8.8 earthquake hits Japan

@High Seas,

High Seas wrote:

Ships in the middle of the Indian ocean "sit" on the water so much lower than ships in the North Atlantic because of stronger gravity.

Is this noticable and significant, or just kind of theoretical?

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@ossobuco,

No, why should they? Best stainless steel was used throughout. Salt is terribly sticky and corrosive though - ever tried to take a shower with salt water?!

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@roger,

Noticeable only by satellite measurements - obviously not to the ship itself; it has no basis for comparison. I'll look for a new simulation of the geoid >
> Edit - this is like the Bible says, "seek and ye shall find" ! This is the geoid, already known from previous satellites, but now known down to the inch:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-geoid-why-a-map-of-earths-gravi-2011-04-01

Quote:

..... what is depicted here is not the shape of the planet, but rather the shape of an idealized sea-level surface extending around the entire globe..

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@High Seas,

Don't spend any time on it. You've already answered my question.

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@High Seas,

I know about salt water and corrosion, at least somewhat, but apparently the steel pipes/valves/pumps weren't sleeved - or were they? - while within tsunami reach....

Rubber around steel? I'm far out here as I'm not aware of different possible protective sleeves.

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@ossobuco,

I don't mean to skew the thread with stupidity but I've a playful design mind even now. In this case, subject to ignorance. But..
I'm not sure why the pipes wouldn't have been protected. I could presume money, but it might have been a pure design decision.
Thus not sure why other pipes et al in similar situations shouldn't be, relatively soon.

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@ossobuco,

The problem was originally INSIDE the plumbing, not OUTSIDE: it started with the seasalt dumped over everything to cool reactors and pools - there was NO CHOICE. Sleeving pipes wouldn't have helped in the least. Their diesel backups got flooded by the tsunami waves and they didn't have longlife batteries. Now of course, with the plumbing destroyed, they have an even bigger problem: leaks, and spills, and seepage of radioactive water spreading in the air, the ground, the ocean, and the water table under the plant, and so on. That's going to take weeks or months to solve - but I'm sure they'll get there Smile

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@High Seas,

I think it's going to take much longer than weeks or months.

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@High Seas,

Right. Sometimes, pipelines are wrapped to prevent external corrosion, especially in certain soils. The only internal sleeving I've ever seen in pipes was in coal fired power plants. Some of the piping handling slurries are actually rubber coated on the inside, probably at greater cost than the pipes themselves.

In many applications, the pipes don't need protection. Water, steam, and some other fluids cause surface corrosion that protects the metal. Valves used for anything beyond cold water are often "trimmed" with Huntington alloys (Monel, Inconel, etc.) and eve Stellite for high temp steam lines. This is because the protective corrosion that protects piping is wiped off every time the valve seats or unseats.

There now. I bet everyone was on the edge of their seats waiting for that information.

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@roger,

I was abled to know something that I didn't know, Roger. Thanks.

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@JTT,

Good. I hope you don't have to wait as long as I did to drag it into a conversation.

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@roger,

I don't think that it will be long at all, Roger.

You know what I heard. I have it on good authority that

Sometimes, pipelines are wrapped to prevent external corrosion, especially in certain soils. The only internal sleeving I've ever seen in pipes was in coal fired power plants. Some of the piping handling slurries are actually rubber coated on the inside, probably at greater cost than the pipes themselves.

In many applications, the pipes don't need protection. Water, steam, and some other fluids cause surface corrosion that protects the metal. Valves used for anything beyond cold water are often "trimmed" with Huntington alloys (Monel, Inconel, etc.) and eve Stellite for high temp steam lines. This is because the protective corrosion that protects piping is wiped off every time the valve seats or unseats.

I can't wait to discuss this at the supper table tonight.

Thanks again, and I'm not being facetious.

I'm always amazed at the tiny little details that go into so many of these things. Human ingenuity, amazing!

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@High Seas,

Thanks, that's clearer, though I still wonder about the eventualities of outside, thus sleeves. But I suppose I am not the first to think of this.

Or is it clearer. Why was it the sea had to be used to cool? Didn't the pipe system fail first? Regular water pipes broke? (geez, I may be forced to read back)
Why were the diesel backups flooded? (there is probably something simple there I don't understand that allows in water entry) and didn't have long life batteries? (money?)

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@roger,

Woo, I'm listening. I thought of in pipe protection but was just getting there.

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@roger,

But, hey, I brought it up..

<snort>

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

Why were the diesel backups flooded?

they were only 15 feet above sea level so they got flooded, and the fuel was kept above ground in tanks which were washed away.

Quote:

didn't have long life batteries? (money?)

That and technology. We are still a long way from where we want to be re being able to make batteries do what we want them to .

Quote:

Didn't the pipe system fail first

Earthquakes and mass evacuations have a way of making water systems non functional. Even a few leaks in the system prevents pressure, even if you can get the pumps working. Restarting water systems ofter they lose pressure is even in the best of cases a chore. Emergency pumps with hoses dipped into the sea was the only option at first. They could have gotten fresh water days before they did but the Japanese did not consider it a priority. It was mainly at the urging of american Nuclear experts that they finally did it.

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@hawkeye10,

Back in the day of the first high tech stuff in detecting leaks in my design days, there were systems to ping about leaks/breaks lest whole hillsides fail.

The obvious re daiichi (sp?) would be that everyone was distraught with good reason, even just monitoring all this from afar.

But supposing there was a leak detection system, wouldn't that point to where to fix?
I suppose in this case there were too many.

What am I whining about - maybe we can work up some way to clamp and awe leaks. (probably not, but improvement is possible, eh?) Which brings up the words, shields, sleeves.

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Quote:

UPDATE, 11:30 am, Friday, April 1, 2011. New video shows that Unit 4 fuel pool is exposed to
the air and contains little or no water. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds
Associates explains the video and its implications:

http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf

This I take it is the pool that they suspect has sprung a leak. Not great:

Quote:

Resnikoff noted that the pools at each reactor are thought to have contained the following amounts of spent fuel, according to The Mainichi Daily News:

• Reactor No. 1: 50 tons of nuclear fuel
• Reactor No. 2: 81 tons
• Reactor No. 3: 88 tons
• Reactor No. 4: 135 tons
• Reactor No. 5: 142 tons
• Reactor No. 6: 151 tons

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-fuel-fukushima

And so much for claims that we have heard around A2K that the nuclear aspect of this disaster is no big deal compared to the wave or the quake, as that stuff can be repaired in 5 years, this is going to be a problem for decades. I also dont like how close toyko is, a little more than 100 miles....

Quote:

UPDATE, 10:00 am, Thursday, March 31, 2011. The International Atomic Energy Agency has
reported that levels of Cesium-137 in areas outside the emergency evacuation zone (especially near
Iitate Village, 40 kilometers—24 miles away) are more than twice as high than levels the Soviets established for relocation from the Chernobyl area. The IAEA said cesium levels are up to 3.7
megabecquerels per square meter (MBq/sq. m) in that area. Soviet guidelines required relocation
when Cesium levels reached 1.48 MBq/sq. m. This is adding to pressure on the Japanese
government to expand the evacuation zone.
Levels of radioactive Iodine-131 in seawater near the Fukushima Daiichi site continue to soar and
were measured today at more than 4,300 times above normal.
Earth Track has published a handy guide to nuclear liability standards in Japan and the U.S.
There are reports this morning that up to 1,000 bodies of people killed by the earthquake and
tsunami inside the evacuation zone have not been recovered due to radioactive contamination.
It is growing ever clearer that the Fukushima disaster will be a lengthy one. We do not believe
people will be able to re-settle in the evacuation zone—indeed, as at Chernobyl, the permanent
exclusion zone is likely to grow rather than become smaller. Andre-Claude Lacoste, president of the
French nuclear society, hinted at this in a press conference yesterday saying:
On contaminated land:
"Depending on the level of contamination, the management of these territories will be extremely
difficult for years to come, if not for decades.

Cesium has a half life of 30 years.....

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

The world's largest concrete pump, deployed at the construction site of the U.S. government's $4.86 billion mixed oxide fuel plant at Savannah River Site, is being moved to Japan in a series of emergency measures to help stabilize the Fukushima reactors.

"The bottom line is, the Japanese need this particular unit worse than we do, so we're giving it up," said Jerry Ashmore, whose company, Augusta-based Ashmore Concrete Contractors, Inc., is the concrete supplier for the MOX facility.
The 190,000-pound pump, made by German-based Putzmeister has a 70-meter boom and can be controlled remotely, making it suitable for use in the unpredictable and highly radioactive environment of the doomed nuclear reactors in Japan, he said.
"There are only three of these pumps in the world, of which two are suited for this work, so we have to get it there as soon as we can," Ashmore said in an interview Thursday. "Time is very much a factor."

http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2011-03-31/srs-pump-will-head-japan?v=1301653174

I bet the decode of this is that if they cant concrete shut the hole and either fill the pool with water or concrete and the fuel catches fire that Japan has on its hands a disaster far worse than Chernobyl.

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@cicerone imposter,

They find minor fault lines after an earthquake....presumably there are many we dont know about .

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8.8 earthquake hits Japan

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