Monday, June 20, 2011

Contaminated Water Processing at #Fukushima: Now It's AREVA's Turn to Cause Problem

The pumps at AREVA's portion of the water treatment system at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant shut down automatically when too much water went through them. TEPCO has been conducting the test run after the Kurion's problem earlier.

AREVA's subsystem comes after Kurion's (cesium absorption) which in turn comes after Toshiba's (oil separation). After AREVA's subsystem, the water goes to Hitachi's for desalination.

It was the 6th time since the test run started on June 10 that the system had stopped, as the following Yomiuri article says.

From Yomiuri Shinbun (1:06PM JST 6/21/2011):

 東京電力は21日、福島第一原子力発電所で、再稼働に向け通水試験を行っていた汚染水処理システムが午前7時20分頃に緊急停止したと発表した。

TEPCO announced on June 21 that the water treatment system for highly contaminated water at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant had an emergency shut down at 7:20AM. TEPCO was running the test run in order to resume the full-scale operation.

 システムのうち仏アレバ社の沈殿・除去装置で、汚染水を流す主系統につながる薬液注入ラインのポンプ2台が自動停止した。東電はポンプを調整し同日午後、全体の通水試験を再開した。試運転が本格化した10日以降、トラブルや故障でシステムが停止したのは6回目。

The problem was at AREVA's subsystem for decontamination. Two pumps for the chemical injection line that connects to the main line for the contaminated water were shut down automatically. TEPCO adjusted the pumps, and the test run resumed in the afternoon. It was the 6th time since the test run started on June 10 that the system had stopped because of troubles and malfunctions.

 不具合は除染装置につながるポンプで見つかった。薬剤注入ラインに希釈用の水を供給しているが、流す水の量が多すぎて停止したとみられる。東電では流量を調整する。システムは複数の装置の組み合わせで、ア社の装置は薬液や砂を混ぜてセシウムやストロンチウムを沈殿、除去する。

The pumps feed water to the chemical injection line for dilution. They seem to have stopped when too much water went through. TEPCO will adjust the amount of water. The water treatment system is a combination of multiple subsystems, and AREVA's subsystem mixes chemicals and silica to remove cesium and strontium.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 Sez:

Tick, Bloop! Tock Bloop! Tick, Bloop! Tock Bloop! Tick, Bloop! Tock Bloop!

Anonymous said...

Not very interesting. Few moderately complex water treatment systems work without "commissioning" (read "fixing glitches").

Anonymous said...

@ Robbie001

You posted the link to the interesting Oak Ridge document from 1981 on the use of zeolites yesterday. (Thank you for all the info you are providing, and the same thanks to Lapri as well.)

I wonder what other treasures you have in your library/brain?

In particular, I am looking for a copy of Glenn Seaborg's speech as AEC chairman, "The Plutonium Economy of the Future", AEC Release No. S33-70, 5 October 1970.

It's the sort of foundational piece I'd expect to be somewhere on the internets, but so far I've drawn a blank.

If you have any pointers, I'd be grateful.

Anonymous said...

[cr here - thank you for your blog work]

(Too bad people like these guys weren't in charge)

1974,
J. GUSTAVE SPETH, ARTHUR R. TAMPLIN
and THOMAS B. COCHRAN
http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/files/nuc_74100101A_3.pdf
[snip]
We believe that the commercialization of plutonium will place an intolerable strain on our society and its institutions. Our unrelenting nuclear technology has presented us with a possible new fuel which we are asked to accept because of Its potential commercial value. But our technology has again outstripped
our institutions, which are not prepared or
suited to deal with plutonium. Those who have asked what changes in our institutions will be necessary to accommodate plutonium have come away from that enquiry profoundly concerned. And the AEC's environmental impact statement does not allay these concerns. It reinforces them.

The AEC concedes that the problems of plutonium toxicity and nuclear theft are far from solved and indicates that they may not be for some years. Yet it concludes, inexplicably, that we should proceed.
Whether stemming from blind faith in the technology it has fostered or from callous promotion of the bureaucratic and industrial interests of the nuclear power complex, the AEC's proposal cann~t be justified in light of what we know and, just as Important, what we do not know,
[snip]

We suggest that it is beyond human capability to develop a cadre of sufficient size with expertise of "very" high order that can be counted upon to understand nuclear technology, to control it, to prevent accidents and diversion over many generations, or even over the present generation .
[snip]

---------------------------

'Anonymous', is this what you were looking for?

Search in Google Books:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Jun 1970
and if you find it, page 7 - 14
had Glenn Seabord's "Our Nuclear Future - 1995" piece.

Crazy stuff.

His pitch included predicting:

..."No Accidents
The massive nuclear accidents predicted by alarmists at the height of the anti-nuclear campaign never occurred.
At times, nature did her best to knock out nuclear installations.
In the Far East, a nuclear station sustained some damage from the wind and flooding of a typhoon.
And a nuclear plant on the west coast of the United States felt the effects of an earthquake.
Although there was costly damage to both plants, their containment systems were not breached, and in neither case was the public exposed to any serious radiation hazards"...

Anonymous said...

[cr here - thank you for your blog work
Looked like I posted this sucessfully, but then it disappeared; if this turn up twice, forgive me]

(Too bad people like these guys weren't in charge)

1974,
J. GUSTAVE SPETH, ARTHUR R. TAMPLIN
and THOMAS B. COCHRAN
http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/files/nuc_74100101A_3.pdf
[snip]
We believe that the commercialization of plutonium will place an intolerable strain on our society and its institutions. Our unrelenting nuclear technology has presented us with a possible new fuel which we are asked to accept because of Its potential commercial value. But our technology has again outstripped
our institutions, which are not prepared or
suited to deal with plutonium. Those who have asked what changes in our institutions will be necessary to accommodate plutonium have come away from that enquiry profoundly concerned. And the AEC's environmental impact statement does not allay these concerns. It reinforces them.

The AEC concedes that the problems of plutonium toxicity and nuclear theft are far from solved and indicates that they may not be for some years. Yet it concludes, inexplicably, that we should proceed.
Whether stemming from blind faith in the technology it has fostered or from callous promotion of the bureaucratic and industrial interests of the nuclear power complex, the AEC's proposal cann~t be justified in light of what we know and, just as Important, what we do not know,
[snip]

We suggest that it is beyond human capability to develop a cadre of sufficient size with expertise of "very" high order that can be counted upon to understand nuclear technology, to control it, to prevent accidents and diversion over many generations, or even over the present generation .
[snip]

---------------------------

'Anonymous', is this what you were looking for?

Search in Google Books:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Jun 1970
and if you find it, page 7 - 14
had Glenn Seabord's "Our Nuclear Future - 1995" piece.

Crazy stuff.

His pitch included predicting:

..."No Accidents
The massive nuclear accidents predicted by alarmists at the height of the anti-nuclear campaign never occurred.
At times, nature did her best to knock out nuclear installations.
In the Far East, a nuclear station sustained some damage from the wind and flooding of a typhoon.
And a nuclear plant on the west coast of the United States felt the effects of an earthquake.
Although there was costly damage to both plants, their containment systems were not breached, and in neither case was the public exposed to any serious radiation hazards"...

Anonymous said...

@ Areva and Anon 4:40,

do either of you two have any info on the criticality at #3 reported in this article? ,

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/japan-s-nuclear-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-safety-reports-accidents.html

In 2007 Tokyo Electric reported a “critical” reaction at Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant’s No. 3 unit that lasted for seven hours.

Does anybody have more info on this ?

Anonymous said...

@ [cr]

That June 1970 BAS piece isn't quite it, but thanks, it's very interesting!

The OCT 1970 SeaborG piece was an actual AEC press release, but the June "Our Nuclear Future" version may well be an earlier draft.

I've found where 30 years of AEC press releases/chairmen's speeches appear to be physically stored (see info at www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups.326.html#326.2.4), but unfortunately they don't appear to have been digitized yet.

BTW, the AEC brings to mind nothing so much as a badly behaved teenaged boy, who doesn't want to clean up after himself.

As Speth & friends point out, the nuclear waste issue was never addressed, yet "inexplicably", the choice was made to proceed with this hellish technology.

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 sez:

Unfortunately for your search the AEC gave the nuclear industry a black eye. So much so they had to change their name and pretend to split up into two separate entities bad cop & worse cop. Specific documents of that era can be hard to come by and sometimes they are guarded scrupulously by the old timers or organizations that control them. You could try to contact the Government Public Library to see if they have any leads.

"Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Publications at the University of Minnesota Government Publications Library"

https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/Staff

You could also try the DOE's Historical Research Center and the DOE Records Management Division. If you do remember patience is a virtue if you can manage to find some ph#'s you may be able to expedite the matter.

http://www.energy.gov/about/locatingrecords.htm

You could also try the University of California at Berkeley PR dept. They may have a collection of his some of his work.

As you can see even the nuclear boosters think Seaborg's tenure at the AEC was disastrous. They are mad because because LWR are dangerous and they infer Seaborg chose the wrong technology when he ignored the MSBR. "He couldn't bear to have Thorium replace his discovery" (I've already reported the "unpublic" accidents the MSBR had long ago.)

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/05/disasterous-stewardship-3-seaborg.html

In the real world by 1971 people were finally waking up to the fact that the AEC was a sham. Seaborg resigned his position due to outspoken and in my opinion justified criticism. The AEC was broken up a few years later and renamed but they kept many of the same idiots in charge so TMI was kind of inevitable.

"After ten years as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, 59, resigned last week to return to the University of California at Berkeley. A professor of nuclear chemistry, Seaborg can look back on his long tenure at the AEC with mixed feelings. Under his stewardship, the agency actively promoted peaceful uses of atomic power and oversaw the modernization of the nation's growing nuclear defense force. On the other hand, the AEC has recently come under increasingly sharp criticism by scientists and conservationists who mainly fear the environmental effects of continuing nuclear experiments and proliferating power plants."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878429,00.html

ORNL had a large collection of AEC documents (20 years ago, not sure how it works now) I found them kind of clannish about giving access to outsiders when I did research there. I don't think they would welcome Joe public snooping around unless they thought you were solidly in the pro-nuclear camp and maybe not even then. I think the best chance would be to call their PR office and tell them you're doing a school project and you need the speech for research "do they have a lead". Don't be surprised if they ask where you go to school or more likely what's your project about, if they can help you at all.

I know Seaborg's speech was given at the Fourth International Conference on Plutonium and Other Actinides a search for the proceedings of that conference may bear fruit. But don't expect to find a digital copy free of charge or unclassified. Academic research can be expensive and tedious.

There is also the outside chance that this information may have been reclassified since it was originally released. I ran into many a research related classification issue during my days as a consultant. I'm not saying this happened but it is plausible.

Secrecy Run Amok: Seaborg journals reclassified

http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/box8_5.aspx

Good luck

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

@anon at 5:24AM, the criticality accident occurred on November 2, 1978 in Reactor 3 at Fukushima I. TEPCO only admitted it 29 years later, on March 22, 2007.

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much, Robbie, you are an absolute gold mine!

Mr Discoverer-of-Plutonium is a fascinating and quite terrifying figure - it's amazing how clever people can be so wrong about stuff, but I guess he thought he was fighting a war, that must have been a big part of it.

We have to adjust our history now, because it's clear the Cold War didn't end in 1991.

The Soviet Union and Soviet bloc were its initial casualties, of course, but Japan is now a victim as well.

I suspect there will be many more victims of this Cold War technology, too, before it's finally all over.

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 sez:

@Anon 3:27

Not a problem. I agree the Cold War was a "We have met the enemy and he is us " situation. I've actually heard people in the nuclear defense industry say that even if people did die from atomic development they were just patriots in a "necessary" silent war. Never mind the overwhelming majority of victims were the innocent children we were supposed to be protecting.

If you want to research nuclear accidents you need to know the nuclear industry rarely calls "accidents", accidents. They use words like incident, anomaly, deviation, out of scale and situation beyond design parameters. In my book accidents are when something happens that you didn't expect. My scale starts at accident and goes up from there (accident, serious accident, catastrophe, Armageddon, Fukushima).

When you search for "nuclear accident" you generally get a rehash of the same well know problems. Try putting nuclear, reactor, criticality, Plutonium etcetera in front of incident or anomaly you might be surprised at what you find if you dig.

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