The Nuclear Power Thread

wimms

Telecoms network is not comparison at all. It doesn't fail when there is lack of capacity, it just slows down. With overload, it just drops some of calls. With energy this doesn't work, some things just physically blow up if overloaded, and no way to selectively drop few electrons, if it goes, so goes whole branch.

And, telecoms solved their quality issues very straightforward - they design in at least 2 times overcapacity.

Actually, being somewhat from telecom industry (networking) and having seen issues that grids have to face, i can say that telecoms networks are completely piece of cake compared to issues grids have to face. It is SO much easier to deal with issues in telecom.

Nereid

Just an example: what use of AI/neural networks is there in the fault/performance/assignment/configuration components of the grid companies' network management systems? AFAIK, that in IP network systems (e.g. from Cisco) is trivial compared with what's in a modern system from Lucent, MetaSolv, Telcordia ... even TTI, which were developed in an era of scarce resourses and much higher cost of failure than today's IP-based data networks.

You're right, the answer to unpredictable resource demand in IP networks is massive over-provisioning (how else could it be done, given the wildly unpredictable nature of the traffic?), and graceful degredation, with some serious work going into SLAs and contracts.

What, essentially, are the key differences between a telecoms network and an electricity grid, in terms of OOM greater difficulty re fault management?

russ_watters

I had a conversation with my dad about this last weekend and I wasn't quite right on this. He's a utility cost consultant and just so happened to take a tour of the facility I was talking about. He said it was pretty cool - reminded him of what NORAD is supposed to look like: high security, underground, and set up like a war room with big displays in the front of a theater shaped control room.

The name escapes me right now and I can't find it on Google, but its not just PECO - its a joint effort of a number of power companies in PA - the PA power cooperative or something like that. Basically, it monitors a portion of the grid and allows the companies to transfer energy between them. Supposedly people from other countries (and the DOE) are studying it as a model for how to control a power grid.

In any case, yes, other people could have done the same thing as this control center did and pulled the plug on their sections of the grid. No one wants to do that though - if you're First Energy (the company that started the cascade) and you have a choice between blacking out your part of the grid and trying to get it from the adjacent parts, what are you going to do? It was too late for them either way, but in a failed effort to help themselves (and by others trying to help them), they let the failure spread. So maybe its just a matter of upgrading the decision making process (the people) to deal with that type of situation. Doubt it. Certainly the government is looking at the issue, but we all know how effective they are. The thing in PA exists for economic reasons - it makes it easier for the companies to swap power. Its only a biproduct of that that it is such a good grid control station.

For that phone analogy, its the same and its not. For one thing, the phone system runs at a fraction of its capacity. And when it does get filled, they have the same sort of problems as the power grid has - calls don't go through, systems crash, etc. Usually though, its like wimms said - you just drop a few calls. And think about your cell phone: what kind of absolute reliability do you have, ie how often do you get a dropped call or call that doesn't go through. Imagine if the power grid had the same (lack of) reliability. It would be crippling. Despite things like the NY blackout, the reliability of power grids in the western world is absolutely extrordinary.

wimms

Trivial isn't necessarily bad/undeveloped. Its a sign that issues to be dealt with are much simpler.

Actually this isn't necessary answer. IP traffic can be very well oversubscribed and priotisation of traffic type is easy. Thus in case of network degradation, first to suffer would be least important traffic. Telecoms overprovision just to avoid the hassle, it makes life so much easier. Often, they are forced to due to completely unrelated issues, for eg. you can buy equipment and lines in specific bunches, and you need to make investments so that they can cope with growing traffic in few years aswell. 2 times overcapacity because they plan for loosing half of their capacity in case of major cable failure.

There is one essential key difference thats behind all others. When you switch on consumer device, power starts to flow, and grid has no control over it other than cutting off completely. In telecom, every single node can control exactly how much traffic, what traffic and when does it flow. It throttles back traffic. Thats the main reason why overloads are "soft" in telecom. Nothing really bad happens with overload. With power, every single overload is critical event, because you can't really limit power consumption, you can either attach another power source or shut down the branch (or face physical destruction). One can lead to cascade of overloads as Russ explained, another is basically blackout of area.

So, the only way to deal with overloads in grid is to AVOID the overload. That needs ideally complete knowledge of all main lines and their load, and is quite computationally intensive to make right decisions, that in addition has to be made damn fast. In IP networks, each node is independant and quite safe, capacity steering is merely a quality issue of monthly capacity planning, not critical survival issue.
In IP, you have huge network and rough estimates of capacity planning. In grid, you have even larger network, and requirement for instant and precise decisions.

I'm not sure, but isn't grid actually implemented after successful example of telecom networks?

russ_watters

Well, either that or what I said before: have enough excess capacity that you don't have to make those decisions and can handle a little hickup without taking any action. The drop in excess capacity is the key difference between the way the grid handles fluctuations today and the way it did 10 years ago. And the solution as I said before is obvious....

.....get back to nuclear power!!

Nereid

Russ, wimms,

Many thanks for your replies to my ignorant posts. I see now that introducing telecoms was, on balance, more of a distraction than a benefit.

Back to my original comment ("A good infrastructure should be able to isolate local failures, irrespective of how heavily loaded it is; it's surely not a very challenging technical problem."), and a (hopefully!) wiser re-casting of it.

this is a 0-th order take; many devils - a.k.a. details - are licking their lips in anticipation of ambushes on the road ahead

Demand varies seasonally (~100 days characteristic time), weekly (~10 days), daily, and hourly. A significant part of this demand is predictable; much detailed historical data is available to characterise variance about (modelled) means within all periods.

Broadly speaking, supply is available to meet all but peak hourly demand. However, there are unplanned supply failures, and the characteristic time for indications of incipient failure ranges from days ("that unit sure has been acting strange!") to milliseconds (or less). Further, a great deal of historical data is available to characterise the root causes, frequency, and 'phenomenology' of all failure modes.

Technology to detect, analyse, and transmit useful information about demand, supply, and failure already exists. As long as the response times are greater than 1 second, 'pre-canned' or algorithmically-based automatic response decisions can be implemented. These automatic decisions can, in principle, be optimised according to a wide range of equipment, supply, demand, down-stream impact, ... conditions. These optimisations can be performed both 'off-line' (independent of the particulars of the event) or 'on-line'.

... and that's as far as technology could take us, in a reactive sense.

Proactively, we could fairly accurately characterise future demand, supply, and improvements in failure detection and remediation capabilities. Through risk analyses (crudely, prioritisation by the 'impact' metric - probability of event x cost of event), main areas to be addressed can be confidently identified (and research investment targeted to improving the probability and cost estimates of the top 3 risks, say). Installing, testing, and refining equipment, maintenance schedules, operations proceedures, etc then follows, using standard QA methodologies.

Finally, the key dimension, economics. Crudely, economics is all about how to better match supply and demand, though price. In the case of grid-supplied electricity, IMHO, there is enormous opportunity for basic economic principles to be better applied. For example, as wimms said "When you switch on consumer device, power starts to flow, and grid has no control over it other than cutting off completely". Yet no (residential) consumer has ever been asked what price they would be prepared to pay for 99% (or four/five/six/seven 9s) availability. With today's technology, I would guess, a multi-tiered set of service contracts could be easily implemented - from 'el-cheapo' electricity (but can have supply cut for up to 10 hours with no notice), to guarranteed 99.9999% availability and 10 seconds restoration in the event of failure (for a VERY large fee).

This is the kind of thing I was referring to when I said "the root cause is bad regulation and wilful ignorance of economics. Behind that there is, without a doubt, the hand of Big Oil [...]
A competitive market should be able to meet demand, unless the regulatory barriers are inefficient."

xeguy

Interesting thread. I think the Germans are shooting themselves in the foot if they continue with this policy. The nuclear bogeyman looms large over everything thanks to the scaremongers. There's a reason why they dropped the "nuclear" from MRI!

Nuclear power = good. Let it power our space probes and homes.

Fusion will be here...eventually...

It's only a few years overdue. ;-)

wimms

Nereid,

what you described, looks good on paper, with 15 minutes of thought put into it. After you put about 1000 hours of thought into it, it would look like total nightmare to you. I don't think we can come up with something top people of energetics haven't thought of. Lets mean no disrespect to them. There are soo many things we can't even imagine _needs_ to be thought about.

Reality checks. Technology exists, on paper, but it doesn't think. People do. To program all that people can costs more than its worth. To install all the needed technology is too expensive, and consumer isn't willing to pay for it. Rare epic blackouts cost less. Economics? Case closed.

As to historical data, yeah, there is plenty of it. So plenty, that no blody mortal can make any sense of it anymore. For statistical analysis it isn't precise, structured nor standardised enough. Its best output is a "gut feeling" of experienced dudes.

No residental customer is ever asked because residental customer exists only because of regulation. As always, its business where money is, and it needs all the nines. To install residential cut-off switches is insane, and only adds to costs, because individual households matter nothing in any of the events, and ability to switch off zillions of homes as per individual sla isn't easy nor cheap. The "el-cheapo" electricity would cost more to electric companies than "el-normo" one. Guess why they aren't eager to offer choice?

For a VERY large fee, electricity providers are not needed. There are factories that build their own nuclear plants nearby and sell excess energy to the grid, and use grid as a backup. no ****. They have all the nines, and even get PAYED for it.

Well, yeah, looks like I'm arguing. Infact, basic idea is that the whole thing is too damn complex, that its cheaper to live with it than to fix it. And the cheapest way to fix it is to "take the larger hammer".

Nereid

Thanks wimms, these kinds of reality checks are very welcome! The sooner we get the regulations changed the better! Let's start charging 'residential' customers a fee that's closer to the marginal cost of producing the electricity they consume, and offer them choices. With the cost of technology decline (courtesy of Moore's law and globalisation), how long before it becomes cost effective? With entrepreneurial suppliers - perhaps 'virtual' - when will biz cases that offer differentiated residential services begin to make sense? With the extraordinary inefficiencies in the industry, re-regulation (soundely based in economics) would surely open a number of juicy niches to creative capitalists? Hmm, perhaps they need all the nines because they've never had any real choices? If there were a competitive supply market, with a rich range of nines/time-of-day/etc choices, how many CFOs would start suggesting to their CEOs that they seriously consider re-engineering their processes to take advantage of the cost-saving opportunities that have just opened up? Bet we'll never find out until the possibility becomes real enough [;)] Well, it has happened in airline reservations (when's the last time you spoke with a profitable travel agent?), banking, telecoms ([6)] ), quite a lot of B2B commerce, [8)] ... what is unique about the energy sector? So let's you and I hire them as our technical advisors, once we have the VC funding to start VirtuEnergy [t)]

russ_watters

Maybe I'm missing the context here, but in most states now there IS a competitive supply market as a result of "deregulation." I put "deregulation" in quotes because it requires new regulations of course. If done well (Pennsylvania), it leads to a small reduction in energy costs for customers. If done poorly (California) it leads to Enron, doubling of energy prices, and region-wide blackouts. Either way it makes electric power supply a pretty complicated issue for consumers - and thats a pretty lucrative thing for my dad...

wimms

No problemo. They can offer you electricity closer to the marginal cost of producing it .. AT their plant. You are free to take it somehow and deliver it where you want, the way you want, at costs you want. If it hadn't occured to you yet, then crucial function of regulation is to force development and maintenance of distribution network, that means wires to your home, your town, your area, country, and protecting you from paying insane money to get your electricity to your home.

When costs begin to relate to differentiated pricing. Already the case. To get the nines, you pay extra. What you have by default, is a free lunch, payed for by someone who needs the nines. No room for whining, be it down for a week if they like. Epic blackouts impact whole economy, thats why they get the front page.

Have you ever owned UPS? They need all the nines because downtime costs them money, much more than all the nines they pay for. Please name one crucial business that can run without energy in todays world.

How many CFOs today seriously consider building nuclear plant to SELL electricity instead of buying it? Who cares what it costs if its compensated? The only "CFOs" who will seriously consider re-engineering their processes are residential losers who will take advantage of the cost-saving choices to find more opportunities in whining about the choices. Perhaps also that it has damn rare major blackouts.

And, seems its not obvious to you that "nines" are not function of production of energy, but of reliable distribution of it. By competitive supply market, you are implying alternate distribution network, grid. You are welcome to build your own nationwide grid thats better, cheaper, more flexible. There are thousands of energy suppliers waiting for you.

Nothing has happened there. Planes are crashing, banks are robbed, telecoms have outages. Unique to energy sector is that every damn business stops without energy.

russ_watters

Nines?

wimms

99.9999% uptime guarantee - 6 nines

Nereid

Reading the lead News Scan article in the November 2003 Scientific American, I learned that:

-> a significant contributory factor in the August 14 blackout is likely to be the fact that degulation of the industry left transmission "lagg[ing] behind [generation systems] because of the patchwork of interstate regulations and jurisdictions. Many policy and grid experts say that in the short term, the [FEMC] should enact nationwide policies covering transmission systems operation, capacity and investment."

-> "Once the government decides how the grid should operate, 'we have the technology to implement it almost on the shelf or coming down the pipe,' says Paul Grant, science fellow at [EPRI] ..."

-> technologies mentioned include installation of more heat-resistant lines; better communication systems among power stations (e.g. dedicated fibre optics, and GPS-based time-stamps); faster, smarter switches; a master transmission control computer; and automatic, adaptive 'islanding'.

-> on the über-computer, the article notes "[p]ostmortem studies by the industry suggest that such a global view would have prevented about 95 percent of customers losing power during the 1996 blackouts in the western U.S." The SciAm article did not mention a need to increase generating capacity.

russ_watters

I guess the implicaton there is that regardless of the actual generation capacity, the transmission capacity isn't where it needs to be. So even IF there is enough generation capacity, the lack of adequate transmission capacity will prevent the power from getting where it needs to go.

Sounds like an interesting article - maybe they have it up on their website...

When I was discussing that command center with my dad a month or so ago, we also talked about transmission lines. Near as we can tell there are only 3 lines going from Limerick into Philadelphia and the surrounding counties (I've actually hit one of them several times with a golf ball as its strung over the 5th fairway of a course I frequent). A bad car accident could black out a million people just by knocking down one pole. And a guy with a handful of backpacks of C-4 could take down most of SE PA for a while.

Nereid

try this:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...8C83414B7FFE87

Argentum Vulpes

I'm slightly disappointed that I did not get on this thread before it turned into a power distribution network debate, so I'll play catch up and address some things that I think need to be added.

First briefly on the subject of coal, there is another reason to not want coal in this day in age. Besides the fact that it pumps CO2, NOx, SO2, and Hg into the atmosphere, one fact that is not discussed is it also puts uranium into the air. Now if we are going to get all huffy about Nuclear power because it uses uranium and might put some extra amount of it into the environment, could we please look at the entire power industry and judge it all by the same standards.

I totaly agree with this statement

As for all of the talk of Chernobyl there remains a vary important fact about Chernobyl that everyone seems to overlook. This fact is that Chernobyl was a RBMK type of reactor, whos main purpose in life was to create bomb grade Pu. The fact that it produced electric power was a happy side-effect for its main mode of operation. This type of reactor would never be allowed to be open in the US, or for that fact most of the world because of its main purpose and its many deadly design flaws. Two of the flaws are that it operates with a positive void coefficient, and because the fuel needs to be constantly changed there is no secondary containment structure. This info came from www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html, and this also explains what a positive void coefficient is.

So this is my two cents on this debate. Hopefully if this debate will get back on track of the original post.