Three Mile Island's containment worked. Only a small amount of radioactive
steam got outside. What prolonged the incident was the location of an indicator
lamp. While the crew was clustered in one spot trying to figure out where all
the water they were pumping into the core was going, the light indicating a
valve was open (which should have automatically closed) was on the other side
of the room. When someone finally noticed the light and hit the manual close
control, cooling water quit blowing out of the containment vessel and the core
was able to cool down. Unfortunately it had gotten hot enough to ruin it.
At the time, control system that brought things to the operator rather than
requiring the operator to constantly move around to check on things were the
realm of science fiction, or were just in their early stages. TMI didn't have
monitors that would pop up a "Hey! This valve isn't closed!" alert right in
front of them.
But such systems have existed for 30+ years. Many types of factories and plants
use computer screens with graphical schematics and readouts of all the critical
things. Operators can point and click to open and close valves, adjust
temperatures, even emergency shutdown the entire system to bring it all to a
halt.
But not at any of the old nuclear power plants. Their control rooms look like
something from 40~50 years ago because they *are* from 40~50 years ago. Never
upgraded, never modernized, never made one iota safer than the day their
construction was finished. Even worse, they went into operation with control
systems already years obsolete because of the drawn out process of fighting
governments and protestors who refuse to learn and understand any facts about
nuclear power - or refuse to allow newer, better technology to be used.
I suspect there was much cackling with glee among the no-nukes crowd when
Fukishima went kablooey. Their obstructionism 'proved' that nuclear power is
'unsafe' by blocking any safety improvements from being made.
Nevermind that radiation release, while worse than TMI was nowhere near on the
scale of Chernobyl. Their constant obstructionism to upgrades is the root cause
of why the tsunami was able to cause the right sort of damage that led to the
overheating, hydrogen explosions etc. The diesel backup generators should have
been relocated to a better spot, provided with better flood protection, or had
additional generators added and better protected. I would not be surprised to
find that all of that (and other safety upgrades) had been proposed at various
times, and blocked by anti-nuke politicians.
The Fukishima reactor complex was designed to be safe from a tsunami wave like
the last big one that had caused major damage many years before. Tsunami walls,
floodgates, and various other mediation projects had been implemented,
especially in locations where the previous tsunami had caused the most damage.
None of it did much good VS the 2011 tsunami that was 1.5x, 2x or more larger.
A wall designed to hold back a 15 foot wave doesn't help much when hit by a 25
foot wave.
The one problem I see as being really troublesome with the design of Fukushima
is that it apparently was incapable of being fully self powering of all its
systems at any time. Who designs a power plant able to run for 25 years or so,
producing electricity, without needing to be refueled, that does not tap its
own power generation to run all of its electronics, pumps etc? No nuclear power
plant should require an external electricity supply for anything as long as at
least one reactor is 'hot' and one turbine is running. IMHO, an ideal
multi-reactor power plant should have one small reactor/turbine/generator set
for powering everything in the facility. One the size of what's used in a
nuclear submarine. Under normal conditions its output would be added to what
the big reactors and generators produce, but in an emergency where the big
reactors are shut down, the little one would stay up and running, in its well
armored and isolated, flood proof, building, supported on isolating springs.
When the earthquake hit, Fukushima went to automatic shutdown. Apparently the
external power supply also went down so the diesel generators kicked in. That's
where the trouble began. The tsunami took out the generators, which shut down
the cooling pumps. Since there wasn't any other way to get power to the pumps
to cool down the reactor cores, they heated up to the point where the water in
the vessels split into hydrogen and oxygen, which then caused explosions.
Better protected generators, and more of them, plus modern control systems with
the ability to quickly self test for damage and get back online after a SCRAM
initiated by the earthquake sensors - might have gotten one core back online
and the facility back under self power in the time between the quake and the
tsunami hitting. But that couldn't happen because Fukushima was forced to be
frozen in the technological past.
Is Japan still keeping all their nuclear plants idle? They've had to import and
burn more fuel to provide electricity since the government ordered all the
reactors shut down.
On Saturday, March 9, 2019, 8:26:16 PM MST, Gene Heskett
<ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote:
Unfortunately for us, the sun has its own way of balanceing things and it
generally Just Works. Thank $Diety its not big enough to nova, but will
end ts life in 5 billion years as a bettelgues? lookalike. Leave it to
humans with no concept of common sense, but lots of don't rock the boat
rules and you get TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. And probably 100 more
lessor 'accidents' we haven't been told about.
The first thing the regulators will do is freeze the design down to the
last screw in it, no matter if a far better way to do it is later found.
My son, who works for a service company that does service work on
electronics that fail in these power facilities on this side of the
pond, he can't replace anything with a newer, better part, it has to be
an official OEM part. No modern, thousands of times more dependable
transistor carrying 10x the voltage and current ratings can be used.
They wind up buying $5k worth of old transistors hoping to find one good
one in the lot. Thats pure BS, the improved technology should be
welcomed. But you can't tell them anything, because the people that
write the rules only know this worked so they'll never ever allow
something that hasn't passed the test of time measured in decades.
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