The Nuclear Power Thread

[xpell]

The Fukushima meltdowns horrified me, because in my innocence as a non-nuclear non-engineer, I had been under the impression that all western (yeah, yeah I know, I know, including Japan!) power plants

Actually Fukushima I-1 and I-2 were "all-American" General Electric's BWR-3 and BWR-4 designs locally built. Fukushima I-3 and I-4 were (very) slightly modified versions on the BWR-4 design by Toshiba and Hitachi. Nowadays that's General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy. So yes, you can consider them "fully Western" in every sense for all practical purposes.

Now, however naive I was, I still insist that if that is not how things are, it is how things should and MUST be, because although one could argue that to design nuclear power plants for passive containment would double their cost (probably not really anything so extravagant, but choose a figure), but even without the political and social costs, the cost of NOT having done so could double the costs anyway (probably not really anything so conservative, but choose a figure). Would anyone believe that the Fukushima failure doubled the effective costs of the power stations? More than doubled? Any bets?

And if such safety measures were to make the power plant uneconomic, that would mean that in such a situation nuclear power would be uneconomic, though to my mind all it would show is that you had the wrong engineers on the job (and maybe the wrong economists as well; to say nothing of politicians).

Hmmm... Honestly I'm not sure about this. The initial cost of advanced Western designs (both American-Japanese and European) has skyrocketed to the Moon and beyond. We are talking about 5 to 10 billion dollars per reactor before first load, usually after huge cost overruns and delays. But new Chinese, Russian and South Korean designs with an impeccable safety record are cheaper and fiercely competitive. Well, even with these economy plants there are no fully privately funded reactors being built anywhere in the world. Trust me, I checked it just a few months ago. Every new reactor in the world is being built for state or parastatal monopolies, or for private companies with guaranteed state support (meaning: the taxpayer is going to pay for the party.) The market doesn't believe in nuclear power, and it has (very) rarely done in the past. Private companies don't go nuclear until securing state guarantees through grants, subsidies or whatever. State or parastatal monopolies (or duopolies)... well, are monopolies, so they have an assured captive market. Seriously, try to find only one recent or under construction nuclear reactor truly "floating in the free market." Hint: There aren't.

While I'm no expert in nuclear power economics, that suggests me that there's something fishy there. If it were a good business, private companies would be writing checks out of their own pockets to build their nuclear power plants and reap the profits. But nobody is doing that anywhere in the world, no matter the local policies or politicians (or economists, or engineers...) Private companies invest in almost every power generation technology out of their own pocket around the world... but not in nuclear. There must be something wrong with the nuclear power business model that applies to every country and territory. I honestly don't know what is it (and I'd love to!), but something is not right there. I am about to read http://www.princeton.edu/~ramana/Saudi-Nuclear-Economics-2014.pdf discouraging the building of nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia, maybe I'll find a couple of clues there.

 

[Jon Richfield]

Actually Fukushima I-1 and I-2 were "all-American" General Electric's BWR-3 and BWR-4 designs locally built. Fukushima I-3 and I-4 were (very) slightly modified versions on the BWR-4 design by Toshiba and Hitachi. ... So yes, you can consider them "fully Western" in every sense for all practical purposes.

I have no quarrel with that!

Hmmm... Honestly I'm not sure about this. The initial cost of advanced Western designs (both American-Japanese and European) has skyrocketed to the Moon and beyond. ... Seriously, try to find only one recent or under construction nuclear reactor truly "floating in the free market." Hint: There aren't.

While I'm no expert in nuclear power economics, that suggests me that there's something fishy there...

I have no basis for quarreling with that either. I suspect that the main problems are political anyway, whether one takes customer resistance into account or not, but however that may be, whether the reluctance is justified in technical and engineering terms or not, my point is that as long as there is any rational basis for practical concern about possible failure of the safety of the installation in the event of catastrophic failure of the infrastructure, then the design is inadequate in engineering terms for as long as no one can make it commercially viable. I would suspect that some high temperature reactor designs for example, could indeed be rendered safe on such terms. I cannot answer for their political and commercial validity of course, but there is no adequate source of power, however green, that is immune to such objections. Warring claims on anyone you could mention, whether wind, sun, wave or geo, sound like imaginary duplicates of a certain politician who is making waves in campaigning for a certain party nomination, slanging each other on the same platform. (A nauseating thought, but it is a nauseating topic! )
Incidentally, almost in sight of where I live, a venerable PWR has been chugging away, largely at over its intended capacity, for over thirty years. Admittedly we haven't had any tsunamis on a Fukushima scale yet, and I understand that it is no safer than any other PWR, but the fact that it has been so faithful for so long, suggests that there's indeed something fishy...
Engineering is so much simpler when one need not take people and politics into account.

 

[nikkkom]

If the nuclear discussion is to be refraimed in Japan, it should to convey that the against-nuclear position is actually the "switch from nuclear" to coal and gas, making clear that while the Fukushima accident has been expensive, the radiation didn't kill anyone but increased coal emissions will.

CO2 does not kill. It is actually useful for something, such as accelerated plant growth.

Ash emissions from coal can be prevented.

 

[nikkkom]

The initial cost of advanced Western designs (both American-Japanese and European) has skyrocketed to the Moon and beyond. We are talking about 5 to 10 billion dollars per reactor before first load, usually after huge cost overruns and delays.

If you allow engineers and private businesses to design and build reactors with little oversight, they inevitably cut corners and compromise safety under economic pressure.
If you put in place strong oversight regime on this industry, bureaucrats predictably make it uber-expensive.

But new Chinese, Russian and South Korean designs with an impeccable safety record are cheaper and fiercely competitive.

Huh? Russians' record wrt nuclear safety is the worst in the world.
Chinese didn't yet have time to screw up. I think your enthusiasm about them has no solid basis.

 

[jim hardy]

Huh? ...
Chinese didn't yet have time to screw up.

not reactors, anyway..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...tures-13-storey-block-flats-toppled-over.html

 

[xpell]

Huh? Russians' record wrt nuclear safety is the worst in the world.

Try VVER-1000 or even most post-1975 VVER-440's for example. Now they're building the first VVER-1200's.

Even the world-feared RBMK's (yeah, that's Chernobyl), after the post-Chernobyl modifications, have been working without much hassle until today and they will possibly keep doing it until the 2030's (there are still 11 in operation.) At the end of the day, it was not such a bad design, even if it had some real design flaws: after all it took 20+ hours of delirious operations and real hard work, including manually disabling every safety system (especially those which were in place to prevent a power excursion in a well-known high void coefficient design), to eventually make one blow up. It wasn't and isn't "intrinsically safe", sure. But it's very inexpensive, very powerful and quite robust; so much that the other 3 RBMK's at the very Chernobyl NPP kept operating in very precarious conditions, with the last one closing in 2000. They're unsaleable because of obvious reasons, but there's a proposed follow-on reactor, the MKER, including "all lessons learnt." We'll see.

Chinese didn't yet have time to screw up. I think your enthusiasm about them has no solid basis.

not reactors, anyway..

Well, they have been operating their military plutonium-production and submarine-propulsion reactors for decades without any known radioisotope-releasing accident that I'm aware of (and don't doubt the propaganda here would immediately amplify the slightest hint of radioisotopes apparently coming from China or any other "undomesticated" country into a Chernobyl-esque disaster even if it was just a silly leak, just like they do with everything else.) That's something very few people in this world can say. I'll give them a vote of confidence on that one.

 

[jim hardy]

Well, they have been operating their military plutonium-production and submarine-propulsion reactors for decades without any known radioisotope-releasing accident that I'm aware of (and don't doubt the propaganda here would immediately amplify the slightest hint of radioisotopes apparently coming from China or any other "undomesticated" country into a Chernobyl-esque disaster even if it was just a silly leak, just like they do with everything else.) That's something very few people in this world can say. I'll give them a vote of confidence on that one.

I hadn't thought of that. My bad.

Hopefully they'll have enough military trained folks to populate their emerging civilian program, as US did.

 

[mheslep]

CO2 does not kill

NOx, SOx, heavy metals, and PM *do*. Have. Will. Aside from the degree, its not debatable.

 

[xpell]

I hadn't thought of that. My bad.

No worries. Actually it's very logical to think that, since here we're only told the bad things about "those countries." Obviously in "those countries" happens the same with us. Here or there, people must do some real serious "digging" to see through propaganda. If I did it, it's only because I'm a very curious person, not because I'm special or anything.

Hopefully they'll have enough military trained folks to populate their emerging civilian program, as US did.

I'd guess so, it's a logical step. Furthermore, they have been doing some very smart moves in my opinion to develop their civilian nuclear program: partnering with everybody ---Americans, Russians, Canadians, Europeans---, including transfers of technology and extensive education, before starting to develop and build their own designs. I'd say they are in a quite good position to "take the best and drop the worst" of everyone. Certainly they have not had much time to screw things up with their own designs, as @nikkkom said, but their first "almost-all-Chinese" civilian CPR-1000's have already being operating for about 5.5 years (Ling Ao II-1 was the first) and they look quite good... at about 2-2.5 billion dollars per reactor instead of 5-10. Yes, they're 1,000 MW_e reactors against the ~1,700-1,800 MW_e of advanced Western designs, but the upfront cost and easy operation and maintenance sound very much like a killer. Actually, not a few people think that less-expensive, "simpler" reactors in the 1,000-1,500 MW_e range are quite a good option for most places and countries, and a way safer investment if things go south or something. If you need more power, just order another one.

 

[mheslep]

With these last eruptions, a major talking point was if it was safe or wise to have nuclear power plants operating in a highly seismic, highly volcanic country.

I would like to think that there's voice in Japan for pointing out the lesson of the Fukushima accident: the problem was with the following tsunami attacking an insufficiently protected coastal reactor. The reactors all shutdown immediately after a very powerful 9.0 quake, with their backup cooling systems intact until the wave hit. I'm strongly pro-nuclear, but I also would not care to live near a low elevation coastal nuclear plant in a zone with tsunami history with the same (insufficient) design.

there's still some uncertainty among sections of the public ("anti" scores 70% in the polls, but "strong anti" seems to be lower at about 53%),

Yes, several types of "anti". I suppose I'm anti-the-high-cost-of-nuclear in the US, which I increasingly believe is unnecessary given the Chinese examples cost 60 to 80% less. In the second half of 2015 the Chinese averaged close to a new reactor startup per month. The difference can't all be explained by labor costs.

 

[mheslep]

...under the impression that all western (yeah, yeah I know, I know, including Japan!) power plants included passive fail-safe systems that did not rely on power or ...

Fukushima did have such system in place, as do other reactors. Fukushima reactors used diesel generators for backup. Immediately after the quake, all reactors stopped that were running, and all 11 continued with either grid or diesel generator power to run cooling systems. The tsunami arrival shortly after caused the 3 Daiichi reactors to lose backup power, disabling most of the backup generators.

The newest reactors under construction in the US and some in China don't require backup power or even pumps, but use a gravity fed cooling system.

 

[nikkkom]

NOx, SOx, heavy metals, and PM *do*. Have. Will. Aside from the degree, its not debatable.

All of these can be filtered or neutralized, except CO2. But CO2 is not toxic.

 

[xpell]

I would like to think that there's voice in Japan for pointing out the lesson of the Fukushima accident: the problem was with the following tsunami attacking an insufficiently protected coastal reactor. The reactors all shutdown immediately after a very powerful 9.0 quake, with their backup cooling systems intact until the wave hit. I'm strongly pro-nuclear, but I also would not care to live near a low elevation coastal nuclear plant in a zone with tsunami history with the same (insufficient) design.

There sure are. But the problem is that Fukushima was very much of a "last (million tonnes) straw." As a result of the Fukushima disaster lots of information about severe design/building malpractice and gross violations of nuclear safety, which had previously been kind of "suppressed" or "hidden from the public eye" by the very powerful electric companies and their friendly zaibatsus suddenly came into the spotlight. It's not only Fukushima, whose tsunami risks had been deliberately ignored in despite of the warnings of quite a few scientists. It's also the "moving nuclear power plant", Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, the most powerful in the world... built in a well-known heavily seismic area, with two (presumedly) previously unknown geologically active faults straight under its reactors. It's a long list of formerly "whitewashed" severe incidents in many plants with the full cooperation of the regulatory authorities. It's an entire substandard culture of nuclear safety.

The Japanese people had been "brainwashed" into believing that their nuclear industry was the best and safest in the world, with quite a few patriotic overtones, maybe except for a couple little small details, and there were the regulatory authorities, the mass media and everything to reassure them. Suddenly, bang! Fukushima becomes environmental pollution. OK, OK, don't worry, it's been a bad tsunami, nobody could prevent... "how the hell nobody could prevent that, man, if there was a 38-meter tall one in the same region in 1896 and you only built defenses for 10 at the very best?" But the reactors are safe and... "Safe? The f---ing BBC is saying that's a full multiple LOCA, the reactors are melting down and the storage pools are in danger!" OK, maybe, but it's all a nasty natural disaster and... "Natural disaster? Yes, sure when Kashiwazaki-Kariwa collapses into a pile of radioactive rubble it will be a natural disaster too, you built it on active seismic faults!" Eh... huh... well, but we still have a high standard of safety everywhere and... "High standard of safety, you d---head? Have you read about all those severe incidents you had hidden from us for decades?" But the Government's regulatory authorities... "F--- the regulatory authorities, they're in your pocket with revolving doors spinning at lightspeed!" Eh...

...it's going to be difficult to rebuild trust after that, I guess.

 

[mheslep]

Every new reactor in the world is being built for state or parastatal monopolies, or for private companies with guaranteed state support (meaning: the taxpayer is going to pay for the party.)

Large power utilities are almost necessarily monopolistic entities, but they are mostly privately owned in the US. They can, and have, gone bankrupt. The new reactor Watts Bar 2 is due to come online shortly. Though it happens to be owned by the TVA, a federally owned corporation, the WB2 project has receive no direct support that I know to complete the rector, no loan guarantees.

 

[nikkkom]

Try VVER-1000 or even most post-1975 VVER-440's for example. Now they're building the first VVER-1200's.

They don't operate long enough to know how safe they are. Fukushima's reactors were "safe" for 40 years, and then we found out they were not.

Even the world-feared RBMK's (yeah, that's Chernobyl), after the post-Chernobyl modifications, have been working without much hassle until today and they will possibly keep doing it until the 2030's (there are still 11 in operation.)

How would you know about "hassles" with RBMK since Russians not at all happy to disclose any problems with them? How about Leningrad's NPP troubles with graphite swelling in RBMK? If you never heard of it, it doesn't mean it's not happening.

At the end of the day, it was not such a bad design, even if it had some real design flaws: after all it took 20+ hours of delirious operations and real hard work, including manually disabling every safety system (especially those which were in place to prevent a power excursion in a well-known high void coefficient design)

It is NOW well-known.
Copious evidence and testimony from ex-Soviet nuclear operators make it clear they did not know about it - were not informed by the designers. Because when *designers* realized (from early RBMK power excursion accidents (heard about THOSE? no?)) how bad it is, they did not want to make it widely knows (that they f*cked up the design). Is that looking like a safety-conscious culture to you?

It wasn't and isn't "intrinsically safe", sure. But it's very inexpensive, very powerful and quite robust

Yeah. Inexpensive. After it costed probably several $100 billion in damages, cleanup costs and hundreds (thousands?) of "liquidators" prematurely dying (Soviets conveniently never had any official stats on their health).

 

[nikkkom]

>> ...under the impression that all western (yeah, yeah I know, I know, including Japan!) power plants included passive fail-safe systems that did not rely on power or ...

Fukushima did have such system in place, as do other reactors. Fukushima reactors used diesel generators for backup.

I wouldn't call that "passive fail-safe" systems. Diesel generator is not passive.

 

[xpell]

Large power utilities are almost necessarily monopolistic entities, but they are mostly privately owned in the US. They can, and have, gone bankrupt. The new reactor Watts Bar 2 is due to come online shortly. Though it happens to be owned by the TVA, a federally owned corporation, the WB2 project has receive no direct support that I know to complete the rector, no loan guarantees.

But if it's a federally owned corporation... it's an state-owned nuclear power plant, isn't it? OK, maybe they have not received direct support from other Government institutions on that one, this I sure don't know... but they are the Government! (Well, a small part of it, I guess, but still the Government...) Please correct me if I'm wrong by saying that ultimately the taxpayer is paying for that and taking all the risks.

 

[nikkkom]

...it's going to be difficult to rebuild trust after that, I guess.

Personally I have problem trusting nuclear engineers too now, not only managers/politicians. For example, on this very forum, *after Fukushima*, they continue to question the need to have filters on emergency vent lines of US reactors. After Fukushima blew into their faces all the necessary empirical evidence that this is a possible path for a massive release.

 

[mheslep]

All of these can be filtered or neutralized, except CO2. But CO2 is not toxic.

In a lab perhaps. In a real plant, they are not, even with best electrostatic traps and chemical washes, and most of the coal fleet does not have anything like the best. In the ~2 TW of actual coal plant capacity in the world, much of it operating for decades, emissions are not eliminated even in the best developed world plants, and collectively the emissions kill many thousands every year. The new coal generation being installed, almost entirely in the developing world at 200 MW per day, will continue to have emissions controls inferior to the developed world. The study discussed http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/indicates the global nuclear fleet prevents 80,000 deaths per year, assuming nuclear was replaced with mainly coal in its absence.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/12/china-coal-emissions-smog-deaths
http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...e-more-than-100000-premature-deaths-annually/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths

 

[mheslep]

But if it's a federally owned corporation... it's an state-owned nuclear power plant, isn't it? OK, maybe they have not received direct support from other Government institutions on that one, this I sure don't know... but they are the Government! (Well, a small part of it, I guess, but still the Government...) Please correct me if I'm wrong by saying that ultimately the taxpayer is paying for that and taking all the risks.

Yes, TVA is a state plant, but it doesn't receive federal nuclear guarantees (tmk). The two new plants underway in Georgia are privately owned mainly by the Southern Company, though they did qualify for some limited federal support. So too the two plants in South Carolina are mainly owned by SCE&G.

 

[jim hardy]

the problem was with the following tsunami attacking an insufficiently protected coastal reactor.

20/20 hindsight - when the evidence of past inundations surfaced, they should have built a submarine hull around their electrical rooms. The bureaucracy failed to bring that to attention of executives.

At my old plant they've built a hill, put a hurricane proof building atop it filled with emergency generators, pumps, you name it.
Before i retired in 2002 we were identifying where and making provisions to connect such things.
My friends still working there tell me management cut no corners.

How does one inculcate honest reverence for nuclear safety into the whole workforce , from Assistant Gardener to Chairman of the Board??
That's a societal problem not an engineering one.

Post Challenger disaster we got a lot of training about how to avoid 'groupthink' and implemented procedures to bring management attention to problems. Anybody, from Assistant Gardener to CEO could submit a Condition Report.

As crazy as bureaucracy seems, it works when the people are honest.

Sounds trite i suppose but it's the simple truth.

 

[xpell]

Yes, several types of "anti". I suppose I'm anti-the-high-cost-of-nuclear in the US, which I increasingly believe is unnecessary given the Chinese examples cost 60 to 80% less. In the second half of 2015 the Chinese averaged close to a new reactor startup per month. The difference can't all be explained by labor costs.

Actually labor costs in China have been rising for some time, since their economic development kicked in seriously. Currently Chinese labor costs are "too high" for not a few Chinese businesspeople and they're outsourcing to Vietnam, Cambodia and the like. Certainly it can't be explained only by labor costs. They seem to be simpler, better conceived designs with all that "international learning" I was talking about before. Right now there're already 12-13 CPR-1000 in operation (2015 info) and nobody is talking about troubles with them. 10-11 more will be connected to the grid in the near future. An advanced version ACPR-1000/Hualong-1 is currently under construction at Fuqing too, with 7 more predicted before 2020, so I guess they're already going for the "second stage" in their civilian programme.

Furthermore, they also have the CNP-600, a lower power (650 MW_e) but even cheaper (~1.5 billion per unit) reactor for areas where not so much energy is needed or some special considerations apply; 1 unit is already online in Hainan Island and 3 more under construction. And they own an experimental fast-breeder reactor too, to fully close the fuel cycle, designed and built by the same Russians of the BN-600/BN-800 fast-breeders at Beloyarsk. They sure are into it big time.

 

[mheslep]

That's a societal problem not an engineering one.

In the longer term, for nuclear power to become used globally and abundantly, I disagree. Both are required. There must be better designs that place tighter limits the worst case consequences of an accident, regardless of bungling. I think the Gen 4 designs get there. Good management and operational practice is required also to make errors rare, but in the event of overconfidence or a mad man at the levers, the worst case outcome should be no worse than, say, a plane crash. Otherwise we're not going to see widespread nuclear power in the like of Bangladesh or Nigeria, regardless of the training of that first crew.

 

[nikkkom]

As crazy as bureaucracy seems, it works when the people are honest.

On average, people are not sufficiently honest. They are all too happy to delude themselves with whatever plausibly-sounding lies they need. TEPCO management did not intentionally build insufficient tsunami walls. They wanted to be convinced that at that location, tsunami waves can't be high - and sure enough, they found right people to produce the "evidence" the wanted to see.

 

[mheslep]

Furthermore, they also have the CNP-600, a lower power (650 MWe) but even cheaper (~1.5 billion per unit) reactor

Or $2.3/Watt, impressive. Virgil 2 and 3 are $10B/2200MW or $4.6/Watt, twice as much. Vogtle 3 with its design changes is running higher still.

 

[xpell]

They don't operate long enough to know how safe they are. Fukushima's reactors were "safe" for 40 years, and then we found out they were not.

Obviously only time will tell. But the latest, post-1975 VVER-440's have been around for some decades by now, and the first VVER-1000 went online in 1981 (Novovoronezh-5.) That's 35 years (they recently made an upgrade.) They're fully under IAEA control regimes and no significant incident not to mention accident has been reported.

How would you know about "hassles" with RBMK since Russians not at all happy to disclose any problems with them? How about Leningrad's NPP troubles with graphite swelling in RBMK? If you never heard of it, it doesn't mean it's not happening.

The IAEA visits, just like any other civilian reactor in the world. Yes, I knew about the graphite swelling in Leningrad's modified RBMK's. It wasn't even an incident: they noticed the problem, corrected it, and all 4 RBMK-1000's in Leningrad continue operating normally today. BTW, they're building 4 VVER-1200 there to replace them in the near future.

It is NOW well-known.
Copious evidence and testimony from ex-Soviet nuclear operators make it clear they did not know about it - were not informed by the designers. Because when *designers* realized (from early RBMK power excursion accidents (heard about THOSE? no?)) how bad it is, they did not want to make it widely knows (that they f*cked up the design). Is that looking like a safety-conscious culture to you?

"Copious evidence" surrounding Chernobyl has been highly politicized. Nobody who is able to build such a nuclear reactor can ignore that it's going to have a high void coefficient ---actually, it was designed that way deliberately. Then they certainly went substandard. They thought that just some basic active control would prevent power excursions like that you're mentioning (yes, I knew about them too.) Later they heavily improved those active controls, but they could still be manually disabled, as it happened in Chernobyl. So while the basic design was not so unsound, the design flaws back then sure were "fail-deadly." I fully acknowledge this.

BUT the operators knew about this. Yes, I know they've told they didn't, but they did. Paraphrasing Dr. House, "everybody lies" (specially when you're accused of heavy negligence with nuke-catastrophic results.) They deliberately disabled every protection against neutronic runaways to try to recover from the programmed test ---you don't do that if you don't know there is such a thing as a neutronic runaway, and that your reactor can do that, and why its protections are stopping you from finishing your test. Actually, according to multiple witnesses, there was a very loud discussion in the control room about the wisdom of removing the last control rods exactly because if they did it, the high void coefficient of reactivity could not be controlled without scramming the reactor if it went berserk... which it did. But that crazy guy Dyatlov, who was basically a bully, imposed his point of view. They went ahead with their test, disabled all the protections against power excursions, disabled the SKALA computer control, removed every control rod... then the runaway kicked in, an operator tried to stop it by pressing the SCRAM button, and then the steel tips of the control rods (another design flaw) getting blocked in the already heat-deformed channels completed the excursion.

So I respectfully disagree on this one. They were fully knowledgeable. I'll only admit that their education to work in that specific reactor was substandard: it was. But their actions betray them. You don't even think in disabling the power excursion protections if you don't know that your reactor can have power excursions, and that there are protections against them.

Yeah. Inexpensive. After it costed probably several $100 billion in damages, cleanup costs and hundreds (thousands?) of "liquidators" prematurely dying (Soviets conveniently never had any official stats on their health).

You understood me. Obviously the accident was expensive as hell, so much that it possibly helped to kill the USSR. But the reactors weren't.

(Soviets conveniently never had any official stats on their health).

Sorry, but I have to disagree on this one too. Soviets did. But in 1991 the Soviet Union disappeared and those stats got divided between 3 new countries, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, with every one of them trying to explain to the world how the accident was the fault of each other or the bad, bad USSR. The thing went nationalistic and real stats stopped being useful just in case.

I have been trying to find a different but also highly relevant information about Chernobyl for several years now: the extensive radioisotopic measurements that the USSR's Armed Forces and Academy of Sciences took after the accident. I know it was done for sure because I've had the honor to personally meet some of the guys who took part in that (heroes, I must say.) I've even seen myself their personal pictures while at work doing that. And the very Pravda reported about it, it was not a secret, I've been shown and translated those articles too. Where did that essential info go after the USSR's dissolution? Nobody seems to know.

 

[xpell]

How does one inculcate honest reverence for nuclear safety into the whole workforce , from Assistant Gardener to Chairman of the Board??
That's a societal problem not an engineering one.

In the longer term, for nuclear power to become used globally and abundantly, I disagree. Both are required. There must be better designs that place tighter limits the worst case consequences of an accident, regardless of bungling. I think the Gen 4 designs get there. Good management and operational practice is required too to make errors rare, but in the event of overconfidence or a mad man at the levers, the worst case outcome should be no worse than, say, a plane crash. Otherwise we're not going to see widespread nuclear power in the like of Bangladesh or Nigeria, regardless of the training of that first crew.

I'm with both of you. It's an engineering problem, and it's a societal problem. I have never worked in the nuclear industry, but I worked in aviation and also in industrial robotics, which can be quite dangerous machines for everyone around. Engineering can do its part, but as we say here in Spain, "nothing will stop a resolute d---head with a wrench." Quite a few times, they don't even need the wrench. I have studied severe accidents that happened because everything engineering worked so well that people went overconfident, and even if they didn't do anything crazy, when an engineering failure happened they simply didn't know how to properly react.

The Air France 447 disaster is a perfect example. Air France's flight crews were so used to those Airbus "flying robots" working so perfectly that they started forgetting things they previously knew, just because they never had to apply them. But that night, some things happened and their "flying robot" went slightly nuts. Not really so much, just some wrong instrument readings and an autopilot automatic shutdown. They were so surprised that they basically didn't understand what was happening, then started doing stupid things, not because they were stupid or bad pilots, but because they went fully disoriented from the very beginning (the lack of visibility and the unstable weather didn't help.) The final accident report states that just a bit of "basic airmanship" would have saved the day. I'll say even more: just by doing a couple things that every Flight Simulator gamer knows, they would have saved the day. They didn't and soon after all 226 of them people crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Honestly I can't think of a single engineering/societal mechanism that would solve all of this, on a jetliner, in a robotic line or into a nuclear power plant. As I see it, it's a highly complex problem.

Post Challenger disaster we got a lot of training about how to avoid 'groupthink' and implemented procedures to bring management attention to problems. Anybody, from Assistant Gardener to CEO could submit a Condition Report.

...then you had the Columbia disaster (BTW, I'm not American, I'm Spanish, but both as a sci-tech lover and as a human being i HATED both of them... so sad!) Some of the reasons behind both disasters seem to be quite similar. Weren't the lessons properly internalised? People went overconfident again? It's a really, really tough problem.

 

[xpell]

Or $2.3/Watt, impressive. Virgil 2 and 3 are $10B/2200MW or $4.6/Watt, twice as much. Vogtle 3 with its design changes is running higher still.

Just for confirmation, I was rechecking and the upfront cost for the CNP-600 seems to be correct according to further different sources:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Construction_starts_on_second_Hainan_reactor-2211104.html

"The total cost of the first two units is put at some 20 billion yuan ($3 billion)."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTOE63P02S20100426

"The plant will have two generating units, each with capacity to generate 650 megawatts of power, with total investment amounting to nearly 19 billion yuan ($2.78 billion). "

The CPR-1000 actually seems to be around $1.5 - 1.7/W. They are reported to be quite under $2B/unit, less than what I myself stated before. But I want to confirm it better to be totally sure.

 

[Jon Richfield]

NOx, SOx, heavy metals, and PM *do*. Have. Will. Aside from the degree, its not debatable.

And actually, if the anti-sceptic doctrine is to be accepted, CO2 is killing people like flies, by generating floods, lahars, hurricanes etc...

 

[xpell]

Yes, TVA is a state plant, but it doesn't receive federal nuclear guarantees (tmk). The two new plants underway in Georgia are privately owned mainly by the Southern Company, though they did qualify for some limited federal support. So too the two plants in South Carolina are mainly owned by SCE&G.

Hmmm... I'm reading that Santee Cooper, a state company, is backing 45% of the V. C. Summer expansion project in SC...

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130901/PC05/130909955
http://www.powermag.com/v-c-summer-nuclear-expansion-costs-to-surge-by-nearly-1b/

 

[nikkkom]

"Copious evidence" surrounding Chernobyl has been highly politicized. Nobody who is able to build such a nuclear reactor can ignore that it's going to have a high void coefficient ---actually, it was designed that way deliberately. Then they certainly went substandard. They thought that just some basic active control would prevent power excursions like that you're mentioning (yes, I knew about them too.) Later they heavily improved those active controls, but they could still be manually disabled, as it happened in Chernobyl. So while the basic design was not so unsound, the design flaws back then sure were "fail-deadly." I fully acknowledge this.

The above description easily qualifies Russians (more correctly Soviets) as having the worst nuclear safety record in the world: no one else went that far "substandard". That's what I said: they have the worst nuclear safety record in the world. Why are you disagreeing with that assessment?

BUT the operators knew about this. Yes, I know they've told they didn't, but they did.

Google "ada335076.pdf"
Did you read this book?

But that crazy guy Dyatlov, who was basically a bully, imposed his point of view.

This "crazy guy Dyatlov's" behavior was more-or-less typical behavior of people in power in USSR: get things done, even if this needs rules to be ignored, and people put in danger. If something bad happens, we cover it up. That's why they have the worst nuclear safety record in the world.

an operator tried to stop it by pressing the SCRAM button, and then the steel tips of the control rods (another design flaw)

Steel tip of the control rod is a design flaw... why? You sure you do understand what was the problem with the control rod? Doesn't look like you do.

Sorry, but I have to disagree on this one too. Soviets did.

No, they did not have any concerted efforts to track the health of all "liquidators". In particular, nobody bothered tracking lowest-ranking conscripted military men sent to clean up the mess. Medvedev's book describes some things he saw with his own eyes. Such as soldiers walking with buckets around reactor building collecting reactor debris. It's not very healthy to pick 2000R/h graphite with your hands, even in gloves. Then these boys returned home, to their parent small tons and villages. Then some were feeling sick. Some died.

 

[mheslep]

Honestly I can't think of a single engineering/societal mechanism that would solve all of this, on a jetliner, ...

I can. Airspeed indication is critical to aircraft control, for pilots and autopilot. If the sensors , pito tubes or alternatives, can't somehow be made absolutely impervious to ice under all possible flight conditions, then flying at night at cruise altitude into thunderstorms becomes off limits. Carry fuel to allow deviation or return. If this breaks some 13 hr flights into two hops, tough. Start with that. Then move on to fixing control law governance in that Airbus, so that it can not automatically switch from one mode to the other without crew acceptance.

I suggest there is still a bit of cowboy remnant in passenger aviation, that somehow "up there" the jets are above it all. I suggest this mentality allowed the AF Captain to be on break while his aircraft was flying through thunderstorms at night. Without apologizing for Putin in anyway, I suggest the *routine* flyover of a modern war zone in the Ukraine shoot down was part of the same recklessness. Flights don't enter the airspace now.

 

[mheslep]

Hmmm... I'm reading that Santee Cooper, a state company, is backing 45% of the V. C. Summer expansion project in SC...

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130901/PC05/130909955
http://www.powermag.com/v-c-summer-nuclear-expansion-costs-to-surge-by-nearly-1b/

Thanks. Knew about other ownership, didn't know it was state owned. Still, I wonder if it's relevant. Santee will have floated bonds just like the private firms to pay for their share.

 

[jim hardy]

On average, people are not sufficiently honest. They are all too happy to delude themselves with whatever plausibly-sounding lies they need. TEPCO management did not intentionally build insufficient tsunami walls. They wanted to be convinced that at that location, tsunami waves can't be high - and sure enough, they found right people to produce the "evidence" the wanted to see.

This "crazy guy Dyatlov's" behavior was more-or-less typical behavior of people in power in USSR: get things done, even if this needs rules to be ignored, and people put in danger. If something bad happens, we cover it up. That's why they have the worst nuclear safety record in the world.

People tend to measure up to what's expected of them.
Gorbachev said in Peristroika, to effect
'That project was considered best which consumed the most manpower, money and resources.'
When i read that i said to myself "He's been reading Edward Deming !"

Every organization chart is a pyramid.
Inside that pyramid are smaller ones - divisions, departments, work groups..
If there's trouble at the base of anyone of those little pyramids the root of the trouble lies at its apex.

I've seen an organization that was diagnosed 'terminally ill' (metaphor) turn around and excel.
It took an open, hard-nosed leader who insisted on excellence. He could sniff out a BS artist and fired several department heads.
About a year after that "pyramid" speech, which he'd given to the whole organization, he and i were walking across the parking lot.
He said "Plant's running pretty well, isn't it?" , which it was.
Then he added: "With the same workingmen we had a year ago..."

It's lazy or corrupt leaders who make messes of things.
Successful organizations weed them out at middle management levels.
Think about it - good executives don't want to be surrounded by laziness or corruption.

A system that places political loyalty above integrity will decline .

Reward corruption and you get corruption.

 

[xpell]

The above description easily qualifies Russians (more correctly Soviets) as having the worst nuclear safety record in the world: no one else went that far "substandard". That's what I said: they have the worst nuclear safety record in the world. Why are you disagreeing with that assessment?

I didn't disagree with that assessment. I disagree with the idea that all Russian reactors are somehow intrinsically dangerous. Post-1975 VVER's have done and are doing pretty well, and there're others. That's what I said.

Google "ada335076.pdf"
Did you read this book?

This "crazy guy Dyatlov's" behavior was more-or-less typical behavior of people in power in USSR: get things done, even if this needs rules to be ignored, and people put in danger. If something bad happens, we cover it up. That's why they have the worst nuclear safety record in the world.

Not that one specifically (I'm going to do), but yes others and many other documents stating that they didn't know what they did have in they hands. So much that it sounds as if they grabbed some peasants from the nearest kolkhoz and put them in command of one of the newest, production-record-breaking power reactors in the USSR. "Nobody knew nothing, it was all the fault of the powerful" is quite a common excuse around the world. Well, that's not how it was. There were many "faults of the powerful", but the operators knew that RBMK's had a high void coefficient and that power excursions were possible. They loudly argued about this in the control room, with Toptunov (a senior engineer) and especially Akimov adamantly opposed to remove further protections and control rods until Dyatlov threatened Akimov with firing him. Dyatlov himself was not a peasant-in-power either: he was a graduate of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (now the National Nuclear Research University) and had extensive experience in the construction of submarine reactors. Do you seriously want me to believe that those guys didn't have a clue about how their reactor worked?

I fully agree that Dyatlov was a "get things done even if the rules need to be ignored" guy. Sure thing. Furthermore, as I said, he was a bully. But please, don't tell me they didn't know about how a RBMK reactor worked: they did know, and they actively disabled every in-built protection. The only thing they didn't know was that their reactor was heavily xenon-poisoned and that there were steam bubbles in the water after 20+ hours of crazy operations. That's why they did what they did.

Steel tip of the control rod is a design flaw... why? You sure you do understand what was the problem with the control rod? Doesn't look like you do.

My error, I meant graphite. That's what happens when you write fast at 4:25 AM (the time here when I wrote so.) The graphite (not steel, obviously) tips increased the reactivity even further while displacing water, fully firing the neutron runaway. Actually one of the two major modifications to all RBMK's after Chernobyl was a complete redesign of the control rods.

No, they did not have any concerted efforts to track the health of all "liquidators". In particular, nobody bothered tracking lowest-ranking conscripted military men sent to clean up the mess. Medvedev's book describes some things he saw with his own eyes. Such as soldiers walking with buckets around reactor building collecting reactor debris. It's not very healthy to pick 2000R/h graphite with your hands, even in gloves. Then these boys returned home, to their parent small tons and villages. Then some were feeling sick. Some died.

Sure it isn't healthy. Maybe they should have left them there, huh? I have seen the personal radioactive exposition booklets of the liquidators (I guess I could still get a couple pics of them in a few days if you're interested), where every exposure was registered. I have seen the USSR's health system records of those other guys who were taking measurements I told you before. They didn't send them there without thinking. We're talking Gorbachev's USSR, not Stalin's. But when the USSR collapsed, all of that was spread between 3 countries and critical information (like the radioisotopic measurements I was talking about before) seemed to vanish into thin air out of nationalistic concerns. Basically Russia says it was all fault of the (mostly Ukrainian) operators, Ukraine says that their operators were blameless and it was all fault of the USSR -> Russia, and Belarusians don't say much. As always, the truth is somewhere in-between.