How would you fix Fukushima? 4

[Windward]

I would start by locking up the TEPCO officials who have been in charge of the response to this monumental disaster. They have been lying and procrastinating and refusing to recognize the danger from the start.

It will take trillions of dollars to stop this thing from getting worse, possibly terminal for life as we know it. How would you do it?

 

[cloa]

I proposed that they use cranes to put the fuel rods straight into casks with observers in helicopters or airships. Radiation is much safer at a distance. Nuclear engineers couldn't find anything wrong with my plan. It would be slow tiring work but safe and would provide a permanent solution- no more radioactive cooling water.

http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=1529

Use translation assistance for Engineers forum

Note the rules include No Student posting

 

[Windward]

The radioactive water is from the melted fuel down below, which they can't get at. The latest plan is to freeze the ground below the reactor buildings to keep the radioactive water from leaking into the sea.

Latest report is that the ground below the reactors is sinking is some places, not others. This is throwing the structure that holds the spent fuel rods 100 feet above the ground into an ever-increasing list. If it goes far enough, won't need those cranes.

 

[cloa]

They can get the melted fuel from the top- the whole contained vessel is punctured. They can't reach it from ground level- electronic robots are unreliable and too radioactive for people. Pure mechanical devices are far more reliable. The water is constantly being produced by continuous cooling.

http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=1529

Use translation assistance for Engineers forum

Note the rules include No Student posting

 

[Windward]

Just how TEPCO or other authorities will be able to deal with this "radioactivity that’s essentially forever" is uncertain, he continued.

"It’s very, very unclear to me how they are going to be able to get at this molten fuel, extract it from the bottoms of these highly damaged buildings and package it for safer or less dangerous storage or disposal.

"This is an accident that’s shockingly not stopping," he warned. [Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER)]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/10-0

 

[davefitz]

The UN or a consortium of US/russia/china should be empowered to assist the cleanup.

There should be complete transparency on the current state of the damage so that the importance of avoiding another such event would be burned into the minds of the public .Perhaps an effort to reveal the deceptions that have been used to bring us to this point might ensue.

There should be sufficient technical capabilities to address the short term leakage issues if the problem is accepted as a global problem. Monitoring using overhead drone helicopters is a simple choice. Use of an oil-barge sized tanker to collect the waste water ,and filtering this water to allow its continued recycled use for the cooling of pit seems to be another simple choice not yet pursued. Side bore drilling under the melt zone and injection of geopolymer concrete may slow the spreading rate of teh contamination.

If significant resources were to be deployed, then one should be able to trace this effort by seeing want-ads for the appropriate technical skills, yet these indications of a strong effort are hard to find, suggesting there is no real effort to solve this issue. The ostrich mentality is alive and well.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! "

 

[Windward]

I agree, davefitz. So does a worker at the plant, who said in a recent interview:

"The government allocates funds to TEPCO for the management of the nuclear power plant accident, but the money is not a grant. It is a debt and must be refunded in the future. Since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is not expected to generate profit in the future, it is normal that TEPCO seek to reduce its debt as much as possible...That is the reason why 'cutting the budget, reducing the cost, and using lower price materials' for constructions and facilities in the management of the nuclear power plant accident is the order of the day...On the ground, there are no such attempts as to gather the brains of the World in order to effectively deal with the nuclear accident.

– That is quite far from gathering the brains of the World. It’s just a get-together of stingy people, right?

"Is it alright to entrust the management of a nuclear power plant accident to just one business entity such as TEPCO? As long as TEPCO is a business entity, it is in pursuit of profit and book closing at the year-end is part of that. So, I think that things won’t work if the management of the accident and the decommissioning project of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are not separated from TEPCO and entrusted to an ad hoc specialized team."

http://no-border.asia/archives/9257

 

[MikeHalloran]

It appears that TEPCO is managing the cleanup exactly as it managed the construction and operation of Fukushima before the typhoon.

... badly, from a global/health perspective.

... perfectly, from a corporate perspective.

Exemplary behaviors include protecting the corporation as if it were an emperor, suppressing or concealing any bad news that might affect the stock value, minimizing expenditures that do not produce immediate returns, sloughing off duties/tasks/expenditures/costs on any available target, ignoring any concept of social duty/fair play/global citizenship, stuff like that.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Windward]

The New York Times published a good article today on the incompetence of Tepco and other matters at Fukushima. The comments are also good:

“Japan is clearly living in denial,” said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor who led Parliament’s independent investigation last year into the causes of the nuclear accident. “Water keeps building up inside the plant, and debris keeps piling up outside of it. This is all just one big shell game aimed at pushing off the problems until the future.”

"The cleanup efforts to date, critics said, were grandiose but ultimately ill-conceived public works projects begun as a knee-jerk reaction by the government’s powerful central ministries to deflect public criticism and to protect the clubby and insular nuclear power industry from oversight by outsiders."

"Critics complain that the government-run committee that has overseen Tepco’s cleanup is loaded with nuclear industry insiders and overseen by the trade minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, whose ministry is in charge of promoting nuclear power. They say Japan may be able to come up with better, more sustainable plans if it opens the process to outsiders like Japanese nonnuclear companies and foreigners."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/w...?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130904&_r=0

 

[davefitz]

windward,

It is almost funny; is there any reason to assume that the criticisms aimed at Japan's ministry should not be equally applied to the nuclear commissions or ministries at other democratic governments? Most "regulators" become "owned" by the very industries they were supposed to regulate.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! "

 

[Windward]

davefitz, "People are the same all over." I am old enough to have seen the original broadcast of that Twilight Zone episode.

In the US, Gregory Jaczko was fired from the NRC mainly because he took nuclear power safety too seriously for the industry:

"He sought to address some longstanding safety problems at the 104 nuclear power reactors in the United States, but with a background in nuclear physics and nuclear policy and not in the nuclear industry, Dr. Jaczko was viewed with skepticism and mistrust by some industry insiders."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/u...sign-as-nrc-chairman-after-stormy-tenure.html

I don't believe he took it seriously enough for the rest of us.

 

[cloa]

As though the NRC operates on the basis of actual safety assessment. Reams and reams of paper are about making it actually safer or just feathering the administration system bed.

http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=1529

Use translation assistance for Engineers forum

Note the rules include No Student posting

 

[TGS4]

I'm gonna admit to a little lack of knowledge here. With all of this talk about fixing Fukushima Dai'ichi, I thought that it would be good to fully understand the problem. You know - the way that engineers always solve a problem, by first describing what the problem is. So, what exactly is the "problem statement" here?

And answers such as "radioactive water is leaking into the Pacific" is pretty much useless. I mean, we should have numbers, with units. And units that are relevant - I've seen in the media talk about the number of tons (or tonnes) of water leaking. Useless unit - water is a liquid and its quantity should be measured in volume units - either litres or m^3. And when talking about radiation, we should first clarify whether it is beta, alpha, of gamma; and then talk about the dose or the dose rate.

Also, does anyone actually know the status of the core? What is its temperature? What is its current cooling rate (again, heat transfer-useful units are needed)?

You can't solve a problem without first knowing what the problem is.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Since the site is not generating or somehow actually consuming water, a reasonable first assumption might be that the amount of water leaking into the sea is probably pretty close to the amount of water that TEPCO is pumping into whatever is left of the core(s).

... which they are doing to prevent accidental criticality.
... the likelihood of which is difficult to quantify because all the useful sensors appear to have melted.

How's that for a (very partial) problem statement?



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[TGS4]

Not even close. I (almost) thought that I detected a number and unit there, but it turned out to be a smudge on my phone screen.

 

[Windward]

TGS4, if you want data, search for it. Why do you expect it to be handed to you? For instance:

"One of the readings reached 1,800 millisieverts per hour, which is considered enough to kill an exposed person in four hours, the company said."

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...hal-levels-at-japans-fukushima-nuclear-plant?

lite

Today it is reported that that level has reached 2200 millisieverts.

There is enough technical information about the accident to show that it is a deadly threat to life on the planet. What we need is a practical way to deal with it. Mike Halloran has described the problem to you as well as anyone could in that many words. You want a textbook on the problem before you act? Why don't you write one?

 

[TGS4]

Windward - you come onto this forum proclaiming to have answers to "fix Fukishima". I want to know what problem is being solved.

How about you take a read through:

http://theenergycollective.com/rodadams/265286/fear-mongering-over-water-leaks-fukushima-dai-ichi.

Is this article right on the money is missing some serious detail that I don't know about?

Your NBC news report is woefully lacking in details. Is the radiation alpha, beta, of gamma? That kinda makes a big difference. What radioactive isotope is responsible for it? What is that isotope's half-life?

I have searched and searched and I cannot find any of this necessary information. You, apparently, have all of the answers to the problem - so I was thinking that perhaps you could define the problem. MikeHalloran's problem statement was "water being pumped into core, water leaking into ocean". Windward's response was "There is enough technical information about the accident to show that it is a deadly threat to life on the planet". Really?? Please quantify before I call BS.

You want a textbook on the problem before you act? Why don't you write one?

Wow - what a serious cop-out. First, I am not "act"ing in any capacity, and for that matter, neither are you. Second, ya - I think that an engineering approach to solving a problem just happens to involve understand and quantifying the problem. I'm not even looking for minutia of details, just a quantifiable big picture. Acting without knowing the problem is the best way to really royally screw things up - ever heard of Murphy?

 

[Windward]

TGS4, you could start your own forum if you don't like it here. I wish you would, since you are completely oblivious to the point and the facts of this one.

 

[TGS4]

And the point and facts of that would be??? I can't even get you to enunciate them?

Don't get me wrong - if there is a problem, I certainly would like to see a fix. I just don't see anyone with actual experience and expertise in the Nuclear field providing any of that in this thread. Without the input of the seasoned veterans from this forum (Nuclear Engineering), this particular thread is heading into "Conspiracy Theory" territory without some actual hard facts and data.

 

[davefitz]

The contrary posts above are a microcosm of the political problems the authorities are trying to avoid , mainly by the means of non-disclosure of the known facts. The immediate shutdown of the radiation moitoring posts is one example. One would like to believe that in the background the appropriate agencies are "on top of it", but one never can be sure. The agenda of the "authorities" likely involves other investments beyond Fukishima and beyond commericial reactors.The logic probably goes " we got past the contamination from the pacific and atmospheric testing of the 1950's, so we will use the same methods to get past this".

It would seem the main theat to society in the short term is the rate at which the nucleides are migrating into the food chain. That could likely be quantified by routine sampling of the invertibrates and algea local to Fukishima, and other life forms which are general stationary ( ie not able to migrate more than 50 mile per annum) . From this data could be extapolated the rate at which the nucleides are being brought into the higher levels of food chain.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! "