What about Nuclear Energy?

Back when I was a kid, I joined the Navy. Testing indicated I was relatively bright for a volunteer, so they sent me off to Nuke school. It seemed that I was gonna be able to put together all that Trigonometry, Calculus, Chemistry, Physics and other crap I learned in High School to some kind of good use.

First step was BEEP school. Basic Electricity and Electronics. After that there was Specialty schools. I wanted Electronic Technician or Communications, but they wanted Electricians more than that, so I got Electricians Mate school instead of my first two choices. Then came the Nuke school. April of 1976 I arrived in Orlando just in time to catch Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue, with guest Joanie Baez. Life’s getting really cool!

Then I got taught about Nuclear Power. All the Physics, all the Chemistry of high pressure, high temperature radioactive soup, all the Calculus, the Engineering! I actually met and spoke with Admiral Rickover! I, along with my classmates, memorized the entire map of all the plumbing, naming each and every valve, and all the electrical system, every breaker from the reactor control panel to the off site civilian power grid.

Oh, how I miss those days of fun and laughter! Following a radioactive nuclear decay chain on the periodic table, running ‘spill drills’ at home in the living room. Here we are, a bunch of drunken idiots with a keg on ice in the bathtub, and when a beer gets spilled on the floor and everybody yells in unison: “Spill, spill, spill! Swims! Swims! Swims!” Swims is the acronym for the steps involved in a spill drill. Secure the area, Warn others, Isolate the spill,…etc. What a bunch of freakin nerds!

So, I’m listening to the radio the other night, as is my habit, when the host announces there has been an earthquake in Japan, no further news yet. In a couple minutes he interrupts the guest with, “and a tsunami, too.” It’s bad. They booted the scheduled guest early to bring in some information on the breaking events. One of the largest earthquakes ever measured by a human civilization. That’s a nightmare all by itself. OMG! There follows an immediate tsunami. One of the worst disasters ever witnessed by half a million cameras, and played as endless loops all across the world media for days. The biggest, nastiest, most awfullest, horriblest, terriblest disaster in the whole wide world since at least Ancient Greece! It’s the Disasterest disaster ever! Ships were dumped miles inland, and trains were dragged out to sea. Thousands upon thousands missing, and the body count is just beginning. All of the power in a wide area was snuffed out, all the wires ripped down, the transformers blown by surges, and even that most quiet and reliable source of energy, the nuclear power plants, have been dropped offline, their cores immediately shut down when the quake first hit. One of those long foreseen and well rehearsed predicaments that may reasonably be predicted to occur sometime in the lifetime of a large power production facility, which of course is expected to be measured in the hundreds of years.

At Three Mile Island, a series of bad decisions in the control room was the disaster. Design saved the day. The plant insisted on shutting down, despite the operator errors. It would have worked much better if the idiot in charge hadn’t turned off the back up cooling water pump, a forbidden action. Chernobyl was a combination of design flaws with incompetence for the icing. Japan was an enormous earthquake followed by a tsunami, right? For only the 3rd time since the Three Mile Island incident, we’re hearing again how monstrous nuclear power is.

Because of my background, I was interested in the story. The global media was ready to oblige. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, they all had an expert to describe “the worst case scenario” to the breathless audience. Even the prestigious Scientific American jumped in to explain how a molten core goes through to China. All around the world, we were informed that a meltdown would be an end to life as we know it. I suffered mightily with my cognitive dissonance!

Then this blog post came around, it’s was originally called “Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors”. Now it’s been moved to the MIT website. A bunch of nuclear type nerds go to school at places like MIT. Godzilla is not responsible for the damage in Tokyo. There was a monster earthquake. There was a tsunami. There was not a nuclear disaster.

What about France? They use nuclear power, right? How do you suppose their thinking will be changed by the Japanese “disaster”? France is number 1 for percentage, tied with Vermont, in percentage, not number of plants. The US runs over 100 plants, and they all need to be updated, not over-regulated. I want 500 new plants across the US. Not refurbished, new! We’ve sat and watched as France built an industry to replace the one we discarded. Iran currently has a better plan for new power plants than ours.

Mini plants, in a variety of models, are already in development. Maybe we should be putting the pressure on the politicians and the media talking heads to put this option out there on the table, where it’s available for polite discussion. I want a baby nuke for my tiny town! So, what about it? How about looking forward just a bit? What about Nuclear Power?

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The future of nuclear is cold fusion.

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Science Daily ^ | Mar. 23, 2009 | American Chemical Society

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I was also a Nuke in the Navy, and although I never met Admiral Rickover, I met a guy at the S1W prototype school who stepped on his hand as he was climbing a ladder. I am also sick to death of hearing about the China Syndrome and the comparison with Chernobyl. Here’s what I wrote on another blog:

I’ve been watching the news about the events at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 1 reactor with great interest. As usual, the news media doesn’t know how to talk about nuclear power and radiation, and some of the “experts” they bring in aren’t much help. Here’s the information we have about the event, what we can deduce, and what it all means.

Fukushima Dai-Ichi, or Fukushima One, is a five-unit nuclear power plant located in the town of Okuma in the Futaba district of Fukushima Prefecture in Japan. 7 miles to the south is Fukushima Dai-Ni or Fukushima Two, a four-unit nuclear power plant near the towns of Naraha and Tomioka in the same district and prefecture. The Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 1 reactor is a boiling water reactor that was built in 1971 and recently licensed to run for 10 more years. Both Fukushima plants are run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO.

When the magnitude 8.9 earthquake hit on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 1, 2, and 3 reactors shut down automatically. Units 4, 5, and 6 had already been shut down for maintenance. After the quake, there was a total loss of offsite electric power at the plant. The emergency diesel generators started automatically and provided electric power for an hour.

When the tsunami hit, the diesel generators were damaged, so they were no longer available to generate electric power. Without the ability to circulate water through the reactor core, the heat produced by radioactive decay caused the reactor coolant temperature and pressure to rise. The only way to cool the core at that point was to release steam into the containment building, which surrounds the reactor.

Due to the steam release, the Unit 1 containment pressure rose to 87 pounds per square inch, making it necessary to release the pressure into the environment. Since the core had been partially uncovered for a time, reaction of the steam with the hot zircaloy cladding of the fuel rods produced hydrogen. When the operators vented pressure from the containment structure, the hydrogen ignited and destroyed part of the surrounding building. The containment remained intact.

Detection of radioactive cesium and iodine outside the containment indicates that there has been some core damage due to the core being uncovered. Cesium and iodine are fission products created by the splitting of a uranium atom.

Radiation levels at the site boundary were measured at 11 millirem per hour after the explosion, but decreased to 7 millirem per hour a few hours later. For comparison, the US dose limit for the general public from nuclear power operations is 100 millirem per year. For nuclear plant workers it is 5000 millirem per year.

The plant operators have pumped seawater into the reactor to cool the core.
Japan has rated this event as a level 4 on the 7-level International Nuclear Event Scale or INES. INES Level 4 indicates an accident with local consequences, an impact on people and the environment. There can be a minor release of radioactive material unlikely to result in implementation of planned countermeasures other than local food controls. There can be a release of significant quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high probability of significant public exposure. For comparison, the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 on 28 March 1979 would have been Level 5 on the INES scale, and the accident at Chernobyl Unit 4 on 26 April 1986 would have been Level 7 on the INES scale. The INES scale was introduced in 1990.

Here’s a little Nuclear Power 101 class to help put this into perspective. In a nuclear power plant there are three boundaries that prevent the radioactive fission products from reaching the general public. The first boundary is the zircaloy fuel cladding that surrounds the fuel rods. The second boundary is the reactor coolant piping system. And the third boundary is the containment structure. This is known as defense in depth, having multiple, redundant, and independent layers of safety systems for the single, critical point of failure: the reactor core.

Here are the conclusions we can draw from this event.

Conclusion #1: The general public is in no danger from this event. There was a single “burp” of fission products that escaped when the operators vented the pressure from the containment. This “burp” contained a small amount of fission products that indicate that the Zircaloy fuel cladding was breached. Now that the operators are keeping the core covered with water, it will cool down to a safe temperature. The reactor coolant and the inside of the containment structure will be extremely radioactive, but that radioactivity will not reach the general public.

Conclusion #2: Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 1 will never produce electric power again. There are high levels of radioactive contamination inside the containment structure. The operators have introduced seawater with all its impurities into the reactor coolant system. The plant is 40 years old. All of these factors will make it more economical to decommission the plant, rather than cleaning it up inside and out to make it operable again.

Conclusion #3: The Fukushima reactor problems are insignificant compared to the totality of damage and destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. The town of Minami Sanriko was wiped off the map by the tsunami, and ten thousand of its residents are missing. Aftershocks, some of them decent sized earthquakes in their own right, continue to cause problems. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and hurting and in need of assistance. As usual, it is better to focus on what is important rather than be distracted by sensationalism.

I hope this talk has been interesting and educational. I am confident that TEPCO will be able to get control of the problems at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. It is my fervent wish that people will understand that nuclear power plants are subjected to hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes all the time, and come out the other side unscathed. It takes the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japanese history combined with a total loss of offsite power and a massive tsunami to cause major problems at a nuclear plant. The earthquake and tsunami have killed thousands of people in Japan, while Fukushima Dai-Ichi has yet to take a single life. Perspective is important.

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