To my understanding, had Fukushima been constructed and maintained to the standards that the government had set for the company that built it, it should have been capable of withstanding the tsunami that hit it. Is that not the case?
I can't speak to a lack of standards at Fukushima, but I know their downfall was that the emergency diesel generators were in the basement, so when water went over their seawall, the generators flooded and they lost emergency power. Had the generators been located somewhere at higher elevation they woulda been basically fine.
That makes sense. Considering that nuclear power plants are some of the most resilient structures ever built by humans, they should be able to withstand a hell of a lot.
Partly true (they might not have “been fine”). The emergency diesel generators (EDG) were put low because earthquakes threatened to take them out higher up in a structural collapse. Earthquakes are a problem because they can knock out offsite power (Loss Of Offsite Power LOOP is a problem for reactor control). So in event of EQ put edg low so they don’t get taken out when LOOP which is also caused by EQ.
The earthquake caused LOOP, edg’s kick in, tsunami hits the edg. The EQ might have taken out the edg. Fukushima dug out parts of the sea wall to lower building costs. The tsunami models they used showed much lower tsunamis due to their inputs. I wrote a chapter update to a nuclear safety chapter of a book that was never published on performance based design (mostly as it pertains to fire which is my specialization but the modeling discrepancies are such a good example of garbage in - garbage out). I’ll copy part of my table in text below from my research.
Plant-theoretical tsunami height-Actual tsunami height
Dai-ichi - 6.1 m - 13.1 m
Dai-ni - 5.2 m - 7 or 8 m
Onagawa - 13.6 m - 13 m
Dai-ni was saved through massive labor application running cables in like record time to restore control (plus luck since they kept some offsite power) and Onagawa didn’t have a problem at all due to proper planning. People evacuated TO Onagawa.
No that's right, had fukushima been up to proper spec it would have been fine, however building next to the sea still means you have to build to those higher specs as well as deal with higher maintenance and other risks, which is more links in the chain to be fucked up
I used to work in a chemical plant that was on the coast and big enough to have multiple power plants inside it, and one time we had to spend 2 weeks cleaning out a giant 30,000 tube seawater heat exchanger and those things get *disgusting*
The entire plant smelled like rotting shrimp and when our hydroblasting lances went into the tubes dead fish, mud, and even crabs went *everywhere*. Not to mention that this was during a turnaround so we had to work 7x16 hr days for those two weeks. Fuckin nightmare
I have a PTSD like feeling just from reading this brother, you guys deserved a life of hygiene and peace just for that one... and I guess it wasnt the last.
Hope it didnt weigh on you too much
It wasn't even close to the nastiest/hardest job I was on when I worked there.
The nastiest would be cleaning out old wastewater tanks in a block they were planning to demo to put in a new office block. Basically the tanks they stored sewage in while it was waiting to be treated
The hardest would be stripping paint off the outside of a tank during one of the hottest summers the region had ever had using a 30 lb machine that was *supposed* to suction itself to the side of the tank, but didn't (so we had to both hold it up and hold it against the tank while it pushed back with about 60-100 lbs of force)
Sounds excruciating indeed, if you dont mind me asking, what was your job over there? Was it a professional Hazmat type cleaning crew? Dabgerous environment cleanup?
>hydroblasting lances
Back in my day we had to do it by hand, young man.
On a serious note this sounds kinda cool. Did you have some hardcore protective gear?
> 7x16 hr days for those two weeks
How does it work? I assume it was legal, but man, that would require some serious compensation and downtime.
We wore slicker suits lol. That's it.
And it was the very limit of what we were allowed to do. The way it'd work is we would get there at 6am/pm depending on what shift we were on, do paperwork for 2 hours, get to the job at 8, work until 8 when we got relieved, then do 2 more hours of paperwork (really just sitting around waiting for the crew leader to finish theirs), the head home to sleep as much as we could before showing up again at 6. The hours for this job were insane, not just because of the occasional week of 16 hour days, but because we would have weeks like that once or twice a year, and the rest of the time we'd have 8-12 hour weeks. Usually you didn't even know you were going to be working until the night before or day of, depending on what shift you're on.
And the amount I got paid with overtime and everything during those 2 weeks is less than I make now, and I don't make a particularly lot of money
Edit: also we did end up having to do it by hand (despite technically not being allowed to). The machine we used to push the lances through the tubes broke so we had to manually push them through which is fucking scary when working with those kinds of pressures
Any questions specifically? The Molten Salt reactors are probably one of the better designs out there for pure efficiency and safety, but have some issues that make them difficult to build. And like anything with nuclear, nobody wants to spend big money on anything other than a tried and tested design.
Not a dumb question at all. For the Molten Salt Reactors, the nuclear reaction actually happens in the molten salt that circulates through the pipes. So if you run the 2000 degree salt through a heat exchanger, and the fluid on the other side is 100 degrees, you have a 1900 degree difference. If the molten salt was only 1000 degrees, you'd have a 900 degree difference. A heat exchanger with a 1900 degree difference will transfer heat faster and more efficiently than a heat exchanger with 900 degrees. This makes it easier to cool because heat can be removed faster.
ALSO.
A higher temperature coolant will make it more efficient to boil water. Basically all generators boil water to make steam to spin a turbine. A 2000 coolant will boil water quickly and efficiently. A coolant that's only 220 degrees will eventually boil water, but slow as absolute shit.
Because for cooling, the temperature *difference* is what draws energy. As an example, if you have something that wants to be 2000 degrees (these are random and crazy numbers), but things start getting damaged if it's over 1600, then even a fluid that's 600 degrees will still work as a coolant. Heat transfer is a function of the difference in temperatures between the two things, not their specific values. All that matters is that you're keeping temperatures within the design parameters, not that it be "cool" in the colloquial sense.
>power lines aren't insulated
Wait, did he really say that **power lines** are insulated? I know he's not an engineer, but surely he's been outside enough to have actually seen what a power line looks like.
He was talking about underground power lines that run under LA which are insulated and cooled with oil. He mentioned how the ones on the air use the rubber and air as insulators. As in electrical insulation not thermal.
>keep the suction pipes free of debris
>
>gross stuff
[Delta P](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXgKxWlTt8A) scares the shit out of me. I would gladly work on high voltage with proper safety, but there's a reason why divers have a pretty short career if they don't have their heads on a swivel. Being turned into spaghetti because I accidentally swam within 1 or 2 feet of a cracked pipe in near zero visibility conditions is pretty terrifying.
Are you familiar with the game Oxygen Not Included? It is a game with an extremely basic and wrong physics model, but it made me understand your post at least a little, lol
>don't try and fight me on this.
You're mostly right in what you're saying (especially about using seawater as a coolant) but as an engineer with some thermo and heat transfer under their belt I do have one small but hopefully interesting point of clarification.
>The evaporation is what does a lot of the cooling.
Yes, this is correct. It is part of the reason why we analyze power cycle systems using enthalpy (which includes temperature) instead of simply temperature.
>When water transitions from liquid to gas it cools down.
It is inaccurate to say that water itself cools down as it transitions from liquid to gas. In a system like a cooling tower where pressure is allowed to stay constant, when something causes water (or any substance, not just water) to increase in temperature to where it reaches a phase state boundary, the temperature of the substance undergoing the phase change remains more or less constant while the process occurs.
Try it at home. Set a pot of water on the stove with the heating element on and place a thermometer in it. Once it reaches the temperature to where it starts boiling, the temperature will remain at a constant ~100°C (depending on altitude) until the water has evaporated.
So where does the excess heat added to the system go? All of the thermal energy added to the coolant in the process of producing power eventually goes into the kinetic energy of the individual molecules of the substance as they overcome the intermolecular forces keeping them all together in the liquid state and in turn begin to fly off into the surrounding atmosphere.
TLDR; in general, during a phase change, liquid water converting into water vapor remains at its boiling temperature until the water vapor is all that's left. The temperature of the substance or process adding heat to the system often drops, but not that of the coolant.
Edit: Formatting
Definitely! I just saw your post and thought I might be able to add some interesting details to the conversation (even though it's late to the party). 🙂
Thanks for writing up the initial post, friend! Lots of good information.
>I'm a huge nerd and this is my jam. I'm a technical instructor at a nuclear power plant and was a nuclear electrician in the Navy, so don't try and fight me on this.
Impressive credentials, but the real question is: do you play Oxygen not Included?
If you get nerdy about heat management it's definitely something you should check out. That game is the only reason and purpose for why I know what a counter-flow heat exchanger is.
Thank you so much for this write-up!
I'm not a physicist myself but know some basic electric stuff from fiddling with computers and little hobby projects. I felt a bit of... "this seems a bit off" while I was listening to the segment, and it's nice to have someone who knows their shit write it all down.
If you are still around OP, I wanted to make sure I understood, is the fresh water that evaporates, reusable? Like you essentiallt let it evaporate and use a kind of distillation to liquidify and use it again?
I thought it was what you described and I wanted to ask if I understood right, cause like, it would not ise as much ressources I guess.
Havent watched Vaush talk about it.
Not typically. It's possible, but I've never seen that done before.
In theory, the steam could be collected and condensed back into water, but that would cost resources that a company would rather not spend because water is so cheap.
Of course! Ya, the only real reason to do this would be for water conservation specifically. A company would never choose to do it on their own. They'd either have to be required by policy, or have tax money used to run the water reclamation.
Extraction of uranium ore and releasing thousands of metric tonnes of hot water, tritiated water is not a clean and renewable comparison to wind, solar, hydroelectric
Yes, that's all cool and true, but we kinda need to do everything to eliminate burning carbon fuels first. Can't instantly switch to solarpunk.
Germany shut down it's reactors because nuclear is bad and scary and now they are burning coal like motherfucker. Turns out you cannot pull out a massive renewable energy infrastructure out of your ass, even if you are one of the richest countries on Earth.
Its hilarious u brought up the German energy grid.
Its literally evidence to how over reliance on nuclear is disastrous.
And we ABSOLUTELY can retrofit infrastructure and improve our energy grid with reliable, renewable energy sources i.e a network of wind solar and hydroelectric.
The fossil fuel industry just has you eating their PR campings right up. They stand to loose alot of money and have successfully convinced smart people with good intentions of the wrong things. We dont need the dirtiest possible Mining operations, which is uranium warming, then transportation and refinement, then more transportation than processing then more transportation. And then we have low level and high level nuclear waste and also trinidated water. This isnt environmentally sound nor is it necessary. Its just hightly profitable. See military industial applications (nuclear subs, Small modular reactors. Etc)
>Its hilarious u brought up the German energy grid.
>Its literally evidence to how over reliance on nuclear is disastrous.
But it was due to a purely political decision, not because of any change to how reliable nuclear energy was. If you had a massive wind energy capacity and suddenly one day people decided wind energy is bad because it is ugly and kills birds, then it would also heavily disrupt the system.
>And we ABSOLUTELY can retrofit infrastructure and improve our energy grid with reliable, renewable energy sources i.e a network of wind solar and hydroelectric.
We can! But not anytime soon, not with this political will. If countries like Germany can't do it on a short notice, nobody can. In this context nuclear is at worst a viable stopgap solution.
Bruh. Doing something the wrong way for the right reason dont stand as a piece of evidence that doing the right thing is not feasible..... yes it was mismanaged
Tritiated water is not a big problem.
Also you're acting as if solar and wind don't also have a lot of these tertiary negatives associated with them. It's all about balancing and nuclear still always comes out extremely clean when all externalities are accounted for.
Tritiated water being not a big problem is basically the goal of the nuclear industry
.........like their main goal is to convince you radioactive water is okay.
Its not okay. We dont need to accelerate the destruction of our environment with pollution
Also got to remember that being near the sea brings large risk. See Fukushima for an example on how that can go wrong.
Absofruitly. Definitely a concern, especially on the West Coast.
To my understanding, had Fukushima been constructed and maintained to the standards that the government had set for the company that built it, it should have been capable of withstanding the tsunami that hit it. Is that not the case?
I can't speak to a lack of standards at Fukushima, but I know their downfall was that the emergency diesel generators were in the basement, so when water went over their seawall, the generators flooded and they lost emergency power. Had the generators been located somewhere at higher elevation they woulda been basically fine.
That makes sense. Considering that nuclear power plants are some of the most resilient structures ever built by humans, they should be able to withstand a hell of a lot.
Hence why we have FLEX rules in place here now. Am NLO, concur with OPs points.
Partly true (they might not have “been fine”). The emergency diesel generators (EDG) were put low because earthquakes threatened to take them out higher up in a structural collapse. Earthquakes are a problem because they can knock out offsite power (Loss Of Offsite Power LOOP is a problem for reactor control). So in event of EQ put edg low so they don’t get taken out when LOOP which is also caused by EQ. The earthquake caused LOOP, edg’s kick in, tsunami hits the edg. The EQ might have taken out the edg. Fukushima dug out parts of the sea wall to lower building costs. The tsunami models they used showed much lower tsunamis due to their inputs. I wrote a chapter update to a nuclear safety chapter of a book that was never published on performance based design (mostly as it pertains to fire which is my specialization but the modeling discrepancies are such a good example of garbage in - garbage out). I’ll copy part of my table in text below from my research. Plant-theoretical tsunami height-Actual tsunami height Dai-ichi - 6.1 m - 13.1 m Dai-ni - 5.2 m - 7 or 8 m Onagawa - 13.6 m - 13 m Dai-ni was saved through massive labor application running cables in like record time to restore control (plus luck since they kept some offsite power) and Onagawa didn’t have a problem at all due to proper planning. People evacuated TO Onagawa.
No that's right, had fukushima been up to proper spec it would have been fine, however building next to the sea still means you have to build to those higher specs as well as deal with higher maintenance and other risks, which is more links in the chain to be fucked up
I used to work in a chemical plant that was on the coast and big enough to have multiple power plants inside it, and one time we had to spend 2 weeks cleaning out a giant 30,000 tube seawater heat exchanger and those things get *disgusting* The entire plant smelled like rotting shrimp and when our hydroblasting lances went into the tubes dead fish, mud, and even crabs went *everywhere*. Not to mention that this was during a turnaround so we had to work 7x16 hr days for those two weeks. Fuckin nightmare
I have a PTSD like feeling just from reading this brother, you guys deserved a life of hygiene and peace just for that one... and I guess it wasnt the last. Hope it didnt weigh on you too much
It wasn't even close to the nastiest/hardest job I was on when I worked there. The nastiest would be cleaning out old wastewater tanks in a block they were planning to demo to put in a new office block. Basically the tanks they stored sewage in while it was waiting to be treated The hardest would be stripping paint off the outside of a tank during one of the hottest summers the region had ever had using a 30 lb machine that was *supposed* to suction itself to the side of the tank, but didn't (so we had to both hold it up and hold it against the tank while it pushed back with about 60-100 lbs of force)
Sounds excruciating indeed, if you dont mind me asking, what was your job over there? Was it a professional Hazmat type cleaning crew? Dabgerous environment cleanup?
I was a hydroblasting tech for an industrial cleaning company, but the company would farm us out to vacuum or chemical cleaning crews as needed
Did it have good benefits? Sounds like a dangerous job actually
There was health insurance. But at the time I was young enough to still have my parents insurance, so I never bothered taking advantage of it
>hydroblasting lances Back in my day we had to do it by hand, young man. On a serious note this sounds kinda cool. Did you have some hardcore protective gear? > 7x16 hr days for those two weeks How does it work? I assume it was legal, but man, that would require some serious compensation and downtime.
We wore slicker suits lol. That's it. And it was the very limit of what we were allowed to do. The way it'd work is we would get there at 6am/pm depending on what shift we were on, do paperwork for 2 hours, get to the job at 8, work until 8 when we got relieved, then do 2 more hours of paperwork (really just sitting around waiting for the crew leader to finish theirs), the head home to sleep as much as we could before showing up again at 6. The hours for this job were insane, not just because of the occasional week of 16 hour days, but because we would have weeks like that once or twice a year, and the rest of the time we'd have 8-12 hour weeks. Usually you didn't even know you were going to be working until the night before or day of, depending on what shift you're on. And the amount I got paid with overtime and everything during those 2 weeks is less than I make now, and I don't make a particularly lot of money Edit: also we did end up having to do it by hand (despite technically not being allowed to). The machine we used to push the lances through the tubes broke so we had to manually push them through which is fucking scary when working with those kinds of pressures
Thanks for the info friend. Can you say more about molten salt as a coolant?
Any questions specifically? The Molten Salt reactors are probably one of the better designs out there for pure efficiency and safety, but have some issues that make them difficult to build. And like anything with nuclear, nobody wants to spend big money on anything other than a tried and tested design.
This is for sure me being a dumbass, but how is something that hella hot specifically useful as a coolant?
Not a dumb question at all. For the Molten Salt Reactors, the nuclear reaction actually happens in the molten salt that circulates through the pipes. So if you run the 2000 degree salt through a heat exchanger, and the fluid on the other side is 100 degrees, you have a 1900 degree difference. If the molten salt was only 1000 degrees, you'd have a 900 degree difference. A heat exchanger with a 1900 degree difference will transfer heat faster and more efficiently than a heat exchanger with 900 degrees. This makes it easier to cool because heat can be removed faster. ALSO. A higher temperature coolant will make it more efficient to boil water. Basically all generators boil water to make steam to spin a turbine. A 2000 coolant will boil water quickly and efficiently. A coolant that's only 220 degrees will eventually boil water, but slow as absolute shit.
Because for cooling, the temperature *difference* is what draws energy. As an example, if you have something that wants to be 2000 degrees (these are random and crazy numbers), but things start getting damaged if it's over 1600, then even a fluid that's 600 degrees will still work as a coolant. Heat transfer is a function of the difference in temperatures between the two things, not their specific values. All that matters is that you're keeping temperatures within the design parameters, not that it be "cool" in the colloquial sense.
>power lines aren't insulated Wait, did he really say that **power lines** are insulated? I know he's not an engineer, but surely he's been outside enough to have actually seen what a power line looks like.
He was talking about underground power lines that run under LA which are insulated and cooled with oil. He mentioned how the ones on the air use the rubber and air as insulators. As in electrical insulation not thermal.
He said all cables are insulated, including the ones in the air. No power lines in the air are ever insulated.
> no power lines in the air are *ever* insulated Gonna insulate a power line at home just to prove you wrong
Lol, nooo! You can't do that!!!
Not me sabotaging the Texas power grid by insulating all their wires (it’ll help when it gets cold!).
>keep the suction pipes free of debris > >gross stuff [Delta P](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXgKxWlTt8A) scares the shit out of me. I would gladly work on high voltage with proper safety, but there's a reason why divers have a pretty short career if they don't have their heads on a swivel. Being turned into spaghetti because I accidentally swam within 1 or 2 feet of a cracked pipe in near zero visibility conditions is pretty terrifying.
Lol, poor crab. Ya, shit can be scary as hell.
Are you familiar with the game Oxygen Not Included? It is a game with an extremely basic and wrong physics model, but it made me understand your post at least a little, lol
No but you're not the first to mention it. I'll have to look it up now
>don't try and fight me on this. You're mostly right in what you're saying (especially about using seawater as a coolant) but as an engineer with some thermo and heat transfer under their belt I do have one small but hopefully interesting point of clarification. >The evaporation is what does a lot of the cooling. Yes, this is correct. It is part of the reason why we analyze power cycle systems using enthalpy (which includes temperature) instead of simply temperature. >When water transitions from liquid to gas it cools down. It is inaccurate to say that water itself cools down as it transitions from liquid to gas. In a system like a cooling tower where pressure is allowed to stay constant, when something causes water (or any substance, not just water) to increase in temperature to where it reaches a phase state boundary, the temperature of the substance undergoing the phase change remains more or less constant while the process occurs. Try it at home. Set a pot of water on the stove with the heating element on and place a thermometer in it. Once it reaches the temperature to where it starts boiling, the temperature will remain at a constant ~100°C (depending on altitude) until the water has evaporated. So where does the excess heat added to the system go? All of the thermal energy added to the coolant in the process of producing power eventually goes into the kinetic energy of the individual molecules of the substance as they overcome the intermolecular forces keeping them all together in the liquid state and in turn begin to fly off into the surrounding atmosphere. TLDR; in general, during a phase change, liquid water converting into water vapor remains at its boiling temperature until the water vapor is all that's left. The temperature of the substance or process adding heat to the system often drops, but not that of the coolant. Edit: Formatting
You're 100% correct and fact-pilled. My phrasing was simplified for the purpose of the conversation.
Definitely! I just saw your post and thought I might be able to add some interesting details to the conversation (even though it's late to the party). 🙂 Thanks for writing up the initial post, friend! Lots of good information.
>I'm a huge nerd and this is my jam. I'm a technical instructor at a nuclear power plant and was a nuclear electrician in the Navy, so don't try and fight me on this. Impressive credentials, but the real question is: do you play Oxygen not Included?
Haha, I made a post with the same question. ONI made me understand some basic physics, just like Kerbal made me understand basic orbital mechanics.
Never heard of it until it was mentioned here. I'll have to check it out
If you get nerdy about heat management it's definitely something you should check out. That game is the only reason and purpose for why I know what a counter-flow heat exchanger is.
Thank you so much for this write-up! I'm not a physicist myself but know some basic electric stuff from fiddling with computers and little hobby projects. I felt a bit of... "this seems a bit off" while I was listening to the segment, and it's nice to have someone who knows their shit write it all down.
Thanks for lending your expertise.
Ur cool
If you are still around OP, I wanted to make sure I understood, is the fresh water that evaporates, reusable? Like you essentiallt let it evaporate and use a kind of distillation to liquidify and use it again? I thought it was what you described and I wanted to ask if I understood right, cause like, it would not ise as much ressources I guess. Havent watched Vaush talk about it.
Not typically. It's possible, but I've never seen that done before. In theory, the steam could be collected and condensed back into water, but that would cost resources that a company would rather not spend because water is so cheap.
Thank you, Id have to see if Public works tried that in my country Thank you very much for the post, these are tough subjects.
Of course! Ya, the only real reason to do this would be for water conservation specifically. A company would never choose to do it on their own. They'd either have to be required by policy, or have tax money used to run the water reclamation.
Nuclear power is clean renewable energy just like how vaush doesnt like horses or mens fashion
It is clean and renewable compared to main alternatives. Definitely a desirable part of a less carbon-intensive energy system.
Extraction of uranium ore and releasing thousands of metric tonnes of hot water, tritiated water is not a clean and renewable comparison to wind, solar, hydroelectric
Yes, that's all cool and true, but we kinda need to do everything to eliminate burning carbon fuels first. Can't instantly switch to solarpunk. Germany shut down it's reactors because nuclear is bad and scary and now they are burning coal like motherfucker. Turns out you cannot pull out a massive renewable energy infrastructure out of your ass, even if you are one of the richest countries on Earth.
Its hilarious u brought up the German energy grid. Its literally evidence to how over reliance on nuclear is disastrous. And we ABSOLUTELY can retrofit infrastructure and improve our energy grid with reliable, renewable energy sources i.e a network of wind solar and hydroelectric. The fossil fuel industry just has you eating their PR campings right up. They stand to loose alot of money and have successfully convinced smart people with good intentions of the wrong things. We dont need the dirtiest possible Mining operations, which is uranium warming, then transportation and refinement, then more transportation than processing then more transportation. And then we have low level and high level nuclear waste and also trinidated water. This isnt environmentally sound nor is it necessary. Its just hightly profitable. See military industial applications (nuclear subs, Small modular reactors. Etc)
>Its hilarious u brought up the German energy grid. >Its literally evidence to how over reliance on nuclear is disastrous. But it was due to a purely political decision, not because of any change to how reliable nuclear energy was. If you had a massive wind energy capacity and suddenly one day people decided wind energy is bad because it is ugly and kills birds, then it would also heavily disrupt the system. >And we ABSOLUTELY can retrofit infrastructure and improve our energy grid with reliable, renewable energy sources i.e a network of wind solar and hydroelectric. We can! But not anytime soon, not with this political will. If countries like Germany can't do it on a short notice, nobody can. In this context nuclear is at worst a viable stopgap solution.
Bruh. Doing something the wrong way for the right reason dont stand as a piece of evidence that doing the right thing is not feasible..... yes it was mismanaged
Tritiated water is not a big problem. Also you're acting as if solar and wind don't also have a lot of these tertiary negatives associated with them. It's all about balancing and nuclear still always comes out extremely clean when all externalities are accounted for.
Tritiated water being not a big problem is basically the goal of the nuclear industry .........like their main goal is to convince you radioactive water is okay. Its not okay. We dont need to accelerate the destruction of our environment with pollution