psychological defences for what is going on. The more they move the goalposts on what is safe and what is not, they not only "deal" with the opponents of nuclear energy. They give support to the arguments of the true enemy. Which side are they on?

[Bryn]

Sorry, L1, but I took the italicized 'questions' in your message of 16:43 yesterday as being intended as rhetorical. They certainly did not seem worthy of putting much effort into searching out specific answers to. They do not seem based on very much thought at all. Take the matter of the distance of the source of electrical power for safety systems (which is what I take it you are worried about) from the nuclear installation, since the immediate catastrophe we are treating with here is a major earth quake and consequent tsunami, I would reckon a power source close to the plant was essential, thus reducing (but still not entirely eliminating) the highly likely danger of fracture of the cabling between the power source and the plant. You really don't appear to me to be approaching these issues with more than a moments thought.

With respect to your most recent posting, I would rather trust the views of an Oxford based nuclear and medical physicist, on questions of nuclear safety, than I would those of the 'man on the Clapham omnibus', for whom you seem to be standing in.

[Lateralthinking1]

Nah mate. They were not rhetorical. The supporters of the industry seem to have a problem with the everyday concept of questions generally. I wonder whether you, or most ordinary folk, would trust those experienced in banking more than the man or woman on the Clapham Omnibus to run the banking system efficiently other than in their own interests. Which of the two, I might ask, is now paying for the environmental cleansing and indeed rescuing of the banks and yet is still not permitted a voice on the extent to which that industry must change?

I doubt that any of you in the lucrative little earner that is nuclear thinks that the general public are mugs and that is a real problem for you on a rational level. You therefore simply chuck water at it and hope that it will go away. It is pretty obvious, isn’t it, how people work generally? You go to invest your money in a property. Do you (a) trust the statements of the experienced estate agent or (b) trust your own amateur knowledge and instincts? If you answer (a), you are a fool or a liar. Down the pub, you would be telling all your mates that he was giving you all the old spiel and that it was baloney. You knew the house was a dud and didn't buy it.

Factual knowledge is one thing. Common sense is another. Trust is a third thing and it needs to be earned. Mainly that is behavioral. The longer this goes on, I am struck by how the nature of nuclear science is identical to the character of its supporters. They believe that it is the opponents who are radioactive and in need of control. Right now, in Tokyo we have cracks at the plant. In the supporters, there are parallel chinks in their abnormal and downright peculiar communication veil. Just as the way in which the components inside the plant are damaged and cannot be comprehended by those who know it all, so the supporters refuse to see that their own traditional methods of managing and coping are damaged. Arguably, that is precisely why the experts cannot find a quick scientific solution. They are being blocked by their own tunnel vision and almost religious advocacy - a psychological framework that is so dependent on defend first, attack second, that they cannot engage with calls for a more open assessment even among themselves.

Of course, nuclear is interesting because the supporters of it will say that it is necessary for life in the future and the opponents will say that it could cause death to many. It is right at the crux of that dynamic and it is also literally and metaphorically about power. Look at the terminology - “fast breeder reactor” and so on. Libido and ego are all very well and it is not unknown for them to be symbolically reproduced in architecture. Witness Andy Kershaw’s recent observations on the skyscrapers in Dubai. In matters of health and democracy, though, people deserve something better. The energies of experts need to be more constructive if this comparatively newborn child of science isn‘t to turn quickly into an imprisoned yob.

[greenilex]

If I were a Pacific whale rather than an Atlantic one I'd be upping my medical insurance right now....

[Bryn]

L1, you seem to be having a little trouble in reading plain English. As I pointed out a few days ago, I am no proselyte of nuclear energy. However, I find it particularly annoying to read comments, such as many of those you have posted, which demonstrate the impotence of arguing from a position of ignorance. The inclusion of representatives from a range of disciplines when brain-storming is a useful. However, to place the uninformed opinions of such contributors to a brain-storm as being of equal scientific validity as those of such as Wade Allison would be the height of stupidity. It is also worrying that you seem to regard anyone who challenges your lauding of ignorance re. nuclear power issues as necessarily being not only a proponent of that technology, but a practitioner of it. I am neither, and I doubt that any of the others opposing your blinkered approach work in the industry either. All energy provision systems have their associated risks. Nuclear power generation in by no means without them, and in extreme circumstances, such as those currently manifesting themselves at Fukishima, the potential for major catastrophe is horrendous. It does seem particularly stupid to have built such a plant in an area of high tectonic activity. I would mush prefer that methods of energy release other than that provided by nuclear power were employed, but there can be little doubt that without it, the current levels of power consumption in the world would be unsustainable in the short to medium term.

What is needed is clear, informed thinking and action, not the impotence of ignorance. A reading of Walt Patterson's popular exposition of the technology and its ramifications, Nuclear Power, would be a moderate starting point for you, I feel.

[Lateralthinking1]

What sort of name is Wade? Never heard of him before today.

[Bryn]

Another attempt at undermining your taste for ignorance:

"Male first name (English): Wade, Wade, Old English (as first name surname) = wade the ford, from a family name, which in turn goes back to a place name 'Ford' (shallow place in a river)."

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes. It is a surname. Thanks.

[Bryn]

Still having problems reading English, I see.

Perhaps you are more familiar with the work of Wade Davis.

[Lateralthinking1]

No, but I now feel like I know what it would be like to be in correspondence with Virginia.

[Bryn]

Perhaps a little application of lateral thinking would help you grasp the non-exclusive use of the "male first name, Wade", as a forename, and to grasp that it might also be used and an effectively gender neutral family (or sur-) name. I happen to be known by a forename used mainly for males in Wales, but for females over The Pond. However, it is also sometimes found as a surname. Non-exclusivity of linear thought patterns is the very essence of lateral thinking.

By the way, I heartily recommend the Wade Davis lecture linked to a couple of messages ago.