Saturday, March 19, 2011

Fukushima: It's All About The Spent Fuel Rods Pool

There will not be a Chernobyl-like scenario event in Japan, only stupid people buy potassium iodide pills, and the worst that can happen is the spent fuel rods pool dries up. THEY know that, so relax.

Meet Gary "GW" Johnson of Texas, a REAL engineer (also a Maths and Engineering professor, consultant, and as you'll see a Professional Cactus killer) who is all over this Japanese Nuclear Reactors mess. When all else fails, consult the experts. Somebody should alert the media.

From  Gary's weblog, I give you his latest on the tragedy below, and if you like that please read his original posting which you can find on his weblog by clicking here. Thank you, Gary.

Figure 1 – Reactor Containments vs Spent Fuel Ponds


The egregious “Chicken Little / The Sky Is Falling” reporting continues unabated over Japan’s nuclear plant crisis. I am getting very disgusted with all the fear-mongering-for-profit.

News media: please learn something about what you are talking about, before opening mouth and inserting foot. The run you have precipitated on anti-radiation iodine pills in the US is completely ridiculous, even insane.

It’s not that there aren’t serious risks at this plant, because there are. But, they have little to do with what gets splattered all over the evening news. Please refer to my previous posting on this subject (15 March 2011), and to figure 1 below.

Even if the reactor cores completely melt down, there is no risk of a Chernobyl-style intense-radiation event. Most, although maybe not all, the intensely-radioactive debris will remain within the outer (#3) containment, even if it is breached.

Breaching the #3 containment into the atmosphere to leak copious amounts of dangerous stuff is extremely unlikely in the extreme. This is for precisely the same reason that most of the fibrous “tire snot” sealing materials stay inside the tire, even after a blowout.

In any event, breaching that #3 outer containment is unlikely, because it is so very tough. This type of concrete and steel construction is pretty much the same as those concrete and steel structures still standing at ground zero of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bomb explosions in 1945.

There, that should “calibrate” your gut feel for just how tough these structures really are.

Breaching the floor of the #3 containment, and releasing dangerous stuff into the earth and groundwater is more likely, but only in the event of a full core meltdown, which is still pretty unlikely, in spite of the severity of the disaster in Japan.

However, this is not atmospheric dispersion, and it stays more or less confined in a definite and geographically-small area. Radioactive fallout from the air is just not a risk more than a few miles from the plant, no matter what happens.

The real risk in this particular disaster is not the reactor and its containment structures, it is the spent fuel rod disposal ponds. These have little or no containment. If they go dry, and the spent fuel rods overheat and catch fire, that really is atmospheric dispersal of some very dangerous stuff.

That is the only thing anybody should be seriously worried about.

There are some lessons to be learned here. They are applicable to retrofits of existing nuclear plants, and to new plant designs. They are also nothing but plain old “horse sense”.

The Japanese plant was designed to withstand a Richter magnitude 8.2 earthquake, and quite successfully withstood magnitude 8.9. However, the geologic record (not the historical record) suggests that the Pacific Ring of Fire experiences quakes substantially above magnitude 9.

Not much can be done to “harden” existing plants. But, pick any number you want for design criteria for future plants. How about 9.5?

The problem in Japan wasn’t so much earthquake damage, it was the tsunami. Nobody planned for a 30-foot wave to sweep away the electrical grid and to disable all the back-up generators and water supplies. They haven’t seen a tsunami like that in Japan since 1700 AD.

Yet, the geologic record suggests that there actually have been far higher tsunami waves all around the Pacific, and in other oceans as well, including the Gulf of Mexico. Pick any number you want, but numbers on the order of 100 to 200 feet tall seem to have happened multiple times, all around the world in the geologic record. Just not within recorded history.

The other problem is the lack of multiple containment, around the spent fuel rod storage ponds. This is retro-fittable at every plant in the world today. It should be done as soon as is practical. It’s a safety thing, the “bottom line” is (and should always be) secondary to that consideration.


-- Gary Johnson

9 comments:

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

I find myself with mixed feeling regarding the recent events in Japan, with my first being my overwhelming sorrow regarding what has happened and yet my second being how the insular nature of their society has not only made things more difficult for themselves, yet potentially more dangerous for those beyond their concern.

That is there is a fine line between the strengths of the nobility found in self reliance and the folly mitigated by such when extended to the consequence(s) of arrogance. I’m not suggesting the Japanese being the only people so inflicted, simply reminding they being one of the most vulnerable. In contrast I’m encouraged by the position your president has taken in respect to the situation in Libya, where he places America as a supporter of the international position, rather than a representative of solely national concerns and policy. In such respect I find the direction of Japan and America as the former being mostly oblivious to others and the later in mindful recognition. Thus my concern rests more with matters such as this, rather than any concern of a technical nature. That is when it comes to the consequence of losing face it being important as to which one you see as being reflected in the mirror.

Best,

Phil

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

What I really wanted to convey is there are people around the world that can help in such trying times having experience going back to the very beginnings of the technology, such as held by you Yanks and us Canucks along with many others.

Best,

Phil

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

It would be nice if past President Jimmy Carter were offered to act as a Presidential special envoy in this matter. I say this because he is one of the few living people to have actually faced such a situation and thus could perhaps prove very useful as a liaison. That is it’s one thing to talk about theory and yet completely different when it’s expected to be turned into practice. I always admired President Carter and thought him not getting a second term not only marked a sad turning point in American history yet for the world more generally. Let more engineers and scientist run the world and we would all be bettered served is what I say.

Best,

Phil

Steven Colyer said...

Wow, Phil, you're quite the poster today, thanks. Yeah, Carter, what can I say? He was too honest. He called voters lazy, and he was right, and that's suicidal politics. Is it AS suicidal as raising taxes when you say you won't, like Daddy Bush did? No. But it's pretty bad.

As far as Engineering Presidents go, we've only had two as far as I know, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, and they were both one-termers. I think it has something to do vs the honesty of Math and Science running up against the inherent cesspool dishonesty of Politics.

On your side of the border, for example, I'm still laughing at that moment so long ago when former PM Pierre Trudeau gave the middle finger from a train to the people of Saskatchewan as he was passing through, remember? Wow, funny. I bet that didn't help him in the next election. ;-)

Yeah, Carter as ambassador? Well, he WAS a nuclear engineer, having worked for the incomparable genius Hyman Rickover, but I wouldn't fret too much about Japan. They are an ancient culture and a tough people, and very competent for the most part (except for their recent financial situation, and that was beFORE this disaster). They'll bounce back, and bounce back well, I'm sure.

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

Yes you’re right Carter was too honest and yet he was a visionary. Ronald Reagan couldn’t wait to get into the Whitehouse to tear down the solar panels Carter had installed. As for Trudeau he never had any support in the west to begin with and thus was taking little risk. He is a completely different story as not being an engineer or scientist yet rather an intellectual of the social/political stripe which I ‘ve always been even more wary of then the lawyers. Yes it true that only Hoover and Carter were engineer’s yet Washington was once a surveyor and Jefferson an Architect for a time.

As for Canadian Prime Ministers we had Alexander Mackenzie as a stone mason, Charles Tupper a physician, William Lyon Mackenzie King a academic intellectual, Lester B. Pearson Professor of History and foreign affairs, Pierre Trudeau, Professor and intellectual. The rest unfortunately have all been lawyers.

The one who I thought who should have given it shot however was lured away by our American cousins only to to keep them amused :-)

Best,

Phil

Steven Colyer said...

Phil, I totally love Jim-muh and his wife Roslyn but don't ever forget he is still to this day considered a mixed bag and is quite controversial.

As an MBA, I can assure you that he and the president who followed him, Ronald Reagan, were and are considered the two extremes of Management "types", neither one considered "good", if you or your organization wish to do well. Reagan was the ultimate delegator and Carter the ultimate micro-manager.

Both were a "fail" in that sense.

Phil Warnell said...

Hi Steven,

I liked Reagan the man yet disliked Reagan the politician, while with Jimmy Carter I liked both. I’m not certain what you mean by Carter being a micro manager as from what I can remember he even listened to his young daughter Amy when it came to things like nuclear disarmament:-)

Best,

Phil

Gary Johnson said...

I suppose politics could be considered a four-letter word, except it has too many damned letters.

GW

Steven Colyer said...

Hi hear you GW. I suppose I should put up a Political Jokes post, but if I did it would be like a bottomless pit of a black hole for me, and I might not ever stop!

Here's my favorite one, by my favorite dead American author:

First you have your idiots.
Then you have Congressmen.
But I repeat myself.

... Mark Twain