Nuclear Situation in Japan

[JimD]

Talking to coworkers more directly involved in the recovery support efforts has led me to a conclusion I want to share. A big difficulty that TEPCO is struggling with is that dealing with damaged reactors is a lot different than operating intact reactors. That seems pretty obvious when you think about it but may not be recognized when we are thinking of what should be going on right now. To compound the situation, there are firms that have done this before that are willing to get involved but only if the commercial agreement is in place giving them a lot of business at attractive prices for an extended time period. So TEPCO is getting good cooperation from some potentially helpful people but the companies in the position to be the most help are looking after their bottom line. TEPCO is not wanting to sit in a conference room listening to a sales pitch and evaluate offers right now.

Right now they need a big tank to pump contaminated water into so it doesn't seep into the ground. Not rocket science. But not something you pick up at Walmart either.

This will get better, things are getting more organized. I do not doubt that Japanese communication style is an obstacle. But I think the bigger problem at the moment is more basic. The skills to manage the current situation are closer to the skill set to manage a new plant construction. Or to recover a wrecked airplane. They are not the skillset of a nuclear plant operator. TEPCO is not doing so bad when you consider this, in my opinion. But for things to really get moving on recovery there needs to be a company with the organizational ability to set up a project plan and get the pieces of the plan moving. Some good things are occurring now but the project seems disorganized on the evening news and the other input I'm getting agrees with this view.

Jim

[JR]

To compound the situation, there are firms that have done this before that are willing to get involved but only if the commercial agreement is in place giving them a lot of business at attractive prices for an extended time period. So TEPCO is getting good cooperation from some potentially helpful people but the companies in the position to be the most help are looking after their bottom line. TEPCO is not wanting to sit in a conference room listening to a sales pitch and evaluate offers right now.

Sounds to me like those firms with the experience don't have much experience in Japah. Solve the problem with a minimum of hassle and they'd lock up business for generations.

JR

[LCHIEN]

its hard to assess the competency of a person or organization unless you know their plans and whether they are making their plan work.

Right now they are not "transparent" and not showing their cards.
Are bad things happening and they caught unawares or are bad things happenening and they knew it was coming but didn't let on because saying this bad thing is going to happen looks bad and somehow they are hoping against hope it won't happen?

I personally feel they are looking less than fully competent because they seem to be surprised and are not anticipating anything. this could be because they are keeping so mum but it sure makes them look bad.

Jim has a point that running a nuclear plant is usually by the book and so operating personnel who are used to that mode of operation are usually not real adept at flying by the seat of their pants and making adjustments on the fly and having a plan B and a plan C.

I'm not a crisis manager but I do plan things that are new and not done before (new product research and development) so we have to have plan B's and plan for possible detours. Each project plan has critical paths that require close attention for breakdown/problems and every essential parallel path has to have someone assigned and be tracked for progress. Each plan has key milestones and timelines that have to be made and can be checked for progress.

TEPCO has not shown its timelines, milestones, critical paths or any hint of a plan so it not possible to judge their progress. Its not clear if they actually have a plan or it they are just reacting to unexpected problems as they come up. Sure looks like the latter. For a 60 Billion dollar business in a $20+ billion dollar liability event they sure need a plan.

I've been watching the news really closely - its a fascination with technology and technical processes and the human side of science and engineering. I hear that something is happening and I wonder, oh that's going to impact this and that and what are they going to do about it. For example, they announce that there's lots of radioactive water in the basements and trenches. I've been wondering where all that water went. But they seemed surprised. My next reaction was, there must be thousands of gallons of contaminated water, what are they going to do with it - can't throw it in the sea, got to be saved and decontaminated. There's no storage... Sure enough two days later that's the big thing, how are they going to store it? I would have thought they'd bring up the issue right away.

I was indignant last week when they started to hook up the pumps to their newly run electric lines. Seems the pumps were bad and they had to order new ones. Considering the buildings were mush I would have assumed one or more would be damaged and ordered them on day 3 or 4 after the explosions.

Anyway they are not anticipating well, or if they are they aren't showing it. Mistakes, retractions, overly optimistic statements and constant apologies don't help.
Right now they're in a Catch-22. Gotta keep pumping and spraying water or they will overheat. Need to go to permanent cooling methods, no firetrucks... But they can't get any permanent pumps in place until they run new wireing and new pumps. Can't do that until they drain the basements and trenches. Can't drain anything until they have a place to put it. Can't drain it if they keep putting more radioactive water in the basements by pumping water on the reactors and pools to keep them cool. Because if they overheat it will create more radioactivity.

[sailor55330]

Right now they're in a Catch-22. Gotta keep pumping and spraying water or they will overheat. Need to go to permanent cooling methods, no firetrucks... But they can't get any permanent pumps in place until they run new wireing and new pumps. Can't do that until they drain the basements and trenches. Can't drain anything until they have a place to put it. Can't drain it if they keep putting more radioactive water in the basements by pumping water on the reactors and pools to keep them cool. Because if they overheat it will create more radioactivity.

That cycle is brutal and leaves very little room for error and simply can't be maintained long term. Based on the actions over the last 2 weeks, anyone wish to retract their prediction that this will not be a major catastrophe--or at least worse than it is before it's over?

[LCHIEN]

I predicted last week that its going to get worse. One major setback and they'll lose all control when they have to pull everyone out for too much radiation.

[leehljp]

50 cycle vs 60 cycle

One of my friends just informed me that close to 20% of Tokyo's electricity came from that plant. That is part of the reason for the rolling blackout - the big need in Tokyo. One other hard luck for them is that Tokyo and north use 50 cycle, while Nagoya and west uses 60 cycles.

How hard is it for a 50 cycle world to "borrow" power from a 60 cycle world?

The Chubu Denki Nagoya/central Japan electric company (serves 20 million people) are in the middle of running emergnecy tests on their nuclear plants. They shut down one of the plants..

[LCHIEN]

One of my friends just informed me that close to 20% of Tokyo's electricity came from that plant. That is part of the reason for the rolling blackout - the big need in Tokyo. One other hard luck for them is that Tokyo and north use 50 cycle, while Nagoya and west uses 60 cycles.

How hard is it for a 50 cycle world to "borrow" power from a 60 cycle world?

The Chubu Denki Nagoya/central Japan electric company (serves 20 million people) are in the middle of running emergnecy tests on their nuclear plants. They shut down one of the plants..

Very difficult.

in order for the grids to transfer power back and forth, the grids have to be synchronized EXACTLY to the same frequency. Its not a matter of close. Any generator attached to the grid will take on the frequency of the grid. If you give it more power to try to speed it up, its phase is said to be leading and it will push power into the grid. Any generator lagging in phase or trying to slow down will be drawing power from the gird. Trying to run a generator off speed will be disastrous and destroy the generator. The process for bringing a generator onto the grid is to match the frequency and phase as close as possible then connect - the more perfect the match the less disruption - a small mismatch will cause surges and sags until it physically locks to the speed. With the phase matched at the moment of connection there will be zero current transferred in any direction.

The best way to transfer power would be to run a large motor at one frequency, turning a belt or gear train to turn a 2nd generator at the other frequency. Then the 2nd generator can drive the other grid. A very expensive setup, the motor and generator would each have to be at least as large as the the turbine generator at a plant furnishing power equal to the amount being transferred. and probably lose 5% or more efficiency. If you want to transfer a megawatt then you will need a megawatt generator and a 1500 HP motor to drive it as well as a coupling, and RPM changing setup (gears, belts) that can handle torque of 1500 HP. A single nuke reactor is on the order of 500 MW- 1 GW so you'd need to have about 500 to 1000 times 1500 HP or around 1.5 million HP motor and a 1000 MW generator. Not something you'd find just laying around.

There are other ways of course of converting energy: go to DC, store the energy in capacitors or batteries, have a DC motor driving a generator or a DC/AC inverter; or pump water into an elevated pond, then release the water through a turbine and turn a generator at the right speed. All these would be even larger and more complex.

[jabe]

My cousins in Fukushima City are OK but they don't have power and water, they at least have their home. They are worried about radioactive contamination as the government/TEPCO have not been transparent. Yes, TEPCO are making mistakes and a lot of it is due to their culture as leehljp mentioned b4. I just hope they wake up and swallow their pride and get the help & skills needed to prevent further damage to the environment. Japan is in a world of hurt.

[leehljp]

That was quick Loring. Thanks.

After looking at my post, I may have given the perception that the Chubu/Nagoya tests were related to the transfer of power, but I didn't mean to do that. The nuclear plant that supplies some of the power to the Chubu/Nagoya area is running tests to see how vulnerable they are to a tsunami.

One of our closest Japanese friends in Nagoya is a man who is 1st VP of Chubu Denki. His wife has been emailing us with a good bit of information. He has been too busy. He was the fellow that introduced us to the Samaria sword museum and the Mokume knives that I wrote about back in 2009 here.

[Kristofor]

Under normal operations where generating plants are dumping a bunch of energy into water to produce electricity there is a lot of heat to dissipate, but the numbers I've seen for the remaining heat generation just aren't that big...

Is the issue with water run off that the holding ponds/tanks/whatever have been physically damaged and are leaking from the sides/bottom? Or is the issue that water is boiling off, or heating to near boiling and they need to keep dumping new water in to keep the temperature down?

If the hottest pit is generating 1 million KCal/hr then you only need like a dozen tanker truck loads of water per day if they have room for a 60 degree temp rise, or way fewer if you're actually boiling off the water...

That low of a volume seems like it would be fairly reasonable and a simple (which is not the same as easy) engineering problem to figure out how to best capture, transport, cool, and reuse (or worse, store) the contaminated water.

If the pools are leaking, okay then what's the next set of steps (patch them, clog them, move the fuel, etc.)?

I could understand lag times for fabrication of parts, transportation, or whatnot, but I agree with Loring that it's odd we haven't even heard what those types of plans might look like or when they're going to attempt them.

If feels (from the outside looking in) like the folks involved are working through a set of procedures to address specific tactical problems (failures/issues), without anyone stepping back and saying "let's come up with a strategy to address the big-picture first. Then we can develop a list of the tactical activities required to achieve that plan."

I hope that type of activity is happening, but it's sure not visible.

[LCHIEN]

yeah the problem with the leaks is they are not really sure where they come from and its too radioactive to go in and look. They don't have robots to do it because Japan has no harsh environment robots and for some stubborn reason they are blocking the use of French, German and US robots shipped over by their respective companies or governments because of "official channels" or some such bureaucratic nonsense,

they can't fix leaks and drain basements without stopping pumping water and pumping water just leaks more into the basements and trenches. So its a bad situation because they can't let it sit without cooling or it overheats and makes more radiation. they need permanent cooling but they can't make that work until they drain the water.

[LCHIEN]

reading new items people don't seem to have an idea of what a half life means.

Iodine 131 has a half life of 8.07 days after which half of it will decay to non-radioactive matter.
So after 8 days (one half life) it will be half as radioactive
after 16 days (2 half lives) it will be 1/4 as radioactive
after 24 days (3 half lives) it will be 1/8 as radioactive
...
after 64 days (8 half lives) it will be 1/128th or about 1% as radioactive as the first day.

So when they are talking about radioactive seawater at 3500 times the allowable limit (today March 29) then it will take 2 months before its at 35 times the legal limit. and another 40 days before it gets to be at the legal limit (which is probably 100 times normal)

Of course, the sea water will have been spreading out and diluting so it will decrease local radioactivity faster... but then the plant will keep leaking into the ocean unabated so the radioactivity may even go up.

Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 years so it will take a long tome to decay.

They also say its not harmful to sea life and humans...
But I think its not true. Like iodine falling on grass, cows munching on grass and concentrating it to milk and milk-borne iodine concentrating in the thyroid to give kids thyroid cancers, iodine in seawater likewise concentrates in seaweed, and then small fish eat seaweed, big fish eat small fish and humans eat big fish, again concentrating these products in human organs. Its a great chain of surprising events that defeats the apparent dilution by nature.

[sscherin]

How hard is it for a 50 cycle world to "borrow" power from a 60 cycle world?

It can be done by converting to DC and using a huge inverter to bring it back to AC at the desired frequency.. Its done on the Pacific DC intertie..
It's a 3,100MW DC lines from the north west to California..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie

The Celilo station the the Dalles converts ac to +500kv DC and -500kv dc at 3,100 amps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celilo_Converter_Station

On the cali end the Sylmar station converts the -/+ DC into AC synched to the cali grid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylmar_Converter_Station

[JimD]

Nuclear generators at 50 Hz turn at 1500 rpm. Nuclear generators at 60 Hz turn at 1800 rpm. The turbines have their frequency response tuned to this rpm. They cannot change without failing. A DC link would work but would take years to procure and install. There might be something you could do in months but not hours or days (like the motor generator set Loring described). Small nuclear plant generators are the equivalent of a half million hp motor. Average sized nuclear plants are over a million horsepower. Those are all made to order pieces.

TEPCO should have some radiation hardened robots to help with assessing condition late next week or early next. The orders are placed and the expediting of the parts is underway.

Another thing that is getting a lot of attention is a cover for the spent fuel pits. They lose a significant amount of water by evaporation. A cover would slow this. There are several ways to do it so the "best way" should be picked soon and covers in place in the next one to two weeks. That will reduce the amount of "fire truck" cooling for the spent fuel pits. Reducing evaporation will also reduce cooling (the latent heat of evaporation is significant and currently a major source of cooling) which has to be considered. A lot of the water the fire pumps send is just washing through radioactive debris and then seeping into the ground. Only a small part is making it to the spent fuel pits.

There is at least one design of an alternate cooling setup for the spent fuel pits under consideration. I uses "off the shelf" parts so it could be procured and installed quickly.

Removing residual heat is the top priority but everybody also knows that they have to stop the radioactivity leakages. That is a lower priority but is still high.

Developing a plan while you are also dealing with a crisis that demands things to be done NOW is far from an ideal situation. But it is the only option available to TEPCO.

The level of radioactivity that is set for limits in drinking water and the environment in general is set so that it can be at that level all the time and have a negligible impact on health. Elevating the level for a brief (hopefully) period of time does not significantly increase risk. That is why it is OK to get medical procedures, fly in airplanes, and work in granite office buildings. The leakages are quite undesirable and cannot continue long term without out at least a potential impact. But short term small elevations of exposure are fairly clearly not a health risk. The workers in the plant need to be careful. The general public is still OK. The workers being careful are a large part of the reason we do not have a good understanding of the material condition of the plants (in detail).

Jim

[Kristofor]

They also say its not harmful to sea life and humans...
But I think its not true. Like iodine falling on grass, cows munching on grass and concentrating it to milk and milk-borne iodine concentrating in the thyroid to give kids thyroid cancers, iodine in seawater likewise concentrates in seaweed, and then small fish eat seaweed, big fish eat small fish and humans eat big fish, again concentrating these products in human organs. Its a great chain of surprising events that defeats the apparent dilution by nature.

I agree in concept, but iodine in particular being such a short halflife helps tremendously as there isn't nearly the opportunity for concentration. You have to remember that it is still decaying at the same rate while in the seaweed, plankton, small fish, and large fish. So, once additional contamination is stopped a few months later you're back to a fraction of the allowed level in the surrounding environment and inany local plants/animals even.

The longer lived isotopes are a much bigger mid-long term concern IMO.