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Cringley: Japan may have just permanently lost 20% of its electricity supply
- mahmud 16y agoI trust Japanese engineering more than Cringley predictions. Let's wait and see what the engineers do. BREAKING NEWS: Pressure successfully released from Fukushima No. 1 reactor: agency - Kyodo http://twitter.com/martyn_williams/statuses/46458943165317121 http://twitter.com/martyn_williams/statuses/4645894316531712... ----- Govt says radioactive measurements near plant roughly doubled, confirming release of gas. http://twitter.com/martyn_williams/statuses/46459695669583872 http://twitter.com/martyn_williams/statuses/4645969566958387...
- ugh 16y ago“I trust Japanese engineering more than Cringley predictions.” What does that even mean?
- Groxx 16y agoThat Cringely is less reliable than Japanese manufactured / designed goods.
- mahmud 16y agoHe says "That’s why the experts didn’t expect it because they are still thinking of how the plant can be saved, but it can’t be." I will accept that statement as true when it comes from a fact-finding mission by the Japanese nuclear authorities, not Cringely.
- ugh 16y agoI think experts refers to “experts” on CNN or Fox. Here is the relevant passage in the text I think this refers to: “‘Coolant?’ wondered aloud all the CNN and Fox News nuclear experts looking for a lede for their stories. ‘What is she talking about, coolant?’” And what’s wrong with speculation? Seemed reasonable enough to me.
- mahmud 16y agoSpeculation is fine, as long as you understand my suspicion of it. Cringely says Japan lost 20% of its electricity supply. I say I wont believe that figure until I hear it from the Japanese nuclear authorities themselves.
- pnathan 16y agoNuclear power is about 35-40% of Japan's grid, according to the what appears to be a site operated by Japanese authorities. "At present, there are 52 commercial nuclear reactors in operation in Japan with a total generating capacity of 45,742 megawatts. Nuclear power supplies about 35% of Japan’s total electricity demand. It is expected that nuclear energy’s share in electricity generation will increase to more than 40% by around 2010."[1] [1] http://www.japannuclear.com/files/Japan%20Nuclear%20Fuel%20Cycle%20Program%20(February%202003).pdf http://www.japannuclear.com/files/Japan%20Nuclear%20Fuel%20C...
- robryan 16y agoRight or wrong it did a better job of explaining how coolant works in nuclear reactors and how they would usually shut down than anything I have seen on the news.
- mahmud 16y agoHe shows technical understanding of the issue, but the alarmist tone of the article places it in the "pessimistic, under-informed opinion about the impact of a natural disaster" category. Nevertheless, I'm waiting for the official verdict.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- light3 16y agoI guess the obvious question is whether 80% of electricity supply meets demand, probably not, how can Japan generate the additional 20% in a hurry?
- Lost_BiomedE 16y agoDemand may be lower for quite a while, due to the same events that caused disruption.
- pedrocr 16y agoLosing a plant means you lose a percentage of your peak capacity but not necessarily that you won't be able to provide the total amount of energy demanded by the economy. You could potentially move a portion of the usage to off-peak hours, starting with some industrial loads for example, moving a few factory shifts to the night.
- sliverstorm 16y agoCan they not simply ship in extra batteries, or are they batteries too large to be moved?
- cheald 16y ago(insert bad joke about non-user-replacable iNuke battery here) I rather suspect the batteries are not easily replaced - they're a tertiary system, designed to be a short-term stopgap to get your primary and secondary systems back online. I'm sure that if just cycling batteries was an option, and the battery systems are operational, they'd do that - it's a heck of a lot cheaper than pulling the killswitch on the whole plant.
- neutronicus 16y agoThe batteries may also be someplace a workman really doesn't want to go.
- gaius 16y agoI'm sure the Japanese have robots capable of it, they are the best in the world at that.
- JanezStupar 16y agoWell 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.
- jarek 16y agoI would expect robots in Japan in 2011 to be able to withstand a bit more than robots in the USSR in 1986.
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- foobarbazetc 16y agoHere's what you need to read instead of Cringley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_Water_Reactor_Safety_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_Water_Reactor_Safety_Sy... Combine that with these: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031219-e.html http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031219-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031220-e.html http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031220-e.... And you can see what's going on. Ignore everything else.
- neutronicus 16y agoLike 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 generally aren’t made anymore because they are perceived as being less safe. That’s because the exotic coolant in the pressurized water reactor can contain boric acid which absorbs neutrons and can help (or totally) control the nuclear reaction. You can’t use boric acid or any other soluble boron-laced neutron absorbers in a boiling water reactor because doing so would contaminate both the cooling system and the environment. He's completely wrong about industry adoption of BWRs. There are two BWR's planned to be built in the US (along with 3 or 4 PWRs), and I believe that China has contracted with GE for a few as well (along with 4 Westinghouse PWRs and maybe a few Areva ones too). PWRs are preferred largely because of their higher power densities (a BWR core that produces the same power must be larger) and simpler nuclear calculations and control strategies (two-phase flow makes calculations much more difficult, and it's harder to calculate correct positions for control blades (whose effects are highly localized) than it is to calculate the correct boron concentration (whose effects are smeared over the whole core)). However, now that computers are faster and us nuclear engineers no longer have the excuse of slow computers to hide behind, PWRs are looking to move away from relying on Boron concentration as the main form of control (the Westinghouse AP1000, specifically, relies much more on rod movement than the AP600), because of the cost of performing regular boron dilutions. He's right that BWRs are simpler and cheaper - about half the moving parts.
- rdl 16y agoIs one of the advantages of the BWR that you don't need a large pressure vessel? I remember news articles about JSW in Osaka being the only source for the huge forgings required for PWR pressure vessels, and only having the capacity for ~4 reactors per year.
- neutronicus 16y agoNot really. BWRs need larger pressure vessels, PWRs need thicker ones. I believe that JSW is the only place (also I think there's one in Germany, too) where you can forge a reactor pressure vessel in one piece, but that if you're willing to bolt two pieces together there are a few more options. It may be that this is more feasible for a BWR than a PWR, but I actually think that BWR pressure vessels are usually more expensive. Where BWRs really save all the money is that you don't need to buy, maintain and replace pressurizers, steam generators, and a ton of piping and pumps that need to be rated for 2500 PSI, as well as a whole bunch of instrumentation for measuring and controlling boron dilution levels. You'll be paying more for engineering services, since all the calculations will take longer, but I can only imagine it's worth it, since, high-margin as engineering services are, they're chump change compared to how much the reactor costs.
- stewbrew 16y agolet's just hope a loss of power supply is everything they have to worry about. it seems some caesium already got out.
- lambda 16y agoI 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, and (2) crack-pot half-baked ideas that are laughable and completely wrong. He's also lied about having a PhD. I wouldn't consider him a very trustworthy source. If he's saying something reasonable, someone else more credible has probably already said it.
- nakkiel 16y agoBeing anonymous just got sweeter.
- gonzo 16y agohe lied a number of years ago about what he'd supposedly done with wifi, a couple high-gain antennas and a corner reflector.
- jordanb 16y agoHe has an article in which he gives an explanation of what happened at TMI in his own words. Being a nerd for this stuff and having read the report of the president's commission (which he claims to have been on) I was... shocked to say the least. Its hard to imagine he was actually on the same committee as the people who wrote the report. His explanation had elements that mirrored the report. For instance, there was a particular warning light discussed in both. But what function the light served in the plant, its behavior during the crisis, the operators' response to it, or its overall role in the incident, on these Crigley was dead wrong. I suspect he got assigned to the president's commission for political reasons, or because he was a 'public media personality,' but that he actually contributed nothing. He remembers an indicator light because he sat there dumbfounded in the meeting where the smart people on the committee discussed it. He then incorporated that into his incredibly child-like and incorrect mental model of what happened. Suffice to say, regardless of his experience on the TMI president's commission, his understanding of nuclear power is even more comically incorrect than his understanding of computers.
- djcapelis 16y agoUhm... the other units at Chernobyl re-entered service for a solid decade after that incident. (Only one of them lasted a decade. Unit 2 caught on fire in '91. Unit 1 was shut down in '96 and Unit 3 lasted until Dec '99.) Cringley's prediction will be wrong. There are a lot of units at that station, two of which are ABWR cores. I would speculate that the majority of these units will return to service.
- TomOfTTB 16y agoI 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). Add a spike in oil costs to the loss of japanese economic output and I think our modest economic recovery just hit a big snag.
- djcapelis 16y agoThis is absolutely true. It will take time to online the other units at the other plants that automatically shut down too. These things don't come up and down on a whim.
- MichaelApproved 16y agoOil 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.
- stevefarnworth 16y agoI'm sorry? Oil isn't used to make electricity Oil is used in some types of power station, and the markets are already reacting to not only the increased demand, but due to the infrastructure damage in the north of the country, the fact it'll be harder than ever to get it delivered. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110312-700945.html http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110312-700945.html
- nathanhammond 16y agoOne 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 reactions are generally passive (dropping of control rods, changing where water flows) and then "all" that remains is to cool the decay heat. Aye, here's the rub: the cooling system is not a passive system. It requires power to drive the water pumps for the cooling system that siphons the heat away from the reactor vessel. After initiating reactor shutdown the most critical time period is the first little while as that is when there is the most heat. Too much heat and it'll damage the fuel, vessel, and/or the cooling system and can effectively damage the reactor enough so to prevent it from ever recovering (thus, meltdown). The questions left to ask are to what degree the cooling systems (primary and backup) are working, and whether they've been powered consistently. With that bit of information alone we'd be able to make a pretty accurate estimate as to the state of the reactors in question. What is scary is that it would be really simple to say that all of those systems are working as expected and that there is nothing to worry about. Since that hasn't been said I'm of the opinion that there is definitely something to worry about.
- gmac 16y agoThese "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.
- abeld 16y agobut 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. Would you be more comfortable with "we can't estimate the probabilities of all failure modes"? I am sure that all engineers involved in planning the failure-handling systems know that those "calculations of probabilities" are only estimates based on some assumptions. I think nuclear often gets bad press because you can measure and calculate a lot of risks to a much higher precision than in other industries. Like "x amount of radiation released" where x is actually a very small number but the fact that you can measure it and make an estimate as to how many cancer cases will be caused by it makes it scary, while people don't care much about the risks of, say, coal-mining because thats harder to measure/estimate.
- nabilt 16y agoHowever 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8
- gimpf 16y agoHmm. 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.
- ugh 16y agoNot 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.
- VMG 16y agoIt is worth mentioning that France is still big on nuclear and we will likely be buying French power from nuclear plants.
- tectonic 16y agoCNN reports explosion at one of the plants. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/
- MichaelApproved 16y agoJapan probably won't need that 20% for a while. Their demand just dropped significantly.
- bilban 16y agoNot 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.
- 5l 16y agoWhy is this getting downvoted? It was the first thing that came to my mind too. Not only is the country prone to earthquakes, but as I understand, several of their power stations are built right on the east coast. It's possible to make a building like a skyscraper fairly earthquake proof, but is it really possible to make things like nuclear power stations earthquake proof? Assuming the building is made to 'wobble', wouldn't that wreak havoc on the cooling systems and other gear inside?
- Bud 16y agoYes. It is possible: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf18.html http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf18.html It's not like they don't think of this stuff ahead of time. This was planned for.
- Bud 16y agoBecause you need power and nuclear is the best way? Consider the facts: 1. The reactors in question here are now two technological generations old; they are old, fragile designs compared to more modern designs. 2. Japan just experienced one of the biggest earthquakes in world history, followed by a tsunami of a scope that makes Kurosawa's war scenes look like moving Legos around. 3. Despite this, there have been no catastrophic reactor failures. Zero. We're not out of the woods yet, but the smart money is on there being a couple minor incidents and no major incidents as a result of all this. I'd say the decision to build nuclear plants instead of, say, dozens and dozens of coal plants (which would have killed a lot of people by now with their pollution) is looking pretty smart.
- dedward 16y agoProbably won't have one -it's dangerous territory, but they are managing it. The Japanese are good at managing things, right? (right?) They have a mix of nuclear, hydro, and other power generating systems to meet their energy needs. Nuclear is one of the cleanest and least disruptive to the environment.
- JoelUpchurch 16y agoI 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.
- gonzo 16y agothe end of its service life was this month! http://www.icjt.org/plants/uni/a/uni194a.html http://www.icjt.org/plants/uni/a/uni194a.html
- Ratfish 16y agoWondered when someone would mention that. Had seen the link to it in the comments on the Cringely article, posted by a Cringely sceptic. Weird coincidence that it happen the month it was due to be decommissioned.
- gonzo 16y agoFUKUSHIMA DAIICHI-1 was already scheduled to be shutdown this month. http://www.icjt.org/plants/uni/a/uni194a.html http://www.icjt.org/plants/uni/a/uni194a.html neutronicus has even more reasons why what Bob says is very likely wrong.
- rospaya 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.
- rbanffy 16y agoI think that, currently, Cringely is just Stephens.
- rbanffy 16y agoI find it notable that you have mounting pressure that could risk the integrity of the pressure vessel, yet can't turn a turbine connected to a pump to drive cool water through heat exchangers... If a reactor self-destructs unless you can cool it down actively after an emergency shutdown, there must be some serious design issues there. After you completely kill the fission, you still have some heat being generated from the decay of fission byproducts doesn't sound weird that the device has enough power to self destruct but not enough to cool itself down?
- erikstarck 16y agoThe Fukushima plant produces 4.7GW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant The total nuclear production of energy in Japan is 47GW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country Nuclear is 28.9% of Japan's energy source (same Wikipedia-article as above). It doesn't add up. Where does the number 20% come from? 2% is closer to the truth.
- davidhollander 16y ago>Hillary isn’t the kind of person to choose the wrong words How has no one pointed out there was never any coolant delivered and Hilary Clinton did in fact misspeak? It renders this article a bit moot. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/japan-quake-nuclear-coolant-idUSN1125270120110311 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/japan-quake-nuclea... "US did NOT deliver coolant to Japan nuclear reactor" "Ultimately, however, Japan did not need assistance from the United States but Clinton did not appear to have been updated before she made her public remarks."
- fraserharris 16y ago...or the Japanese sourced the coolant themselves (which appears to be the case) and the article is correct.