Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply • Hacker News Board

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#41

Post by gmac » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 10:20 AM UTC

nathanhammond wrote: post #32

One of the interesting things about disaster recovery planning for nuclear power plants is that you count on (X) number of things to go wrong and figure out how the plant recovers gracefully. In Japan they've effectively had three things go wrong: earthquake, tsunami, and general infrastructure damage. Most disaster scenarios only cover a single event and TEPCO has a lot to deal with. In a disaster scenario the first…

These "three things" boil down to one thing (the earthquake) and its foreseeable impacts. I certainly hope the disaster planners wouldn't see these things as independent failures (and assess probabilities accordingly), but that kind of hubristic "we can calculate the probabilities of all failure modes" thinking is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of nuclear.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#42

Post by masklinn » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 10:21 AM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #15

Like they wouldn't have boron near a nuclear reactor. I'm a PWR man myself, but I am 99% sure that GE BWR designs have a couple of big tanks of borated water specifically for a LOCA. I highly doubt they're having reactivity problems, it's probably just managing the decay heat, and now the radiation leaks, that's the problem. "Just" is a relative word, here, of course. Boiling water reactors are simpler, cheaper, but…

> Like they wouldn't have boron near a nuclear reactor.

They probably do, the question is whether they can carry it to the site faster than the US navy, and whether the boron tanks have not been compromised.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#43

Post by gimpf » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 11:05 AM UTC

nabilt wrote: post #33

However the events unfold I wonder if this will cause more nations to investigate other reactor technologies like Thorium. The abundance of Thorium and its inherent safety mechanisms (as a liquid at least) make the technology very exciting. Check out the Google Tech Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8

Hmm. Here in Central Europe this would probably read:

"However the events unfold we can rest reassured that scientists have to acknowledge that any use of nuclear technology for electrical power generation is inherently unsafe and therefore irresponsible."

And then we build a new coal power plant.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#44

Post by bilban » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 11:13 AM UTC

Not wanting to change the topic. But why on earth would you even consider nuclear power generation when you are in such a geologically unstable area? Sounds like idiocy to me. Fingers crossed here, could do without another man made disaster.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#45

Post by ugh » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 11:30 AM UTC

gimpf wrote: post #43

nabilt wrote: post #33

However the events unfold I wonder if this will cause more nations to investigate other reactor technologies like Thorium. The abundance of Thorium and its inherent safety mechanisms (as a liquid at least) make the technology very exciting. Check out the Google Tech Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8

Hmm. Here in Central Europe this would probably read: "However the events unfold we can rest reassured that scientists have to acknowledge that any use of nuclear technology for electrical power generation is inherently unsafe and therefore irresponsible." And then we build a new coal power plant.

Not even probably. In Germany, opposition parties already (and once again) demanded of the government to rethink their nuclear strategy. (No new nuclear power plants are built or planned in Germany but the coalition government recently extended the runtime of existing nuclear power plants.)

I'm a bit annoyed that the only two options in Germany seem to be to either shut all nuclear power plants down or to extend the runtime of the already existing and rather old nuclear power plants. It seems to me that it is possible to have safer nuclear power but no political party in Germany seems to be willing to even talk about that.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#46

Post by wisty » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 12:12 PM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #38

TomOfTTB wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right but I give him credit for drawing attention to a big issue that everyone else is ignoring which is Japan's diminished production capacity (rather than focusing on the doomsday meltdown scenarios most of the media are fixated on). Even if they return to service eventually there's going to be downtime. That's going to force Japan to use more fossil fuels which will drive up the price (even more). A…

Oil isn't used to make electricity. The major options are nat gas and coal. This disaster will likely drive DOWN oil prices since Japan will likely need less of it in the short term.

Small generators, like the kinds you use for emergency backup power, often run on oil.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#47

Post by nakkiel » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

lambda wrote: post #25

I don't know much about nuclear reactors. To my untrained ear, what Cringely says sounds fairly reasonable. But then, having read a bunch of articles of his linked in the past on computer hardware and software, which I do know something about, I find that what he writes usually falls into one of two categories: (1) stuff that's obvious to anyone who knows what they're talking about and are paying any attention at all…

Being anonymous just got sweeter.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#48

Post by neutronicus » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 1:14 PM UTC

patrickgzill wrote: post #35

neutronicus wrote: post #15

Like they wouldn't have boron near a nuclear reactor. I'm a PWR man myself, but I am 99% sure that GE BWR designs have a couple of big tanks of borated water specifically for a LOCA. I highly doubt they're having reactivity problems, it's probably just managing the decay heat, and now the radiation leaks, that's the problem. "Just" is a relative word, here, of course. Boiling water reactors are simpler, cheaper, but…

I thought the new designs were classified as ALWRs - advanced light water reactors (light water meaning they use regular water).

However they're "classified", some of them (ABWR, ESBWR) work by boiling water inside the core at atmospheric pressure and using the steam to turn a turbine, and some of them (AP1000, EPR) work by heating pressurized (borated) water inside the core, which then transfers heat to other (pure) water at a steam generator, which (pure) steam is then used to turn a turbine.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#49

Post by JoelUpchurch » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 1:28 PM UTC

I suspect the decision to use sea water to cool the reactor means that they have decided to write off the plant. It was 40 years old anyway and nearing the end of it's service life.

Re: Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply

#50

Post by JanezStupar » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 1:35 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #26

neutronicus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The batteries may also be someplace a workman really doesn't want to go.

I'm sure the Japanese have robots capable of it, they are the best in the world at that.

Well not any robot will do in high radiation environment, since radiation tends to fry their circuits...

They tried it in Chernobyl but it didn't really work, so they had to use humans to do it. Every soldier got to run in, move an item, run out and be dismissed from this nuclear cleanup duty, due to irradiation received in this one try.