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Let’s Not Lose Faith in Nuclear Energy

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 14th, 2011 at 02:10 PM  | 

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A nuclear catastrophe is potentially unfolding in Japan after the country’s eastern seaboard was devastated by its biggest earthquake on record. A tsunami with waves of up to thirty feet high swept away entire villages and damaged major industries, including oil refineries and at least two nuclear power plants.

Two explosions occurred at a nuclear facility in Fukushima Prefecture over the weekend. At least one of its reactors may have experienced a partial meltdown after its coolant pumps failed. In the aftermath of the quake, engineers attempted to cool down the reactor using sea water.

Nearly two hundred thousand people in the vicinity of the plant were being evacuated out of precaution. Eighteen people were believed to have suffered radiation poisoning.

While the emergency in Japan almost immediately triggered another discussion about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, it may be worth remembering that Japan has fifty-three nuclear power plants. After the United States and France, it has the most nuclear plants in the world which provide more than a third of Japan’s energy needs.

Because Japan has so very few natural resources, it is highly dependent on the import of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy has been a strategic priority for Japan since the 1970s in an attempt to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and natural gas.

While Japan has had accidents with nuclear power in the past, it has some of the world’s most skilled engineers and scientists in the field and quite possibly the most modern nuclear energy industry in the world. It has also learned to live with earthquakes and among the world’s most rigorous of building codes which probably saved countless of lives in the most recent disaster.

Since the 1950s there have only been two major accidents with nuclear power—the partial core meltdown of a reactor of the Three Mile Island station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1979 and the Chernobyl incident of 1986. Both events led to more stringent safety requirements for existing and new plants. The situation in Fukushima will probably produce additional insights and lessons for future nuclear power plant construction.

While accidents with nuclear power are potentially catastrophic, other energy sources are much more fatal.

Nearly nine hundred people died in coal mining since 1980 in the United States alone. Even wind turbines have caused more deaths than the nuclear power industry. The very opponents of nuclear energy often allege that entire wars are fought over oil. No country has ever invaded another to seize its nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power is much safer and much cleaner than traditional sources of electricity. It is reliable and efficient unlike wind and solar. A nation as France is almost entirely energy independent because of it.

The opposition to nuclear power is not based on science. It is not based on facts. The people who fear nuclear power do not understand how it works and cannot comprehend that man is able to master its technology. But he is—and he should.

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  • acat

    which it is, statistically… but that ignores the significantly higher cost once a plane, or a nuclear plant, goes into a failure mode.

    Look at it this way… if the engine on my car dies, I can try to coast over to the shoulder. I have to deal with a few dozen feet of asphalt. If the engine in a Cesna dies, the pilot has a couple thousand feet of altitude to deal with … if the engines on a 747 die (let’s assume bad gas) the scenario is even worse, and – unlike any passengers in my car who can get out and help push or change a tire – everyone on board and everyone on the ground are helpless.

    If something really bad happens to a coal plant, or a natural gas turbine, or a car or truck, only the people in the immediate area die.

    If something really bad happens to a nuclear plant, the effects are similar to those of a dirty bomb – radioactive particles carried on the wind, affecting far more people.

    I’m not saying that we should give up on nuclear power – but the defense, in this case, should be to push for replacing some of these old reactor designs with something like the CANDU reactor designs that, in the event of a catastrophe, fail to a safe point. They literally cannot go into meltdown.

    Mew

    • aesthete

      but keep in mind that the reactor in question was built to withstand an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale… and that it has actually done quite well with the 9.2 earthquake it got. I don’t think that any reactors are built using older designs anymore, so that shouldn’t be a problem with future reactors.

      • acat

        because the correct response to this shouldn’t be “close the nuclear plants”, it should be “build enough newer nuclear plants to replace close the old ones.. and the coal, oil, and natural gas plants as well”.

        Mew

    • Finrod

      With coal, there’s the dangers of mine explosions or collapses that kill coal miners. Trucks carrying coal get into accidents and kill people. Pollution from coal-burning plants can cause long-term health effects that lead to fatalities.

      With oil, there can be oil spills that wipe out wildlife, or explosions that kill oil workers. Pipelines can explode. Oil refineries can catch fire. Similarly with natural gas.

      It’s not so much that nuclear energy is more dangerous than other forms of energy, it’s that its failures tend to make major headlines, whereas other forms of energy, the deaths get spread out more and are not so obviously connected to the production of energy.

      The only really bad nuclear power accident was Chernobyl, which was a nuclear power plant with substandard technology under a government that didn’t give a (deleted) about its people. There’s never been a nuclear power accident under a free government that has killed large numbers of people.

      • donnybrooke

        Well, it’s a bad situation, but “catastrophe”? I suppose thousands are dying of radiation exposure? The containment buildings have been breached and radioactive material is spewing from inside? Godzilla has been seen smashing Tokyo?

        Let’s give a list of “accidents” to put this into perspective:

        Civilian:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

        Military:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

        Gee! I didn’t know Florence, South Carolina had been “nuked” back in 1958!

        Really, the use of “catastrophe” may be a bit much in terms of the
        problems at the Fukushima facility, which survived a “catastrophic” natural disaster. But because the nuclear story is “sexier” and fits the Left’s Agenda, it is getting more play. They forget that perhaps 10,000 or more people are dead or missing from the earthquake and tsunami, and if they were actually using “logic”, they would be calling for stricter building codes for California and the areas along the New Madrid Fault.

        BTW, they speak of “hydrogen” explosions at the plant, and I just have to shake my head. What most people don’t realize is that most large power plants use hydrogen systems and have liquid hydrogen tanks on site. Hydrogen is pumped into the turbine in order to raise it’s efficiency (it’s thinner than air) and cool it. In pure form, it’s perfectly safe. But if oxygen gets into the system, then you have a BIG problem. This was our big concern at the plant where I worked for a time, not a nuclear accident.

        • etlib

          I thought the hydrogen explosion was caused by the fact that water dissociates at high temperature. the hydrogen would rise and then explosively recombine with oxygen in the air. Essentially transferring the energy from the fuel rods into an explosion.

          • donnybrooke

            The hydrogen produced by reaction of water with the fuel rod cladding is probably at the root cause. Workers would not normally vent enough hydrogen into the building to cause an explosion (especially if they had hydrogen monitors). It is how the hydrogen reached the secondary building that is confusing, but this article gives a pretty good explanation.

            http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3940804083/possible-cause-of-reactor-building-explosions

            Because of the size of the explosions, however, I was wondering if there might have been secondary hydrogen systems in use at the plant as there are at certain plants here in the US. These are used in the turbines and would create just such an explosion in the secondary building. I do not know if the Japanese plants use such systems, however.

          • ehosterman

            Was most likely a metal water reaction involving the fuel cladding in the core. As to how it got intosecondary containment, I can only speculate. I had heard from another engineer that the Fukushima Daiichi plants do not have hardened containment vemts, like US BWR’s. If that’s the case, when they were venting the primary containment, they were venting directly into secondary containment.After losing power, they would have lost their standby gas treatment system and gas would have built up in secondary containment waiting for a spark. ( However, again, this is just speculation)

            I doubt the hydrogen came from another system. The palce we’d typically use hydrogen would be in the generator and that would involve the turbine building, not the reactor building.

      • acat

        it is somewhat disingeuous.

        Nobody in the U.S. is forced to be a coal miner. (coal miner’s daughters have less choice, I understand) Potentially, Californians are going to need to stock up on iodine tablets, through choices they have no control over.

        Mew

        • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

          Care to explain what tablets I could have taken to prevent the asthma I was given by your precious fossil fuels?

          • acat

            My point to Finrod is that nuclear power plant catastrophic failures are a bit different than conventional power plant catastrophic failures.

            I see this as a good reason to replace the old water-boiler plants (there are a number of them around the Chicago area…) with better nuclear designs.

            As I’m not aware how you could have chosen to be born or raised elsewhere – most people don’t get to pick – and as I was discussing catastrophic failures, not operational side effects, while you have my sympathy, I’m not sure what else you’re after.

            Mew

          • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

            You have a bias in which you look at the news-friendly catastrophes but you ignore the co nstant catastrophe of pollution.

          • acat

            then, using that definition, we are in agreement.

            I do not see an easy road in convincing others, especially with the conservationalist movement having been clubbed like a harp seal by the power-seeking poser environmentalists still around…. but I see your point.

            Mew

          • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

            The fact is, the LA Basin pollution makes more people sick than the Japan thing ever will.

          • acat

            makes kids in urban areas stupid; their playlots and front yards are full of lead. New Orleans comes to mind. (bringing it up as another fossil fuel produced health issue)

            The time scale is distorted, though. We’ve been using fossil fuel for a lot longer than fusion…. if you count coal-burning stoves it’s centuries .. if we’re looking only at gasoline and the automobile, it’s a bit closer, and I have little doubt that nuclear will remain safer as the time scale balances out.

            As I said – it’s not going to be easy to change the perception.

            Mew

          • aesthete

            in any developed country: Chernobyl and the foibles of a command economy and its shoddy work in all facets certainly shouldn’t inform our policy. Only one person died as a result of Three Mile Island; no one has died as a result of this accident which was under the worst conditions, and no one is expected to die. To be sure, accidents happen and the toll on the environment and quality of life as a result is unfortunate. Perhaps we in the West have just been lucky and it’s inevitable, but to this day, there has only been one fatality in a non-Soviet country (and that guy was in Buenos Aires), and a handful of radiation poisonings that have resulted in health complications. If those count as “catastrophes”, then we should start calling obesity a genocide against black people and hispanics, and we should start referring to drunken bar fights as incidents of domestic terrorism. Orwell warned us about the abuse of English 50 years ago, and here we are…

          • acat

            My point was that, when a fossil fuel plant goes boom, that’s about it. Refineries go boom, coal power plants go boom, local area is affected, people die, we move on… but .. when a nuclear plant goes boom, there’s a bit more to it… and we’re watching that play out right now in Japan.

            Yes, the containment has held. Yes, nobody has died. That’s encouraging, especially since the containment is an old design. Newer designs should fare even better.

            Mew

          • aesthete

            Your use of the term “catastrophe”, in line with what every policymaker and opinion columnist is saying, simply gave me an opportunity to rant about the misuse of language in the hands of tyrants: relatively minor nuclear power accidents are “catastrophes”, but fatalities resulting from a lack of cheap energy to heat homes or light buildings are “accidents”, despite the fact that they are much more numerous. It is the politicization of the topic and language in general that I’m concerned with, not your specific posts.

          • Leon H. Wolf

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            oil, nat gas, coal and nuclear power.

            That said, is it iodiNe or iodiDe?

          • ehosterman

            following nuclear emergencies are Potasium Iodide.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
    • http://marketfundamentalist.blogspot.com/ Nick Ottens

      Accidents with nuclear power plants should be reason to build safer plants in the future. It’s not a reason not to be build new nuclear power plants at all.

      Which is not what you’re arguing of course. So this is just to say: I agree.

      • acat

        I cited the Canadian-designed CANDU because it fails relatively safe – that is, while it’s also an older design, simply by draining the heavy water and replacing it with normal water, the reaction shuts down. It does, like any light-water reactor (including the G.E. designed units in Japan) need to keep the heavy water cool, but it can’t go into meltdown without heavy water in the core.

        There are other fail-safe designs, including pebble bed reactors, but unlike the CANDU design, there are very few currently operating. Unfortunately, thanks to a lot of fear-mongering and a lack of basic understanding of science, most research on new reactor design is not happening in the U.S. or Europe.

        China, for example, has CANDU reactors running, and has built at least one pebble bed reactor, although I’m not certain whether the latter is a production or test system – that is, whether it’s intended to provide power, or just prove the concept.

        What should be happening is a build-out of these better designs, replacing the older ones. Unfortunately, the economics of building a new reactor are what Obama has been modeling the economics of building a new coal plant on – that is, delay and sue it to death…

        About the only good news I can see is that the Canadians can build CANDU reactors and use them to replace their fixed-base (i.e. power plants) hydrocarbon fuel needs, then sell us what they no longer need… or use them to extract oil from their shale sands, etc. etc.

        Mew

        • ehosterman

          of CANDU reactor designs. CANDU reactors cannot be built or operated in the US because they have a positive coefficient of reactivity. That is, power increases tend to increase power unless otherwise controlled. All reactors in the US must have negative reactivity coefficients. Also, without cooling, any reactor fuel can melt, CANDU or light water reactor. The key is a robust containment structure and diverse and redundant emergency cooling systems.

          • acat

            I’m always happy to learn, and would like to learn more about this.

            Specifically, how did the Three Mile Island design, which went out of control, demonstrating a negative coefficient? Further, the G.E. design we’re all watching in Japan appears to also not fail negative….

            I’m assuming that the negative coefficient law may have post-dated TMI, with the older designs “grandfathered”… yes?

            Even so, with the heavy water dumped out of the core of a CANDU design, and replaced with light water, enough neutrons are absorbed by the water that fission is significantly reduced.

            I also question your statement that “any reactor fuel can melt”. This is not the case with a pebble bed design – the graphite-housed balls don’t melt, although they aren’t exactly something you’d want to put on your mantle… To date, only China has built a pebble bed reactor, so I suppose we’d have to ask them.

            Mew

          • ehosterman

            don’t understand the basic difference between reactivity control and shutdown cooling. Neither TMi nor the GE plants in Japan ran “out of control”. In both cases the reactors were shutdown and the nuclear chain reaction stopped. However, decay heat can amount to close to 4% of the energy of an operating core even after several days. In the case of TMI (operator error) and the Japanese plants (tsunami induced loss of backup generators powering cooling pumps) shutdown cooling was lost allowing watre levels to drop, uncovering fuel.

            A positive or negative temperature coefficient of reactivity has to do with how a reactor core responds to increases in temperature (power). Light water reactors have negative temperature coefficients of reactivity, I.e. as reactor core temperature increases, the moderator (water) becomes less dense allowing neutrons to escape the core, this tends to decrease power in the absence of other factors. The CANDU reactors have a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity. I.e as core temperature increases power tends to increase in the absence of other factors ( I think it has to do with the neutron absorption spectrum of U-238, but it’s been a long time sice I took reactor Control system theory and i don’t feel like rummaging around in my basement to find my old textbook). The factor that makes CANDU reactors controllable is that the positive temperature coefficient is small. That means that the power changes in response to increasing temperature are small and can be offset by other controls.

            The law requiring all US reactors to have negative temperature coefficients of reactivity goes back to the early Atomic Energy Commission regulations (pre-NRC) for licensing of reactors.

            With regard to potential for meltdown, all CANDU reactor are water cooled and have large amounts of decay heat. Lose shutdown cooling and they will melt. Which is the point I was making.In Pebble Bed reactors, the fural is mixed in a poly graphite pellet, which can withstand higher temperatures than typical light water reactor fuel. However, because it is graphite, it can also burn in the presence of air. Since it would probably ignite prior to melting if the helium coolant was lost, it’s probably technically correct to say it wouldn’t melt, I’d rather have melting fuel than burning fuel (i.e. graphite moderator and fuel at Chernobyl)

            With regard to Pebble Bed reactors, there are exactly zero operating commercial Pebble Bed reactor operating. Development work is going on in South Africa, but to date, no commercial plants have been built. The Chinese reactor you have referred to is a 10MW research reactor prototype. Thet also have exactly zero commercial Pebble Bed power plants. Until any are built it will be difficult to assess their true strengths and weaknesses, although I suspect the maintenance of the helium coolant will be a big issue long term.

            In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I have a BS in Nuclear Engineering and over 30 years experience a an engineer in the Nuclear industry with a specialty in heat exchanger design and testing and cooling water system analysis, while you have apparently slept in a Holiday Inn.

            By the way, useful references on reactivity coefficients are “Nuclear Reactor Analysis” by Duderstadt and Hamilton and “Nuclear Reactor Theory” by Lamarsh.

          • aesthete

            You seem pretty knowledgeable, and kudos on being a nuclear engineer, but if you get this rankled with a questionable query in good faith in an online discussion on a topic that few people are knowledgeable on, you aren’t going to have a good time here at RS. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?)

            That aside, I am interested in the implications for structural engineering: from what I can tell from layman reports on the subject, the reactors have held up above and beyond what they were made for. If I understand correctly, worst-case scenario is a partial clad and/or fuel melt, which (again, limited understanding of the subject) is supposed to have minimal radioactive release. It’s really too bad that Germany’s anti-nuke movement has been successful in shutting down nuclear plants for a “safety review”, as there is absolutely no chance of a tsunami and a quake happening in Germany. Too bad the rubes over here are going to use this as an example of how “unsafe” nuclear power is; IIRC, it is quite near the cost of “cheap” sources of energy like coal and fossil fuels, and is relatively clean, besides.

          • ehosterman

            the post i was repsonding to, but it seemed a bit snarky With regard to my time at Red State, if you check my posting history, you’ll see I’ve been here a while. I just don’t post a lot because I don’t have time, but any discussion of nuclear energy will catch my attention, and being in the field, I want to make sure that the discussions are factual.

            With regard to the structures; it does not surprise me that they stood up to beyond design basis events. The structural calculations behind nuclear power plants are very conservatively done (as are most calculations in this field), as as a result the structures have a great deal of margin, even at design basis conditions.

          • acat

            I am not a nuclear engineer, although I read a good bit, and I tend to pick up odd facts here and there. One of them is that the CANDU design uses heavy water specifically because it absorbs fewer neutrons than light water.

            Replace the heavy water with light water in a CANDU, and the reaction is slowed. Yes, the fuel rods can melt if all water is removed or it boils, but the reaction cannot go out of control. It reaches a determinable worst case, and sits there.

            As for the pebble bed – there’s at least two assumptions to the catching-fire issue. First, helium coolant is gone. Second, oxygen (air) has become present. (I know it’s simple, but .. no o2, no fire) Further, that no additional steps have been taken from the time the coolant was lost (or air entered .. likely the same catastrophic event) until the flash point of graphite is reached. This is not an insigificant amount of time.

            Further, merely separating the pebbles, as with replacing the water in the CANDU design, slows the reaction as fewer neutrinos make it from one pebble to another. Spread them far enough, and they just sit there emitting heat.

            I’m not a nuclear engineer, you’re right about that, but I am pro-nuclear power, provided it can be done safely.

            Given your answers, while I am not disputing your credentials, I do wonder about your motives.

            Mew

          • ehosterman

            an online discussion of nuclear power stays factual and is informed by knowledge. In fact, CANDU reactors are no more or less safe than light water reactors. Dumping the heavy watr to shutdown the nuclear reaction is no more passive safe than inserting control rods. Both are designed to fail safe and both require decay heat removal. CANDu reactor however, require heavy water, which is expensive, and because of licensing regulations, can’t be built in the US.

            With regard to the pebble Bed, I tend to be sceptical of new designs until they are proven in use. With regard to the assumptionof air entering following loss of helium cooling, and no other actions taking place, it’s no different than what’s taking place in japan right now. A lot of expected operator action aren’t taking place because the beyond design basis earthquake and tsunami eliminated all of the AC power (both normal and emergency sources). yet still the offsite release of radiation is being minimized, even from a 40 year old reactor.

          • acat

            and I’m skeptical of pebble-bed designs .. but I’m also critical (and have been since the ’70s) that the existing designs make some dangerous assumptions – one is that electrical power will be available.

            What happened in Japan is my worst-case guess for Chicago in the event the New Madrid fault lets go. Braidwood, Zion, etc. are all obviously ready for an 8.0 or higher quake, and I’m happy to see that the G.E. designs are exceeding expectations, but the grid that they’ll be depending on isn’t….

            I am not anti-nuclear power – one of the things the McCain campaign got right was wanting to build more nuclear power facilities. I just want them designed with, as Machiavelli may have put it, as little reliance on outside resources as possible. Mechanical systems, gravity driven, non-powered convection-based cooling systems… Yes, they add cost. So what? Seat belts add cost to cars, but few argue whether they are worthwhile…

            Mew

  • ehosterman

    The worst damage that will be done by this disaster is the irresponsible reporting and the effect on the worldwide cost of energy. based on th eradiation reading I’ve seen to date, no one has suffered from radiation poisoning. The maximum exposure is 10 Rem. At that level I’d expect no health effects. The maximum dose rates in the vicinity of the plant for a short period of time are on the order of the exposures experienced by commercial airline crews.

    The plants will almost certainly be scrapped, but the containment structures did what they were designed to do. They are protecting the public, even in the face of beyond design basis events. That is why redundancy is designed into the plants.

  • runner12

    of nuclear power. Sorry, but I just don’t buy the “it could never happen” mentality. Just look at the story of the Titanic and you can understand the faulty reasoning that if we build it better, bigger, and stronger all will be well and nothing bad will happen.

    I don’t buy into all of the hype regarding Japan because I know most of it is tripe to sell newpapers and increase ratings. However, the whole concept of nuclear power just kind of creeps me out a little. Let’s put it this way, I would not live near a nuclear power plant for any amount of money.

  • rickbull

    a coal fired power planet, either. When operating properly, a coal fired plant emits more radiation than a fission reactor power plant, not to mention the other aerosol emissions that occur with burning coal.

    Chernobyl melted down because the reactor had no containment to flood to stop the runaway reaction.

    Three Mile Island almost melted down because the engineers were more concerned with dollars than safety. Had they not overridden the failsafe systems, the plant would have shut down normally, and the only incident would have been a power shortage on the electrical grid.

    The GE plants in Japan that they are scrambling to get under control right now have been on the IAEA and NRC’s troubled design list since 1972.

    Bottom line: safe nuclear power is all about building plants right in the first place, and letting the backup systems and failsafe systems do their jobs if there is a problem.

    Oh, and don’t let the Soviet nuclear engineers anywhere near your hometown.

  • runner12

    I am just stating how I feel and how many other Americans may feel as well. Despite all of the reassurances, whenever you throw the word “nuclear” in the mix, the response will usually be negative.

  • etlib

    People aren’t always rational about risks. Especially when the media saturate the culture with a particular message.

  • rickbull