Fukushima Daiichi - Emergency Seawater Injection Practice

TEPCO has released a new video, available right now at the APR YouTube Channel. This video shows TEPCO operations during a practice evolution for injecting seawater to a reactor core in an emergency. The video is brief, so a bit of background might be helpful.

TEPCO has been all too well aware since March of this year that there could be a further major earthquake and another tsunami at the Fukushima Daiichi site. To this end, TEPCO has made preparations as much as possible (that is to say, on a basis not to impede or detract from direct recovery work) to respond to another major natural disaster.

For the purpose of the drill in the video just released, then, it is assumed that another earthquake has knocked out the normal water injection cooling at the site and that it cannot be recovered. This would mean a total failure of all of the electric pumps (LOOP) and a failure of diesel generators placed on site to power the cooling and injection systems as they are now. In this eventuality, TEPCO has fire engines and other emergency equipment stationed in safe places, away from danger, which can be moved on site. For the purpose of this drill then TEPCO chooses to directly inject seawater to the reactor core - simulating a last resort to reestablish cooling.

Keep in mind that the location shown in the video for the drill is more toward No. 5 and No. 6 plants at the site. The building enclosure now surrounding No. 1 plant can be seen in the background briefly in a couple of the video shots. TEPCO has constructed an exact duplicate of the water injection manifolds being used on No. 1 through No. 3 plants at this area, complete even to the point of being instrumented. It is with this test rig TEPCO conducts the drill.

Important to note is the statement by TEPCO that only one hour instead of the planned three was required to perform this activity, making it credible that even if loss of normal injection happened at all three plants it might be recovered at all three within three hours of the decision to employ this method.

CLICK HERE TO GET TO APR ON YOUTUBE; SEE "FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI - EMERGENCY SEAWATER INJECTION PRACTICE" VIDEO.

Seawater injection to the cores was employed for some time during the early period of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, with an effect on materials which will not be known until defueling - but which likely did have an effect in lessening the severity of the accident overall. For those unfamiliar but interested (and with time,) use the Google search box on this site and look for the many early entries I made here during the accident with the word "seawater" and this will become clearer.

7:52 AM EASTERN WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 19, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Carnival of Nuclear Bloggers up at ANS

The 74th Carnival is up right now at ANS Nuclear Cafe.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CARNIVAL

3:10 PM Eastern Sunday October 16, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Davis-Besse containment update

A much clearer picture of the actual situation is provided in the linked story below.

TOLEDO BLADE / DAVID PATCH ON DAVIS-BESSE CONTAINMENT

6:48 PM Eastern Friday October 14, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 enclosed

The enclosure for Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 is complete as of October 14, 2011. This was the first plant to suffer a hydrogen gas explosion with subsequent severe reactor building damage during the accident sequence.

Below, TEPCO press photo showing the final roof panel unit being lowered.


Below, TEPCO press photo showing the completed enclosure.



Here are some "before" photos.


Above, No. 1 reactor building as seen on May 24, 2011 with concrete pumper truck positioned alongside. During the entire effort to recover the plants, these concrete pumper trucks performed yeoman service in many areas, including spraying water on spent fuel pools, carrying cameras for observation, and carrying airborne contamination sampling equipment.


Above, TEPCO release showing laser imaging of the No. 1 plant. This is NOT a photograph; this image was obtained through the use of several laser imaging units, with the image results run through a computer program giving this image which appears to be a photo but which is actually a computer-generated 3D construct.

CLICK ANY IMAGE ON THIS PAGE TO ENLARGE..


Above, TEPCO image showing CAD design for the completed reactor building enclosure. This image used the earlier 3D laser image data as a starting point; the structure was then designed and added to the image.


Above, a realistic computer generated view of the completed structure. Note the close conformity with the structure as actually completed October 14th. This image is also from June.

The plan was developed to construct major components at Onagawa which would then be shipped to the Fukushima Daiichi site by sea for assembly around the reactor building. Below, analytical work on how the assembly was to be built at the Fukushima Daiichi site resulted in this detailed illustration showing one of the very large construction cranes, with all elements to scale.



Finally, above, another view from about one month ago - September 10, 2011 - showing the framework of the structure well underway.

5:30 PM Eastern Friday October 14, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Davis-Besse: Crack in containment building

A 30 foot long, hairline crack has been discovered by workers at Davis-Besse while preparations are underway to replace the reactor vessel head.

According to reports such as this one, the outermost shell is physically separate from the actual, steel vapor containment and thus this condition is not directly comparable to the long-standing shutdown at Crystal River, where failure to hire an experienced contractor and use of a newly developed process for cutting the containment resulted in delamination of the concrete containment building. There is no gap at Crystal River. As such this crack is not likely to be nearly as serious a failure to repair as that at Crystal River is proving.

According to the local Fremont News Messenger (Fremont, Ohio, near Oak Harbor where Davis-Besse is located) an NRC spokesperson stated that the plant cannot restart unless this situation is resolved. Which is exactly what one would expect.

FirstEnergy stock fell after the announcement; however, various recommendations I've seen in the last hour range from hold (Jefferies via StreetInsider.com) to buy (Deutsche Bank.) Deutsche Bank has a target price of $49 for FirstEnergy which was $43.76 at close (NYSE) on Thursday.

This writer has yet to see any determination of whether this crack existed prior to cutting the opening for passage of the reactor vessel heads (new one in, old one out) or whether it has been caused by the operation. What is clear however is that the plant is totally safe and that a crack in the containment outer shell at this moment is irrelevant considering the large opening deliberately cut into the building to allow the work to proceed. It is repair of the crack and any certification or testing after reactor vessel head replacement is completed which stands now in question.

3:00 PM Eastern Friday October 14, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

US Energy Policy and the NRC

This morning I made a post on one of my favorite social media forums, and while much of it was really kind of targeted at a specific point, I'd like to reiterate some of it here for my readers because I think it's important that we think about, develop, and vote on some sort of solid energy plan - better than what we have - in the United States, and that means selecting candidates in elections who understand our energy problems as they really are.

In this embryonic policy idea, I made three points about an energy policy.

-We must continue with nuclear plants under construction or ordered now, and order and build all those presently planned and probably more

-We must get the NRC committed to being in front of the curve on reviewing advanced reactor technology like Gen IV plants instead of waiting to develop review and analysis in parallel with development

-We must place loan guarantees differently depending upon what they are for. As an example, loan guarantees to develop nuclear belong covering owner-operators -- in other words, the utilities -- while loan guarantees for solar should NOT be given to manufacturers but rather to END USERS who will actually install solar equipment on their business premises or homes.

I can add to that one further point.

-We must decide on a national nuclear waste program, whether or not it includes continued on-site storage in dry casks, whether or not it includes centralized (federal) spent fuel storage and/or reprocessing, and if it is to use a repository get the studies done rapidly and the facility under construction. Some unified final plan is absolutely necessary.

Much of this came out of the recent webinar with the NRC Chairman. I have a massive post about this webinar still in the works as a draft, and intend to publish it soon. It is very long, and likely will receive very widely disparate opinions. One part of this I can mention now is the fact that Chairman Jaczko stated that the NRC is really in no way ready to review any Gen IV reactors and that nothing is pending or being discussed at the NRC about these plants. Further, it's clear he killed the Yucca Mountain program fairly single-handedly with no substitute in sight.

Those are problems.

In support of the first point, it's clear that utilities are facing both continued scrutiny on the aging of older plants and concerns following Fukushima Daiichi as well. Considering that roughly one fifth of our energy in this country is nuclear, considering our desire to stop carbon dioxide emissions and acid rain, considering our desire to reduce or eliminate dependence on foreign oil, and also considering our need to develop jobs and improve our electric system infrastructure in this country, how do you not build new nuclear plants? The answer is: You DO build new nuclear plants.

In support of the second point, there are those (this author for one) now who are beginning to wonder whether the NRC Chairman saying that nothing for Gen IV plants is on the horizon is simply a realistic appraisal of the likelihood of near-term application and review work for Gen IV plants or if it's plain obstructionism. In the old AEC days where the agency's job included both regulating and promoting, the AEC was up to speed fully on, say, fast breeders cooled by liquid metal as a result of its own EBR program and the Navy's SIR program (S1G prototype, S2G on USS Sea Wolf.) This made review of the Enrico Fermi Atomic Power Plant kind of in-step with work already accomplished and underway, and was supposed to have paved the way to what became the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project (later cancelled after AEC breakup) that might have helped close the fuel cycle loop. Since the NRC's purpose now is beginning to look a little more like obstruction than regulation, we clearly need to figure out how to rectify the situation and get the NRC to simply, only regulate without imposing political agendas (for example, "no" on Yucca Mountain, public scrutiny of Westinghouse on the AP1000 containment, deliberate "head in the sand" policy on Gen IV plants) and begin to help open a path toward future technologies. This can't happen when obstructionism is in place.

[EDIT: OCTOBER 14. Speaking of obstruction, the NRC has now announced a holdup of licensing for AP1000 and ESBWR plants until the Fukushima review is complete.]

To the third point... It's clear now that federal funding of Solyndra was both a mistake and an affront to the American people. It is my position that different loan guarantees for solar, or for nuclear, should be handled differently; as my example, I can say clearly that the trend now is for large central station nuclear plants to be planned and built, by and large, not small modular plants - so that loan guarantees are being issued to the utility companies who will build and operate the plants. However, no one is trying to build large solar power stations and won't in the near future - so that funding, say, solar panel equipment manufacturers such as Solyndra is a mistake. You must entice the end users (homeowners up through business owners, building owners, and maybe small communities at most) who will install solar equipment to attempt to reduce overall energy billing and come out ahead once the equipment is paid off and any maintenance is taken into account. It is that kind of user most likely to benefit from solar, and it is that kind of user that might be prompted to buy knowing that loan guarantees were available to the lenders they'd do business with. The two are different (nuclear and solar) and the loan guarantees if given must be handled differently. This will create jobs in the nuclear field in larger numbers while stabilizing our energy infrastructure, while in terms of solar will actually have effect on energy use bit by bit and create jobs that will stay instead of having a company like Solyndra hire a load of workers, then have to fire them all when it goes broke.

As to my fourth point... The Chairman expressed his view that storage of spent fuel on site (at sites where nuclear plants are operating, or else where there were plants in the past that are now shut down) could reasonably last safely far longer than previously predicted and might be safe for a hundred years. That's very refreshing - I happen to agree. What's troubling is the still existing federal mandate to provide spent fuel storage. We need to adjust the letter of the law, and the focus of the country, on a realistic spent fuel program in terms of on site, off site, centralized storage facilities and any future plans for reprocessing. We also need to discuss any attempts to further develop breeders if there is enough consensus in the industry to build and operate them (again.) While this fourth point is not as pressing as the others it's vital.

I would like to invite commentary on these views. Please either use the comment feature on the blog, or else the e-mail link on this site.

10:45 AM Eastern Wednesday October 12, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Well done article on Spent Fuel Storage

Here is a link to an article worth reading.

"Spent Nuclear Fuel Rests in Peace near Ft. St. Vrain."

This article appeared in the Northern Colorado Business Report on October 7th and is a good example of level headed coverage concerning spent fuel storage at a site that formerly had, but does not now have, a nuclear reactor operating.

Ft. St. Vrain was the second of two General Atomics high temperature gas-cooled reactors to be built in the United States as demonstration plants and as central station generating plants. The first was Peach Bottom 1, ordered by a large consortium in 1958 (which was headed by Philadelphia Electric) and placed on line in 1967. Before that plant was finished, GA got an order for the Ft. St. Vrain Nuclear Generating Station from the Public Service Company of Colorado.

Below we detail from an October 1968 ad showing the station as designed.


By this time, Gulf Oil owned General Atomic - thus the new name "Gulf General Atomic" on this ad. The full text of this ad, which appeared in the ATOMFAIR '68 brochure 'Exhibitors Program' reads as follows:

"Fort St. Vrain HTGR under construction

Construction is now proceeding rapidly on the 330 MW(e) High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) plant near Platteville for Public Service Company of Colorado. Site preparation and excavation for the Ft. St. Vrain Nuclear Generating Station were completed during the summer; the construction permit was issued in September; and reactor construction is under way. This will be the first nuclear power plant in the U.S. to produce electricity at modern steam conditions of 2400 psig / 1000F / 1000F with operating efficiency of over 39 percent. This HTGR plant is being built by Gulf General Atomic under the AEC power reactor demonstration program."

The steam condition data in this quote is of interest, because prior to this time GA had made a fair amount of press with the first gas-cooled plant it built, Peach Bottom (later known as Peach Bottom 1 when two more plants, both GE BWR's, were built on site) by stating that Peach Bottom would be the first plant capable of generating 1000F steam in the United States from nuclear energy alone. Steam conditions on Peach Bottom 1 were 1450 psi / 1000F.


Post card / APRA collection. Left of center in this photo is the Peach Bottom 1 plant, the experimental 40 MWe high temperature gas-cooled reactor. Further away under construction are Peach Bottom 2 and 3, both ordered in 1967 and which are GE BWR plants still in operation today. In the very lower left corner of the photo is the now long-gone Visitor Center.

I do hope everyone reads this article, because it's important to keep things such as this story in mind as we find ourselves temporarily (I hope) without a national plan for a central fuel repository or else a plan for fuel recycling.

9:10 AM Eastern Wednesday October 12, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More