One fine day I noticed that a video on nuclear waste issues was taken out of Youtube. This was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEbjYr8rubA&feature=youtu.be
This is not the only nuke mischief. Here is another:
Ace Hoffman
To
Today Saturday March 1, 2014 at 10:46 AM(IST)
Dear Readers,
Why
would You-Tube take down a video of me speaking at a public rally on
March 11, 2012? I have no idea! (See item #4, below.) You Tube has
apparently taken a number of nuke-related videos down. What's going on?
Also,
was the steam generator problem that permanently closed San Onofre
unique, or are other reactor's steam generator designs capable of
experiencing "fluid elastic instability" (FEI)? Are they capable of
suffering a cascade of tube failures, especially during a "blowdown"
(loss of pressure in the secondary coolant loop)?
And, is the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission going to tighten up its rulings, so that
utilities cannot claim a design is "like for like" just because the net
result is 90% similar? Firstly, 90% isn't good enough when dealing with
nuclear issues -- 99.9% may not be good enough. And secondly, current
regulations -- believe it or not -- allow a large change in
specifications (such as a large increase in operating temperature) to be
compensated for in risk analysis by, for example, putting
better-fitting insulation around the containment dome's openings, so
that the larger steam explosion made possible by the higher operating
temperature is as likely as before to be contained within the dome,
since the seals are tighter.
In most other industries, getting away with stuff like that is called "bassackwards."
This
past Wednesday several activists attended an IEEE meeting in San Diego
during which two nuclear safety/risk analysis experts talked about what
happened that caused a plant worth tens of billions of dollars to close
permanently because of a $670 million part failure.
Below is a
letter written to one of the meeting's presenters, following up on
comments made at the meeting. Several additional items are also shown
below.
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Attachments:
(1) Follow-up letter about IEEE meeting regarding San Onofre's shut down
(2) Nuclear power promoter James Hansen at Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Oregon this weekend (3/1/2014)
(3) Three Mile Island perspective from someone who was there when it happened
(4) I want my video back up on You Tube!
(5) Contact information for the author of this newsletter
===============================================
(1) Follow-up letter about IEEE meeting regarding San Onofre's shut down:
===============================================
(Note:
In the letter below, "N16 monitors" are devices that detect the
presence of the radioactive isotope nitrogen-16, which is present in the
primary loop. When a steam generator tube leak occurs, the radioactive
nitrogen in the primary loop escapes into the secondary loop, and from
there, when that steam is condensed after going through the turbine, the
nitrogen, being a gas at room temperature of course, escapes into the
turbine building. N-16 has a very short half-life and decays away
completely in a matter of hours.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To: Anthony J. Spurgin, PhD
Re: Wednesday evening's IEEE meeting in San Diego, CA
Hi Tony,
It
was a pleasure meeting you yesterday and attending the IEEE meeting at
UCSD Extension. I was surprised and pleased at how interested the
attendees were in the subject -- especially considering that most of
them were clearly unaware of any of the details of nuclear power, except
for a few experts.
The following is my opinion. My sources
include conversations with nuclear workers at SCE open houses (who
specifically told me the Unit 2 reactor 70% restart plan involved
operating the reactor at full pressure and temperature in the primary
loop), SCE public documents, NRC public documents, public hearings, and
many other public sources. It is also based on conversations with
former SCE employees (ie, whistleblowers).
Since you've designed
both nuclear pressurized water reactor steam generators and airplane
wing airfoils, I'll try to skip everything I assume is normally known
about steam generators and turbulence in general, but sometimes I'm sure
these comments might appear to belittle your knowledge, experience, or
intelligence. That is by no means my intent; I just don't know exactly
what you know and what's been learned since your time in the field, nor
do I know what's changed names (this happens all the time in the nuclear
industry, as I'm sure you know). I also only studied SanO for the most
part, so I don't know what's specific to SanO's problems and what the
industry knows. And lastly sometimes a little context ensures clarity.
My
background is interactive programming for animation, simulation,
real-time display of data, laser targeting (gulp!), interactive robotics
(super-accurate joystick control, for example), animated technical
illustrations, etc.. Our work seems to have overlapped in one way or
another time and again over the years. The Steam Generator animation I
showed you is available online (it runs in Adobe Flash, so it sometimes
won't run on Apple Macintosh computers). Here's the URL:
http://www.acehoffman.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-animation-shows-what-could-happen.html
One
of these days I'll release the smartphone version I showed you last
night but for now, it's only publicly available in the online version,
although I can also send you an "exe" version for offline use if you
like.
In today's nuclear technojargon, Flow Induced Vibration
(aka Fluid Induced Vibration) and Fluid Elastic Instability are two very
different phenomena which can occur in steam generator tube bundles.
However, I don't think anyone would expect to see FEI without also
seeing FIV, and FIV is much more common. Both are illustrated in the
above animation (along with the Mitsubishi Flowering Effect, Main Steam
Line Break, etc.).
Fluid Elastic Instability specifically refers
to a type of coordinated vibration which is NOT random: In FEI, one
tube's vibrations (the "initiator" tube) causes the tube next to it to
vibrate in time with the first one, and then the next and next, limited
"only by tube breakage or collision with support structures" (wording
from memory, but based on NRC/SCE descriptions).
FEI is a
coordinated vibration which quickly becomes catastrophic if left
unmitigated (by immediately shutting down the reactor).
Flow
Induced Vibration, on the other hand, is normally considered to be much
more random. Small FIV-induced leaks of primary coolant into the
secondary coolant loop sometimes plug themselves (with "crud") or at
least stay tolerably small. N16 detectors, of course, are relied upon
to know if there is a leak, but they do not say which tube (or maybe
even which steam generator) is leaking, or why the leak is occurring.
FEI
at SanO was caused because the upper area of the tube bundles in the
secondary coolant loop of the steam generators were practically
completely devoid of water -- they were nearly all steam. Many factors
contributed to the difference between the old and the new steam
generators: More tubes, longer tubes, thinner tubes, different (worse)
heat transfer coefficient, tighter packing of the tubes, no stay
cylinder, different tolerances of the tube support plate holes... these
are only a few of the many changes from the old to the new, making the
resultant behavior unpredictable -- at least without careful modeling!
:)
The "void fraction" or percentage of water to steam should not
have been above about 98.5% steam and 1.5% water as it exited the top
of the tube bundles. Instead, the upper tube bundles were well over 99%
steam and less than 1% water (approximate values; taken from memory).
Another
cause of FEI was that the tubes were not restrained in the in-plane
direction. There was no way to be sure that the extra twist that was
manufactured into the Unit 2 Anti-Vibration Bars was enough to prevent
FEI if that unit were restarted, or was what had prevented FEI in that
unit in the first place.
As I started to say last night at the
IEEE meeting, the recirculation ratios were less than 2 to 1, meaning
that for every pound of secondary coolant which goes up and out of the
steam generator and into the main steam line to the turbines, less than
twice that amount -- less than two pounds of water -- recirculates by
coming out the swirl vanes and steam dryers and going back down the
outside of the tube wrapper to the bottom of the steam generator for
another time around the steam generator, without having gone through the
turbines and tertiary loop condensers.
Proper steam generator
recirculation ratios should have been closer to 4 to 1, with most of the
secondary coolant loop's liquid going around three or four times prior
to exiting though the main steam line. Part of the restart plan
involved properly increasing the recirculation ratios.
Also,
because of the lack of moisture, the tubes dried out from nucleate
boiling, so that when the tubes banged into each other, there was
virtually no damping whatsoever, and thus, far greater damage to the
dime-thin tubes. Steam is, of course, far less adequate at damping than
liquid -- about 30 times less. But the thin layer of liquid that
should have been running up the outside of the tubes was also gone.
Additionally,
the dried-out area of the tube bundle -- caused by the above-mentioned
problems -- in turn transferred heat out of the tubes from the primary
loop less efficiently. This in turn caused a feedback loop of sorts,
continuously overheating the local area of the tube bundle (the
estimated heat distribution for San Onofre's steam generators can be
seen in the animation by clicking in the tube bundle area).
SCE's
proposal to run at 70% was bogus. First of all, as I stated last night
at the IEEE meeting and again in this email, the reactor itself was
going to be operating at approximately 100% of normal primary coolant
loop pressure and temperature. The main bleed-off prior to the turbines
would be from increasing the recirculation ratios in the steam
generators, with some adjustments to the flow rates and temperatures in
the primary and secondary coolant loops.
What was being called
70% power output at the turbines was not very relevant to the pressures
and temperatures inside the steam generators. Not that there would be
no reductions at all, and certainly not to say that small thermal and
pressure changes inside the steam generators couldn't significantly
reduce wear and tear during a five-month trial, but what really made the
70% idea bogus was that it did not cover the following problem: A
cascade of tube failures caused by Fluid Elastic Instability during a
blowdown following a Main Steam Line Break combined with a stuck-open
Main Steam Line Isolation Valve.
Such an accident scenario is
normally expected to result in temporarily completely voiding the steam
generators of water in the secondary loop due to the sudden loss of
nearly all pressure on the secondary side.
Normally, this isn't
good, but if Fluid Elastic Instability can set in, it can be quickly
become disastrous. I believe what permanently closed SanO was that
there was simply no engineering principle to get around this problem.
The
specifications that tubes not be worn severely (not greater than 40%
tube through-wall wear allowed, of a dime-thin tube, measured with an
inexact probe) assumes that tube wear will be random and you won't have
multiple tubes that are highly worn, with the wear spots sitting right
next to each other, from tube to tube to tube. However, FEI causes such
wear in adjacent tubes, and that's exactly what was seen in Unit 3.
Evidence of FEI was not found in unit 2, although the exact reason why
not was never established by NRC, SCE, MHI, Areva, Westinghouse, the
independent experts, or anyone else.
Even running at "true" 70%
power, let alone what they were calling 70% power, would have provided
essentially ZERO protection against a cascade of tube failures caused by
fluid elastic instability during blowdown.
From my perspective,
that, in a nutshell, is why SanO could not re-open. Friends of the
Earth's and other activists' contributions may have forced the NRC to
fully consider the problems, but once they did that -- assuming they did
that, and I think they did -- there wasn't going to be any way they
could approve the reactor for restart at ANY power level.
Hence
the letters to SCE from NRC asking for something like 60 different
highly technical responses being sent out on Christmas Eve?
What I can't understand is why it took SCE a year and a half to give up!
Reopening
the plant with all the other wear and tear just wasn't going to be
financially possible. You might remember the broomsticks-and-trash-bags
leak repair job that made the news at one point. Insider stories
painted numerous additional pictures of other rusted-out parts of the
plant. Add in the fact that they did not have a good workable steam
generator design (the old steam generators had vibration and wear
problems too), and even if they did have a new design everyone trusted
-- good luck with that -- it would take two years to build it, during
which time the plant would continue to rust out and produce nothing.
There
was no way SCE could make money, considering that when they were asking
for permission to put in the new steam generators, they claimed the
replacement would save ratepayers a little over a billion dollars over a
20 YEAR period. That amount would get spent just waiting for the
replacements, let alone building and installing them.
When
deciding to do the steam generator replacement at San Onofre,
approximately a decade ago, such slim savings assumed nothing as serious
as what went wrong could or would go wrong. Today's California Public
Utilities Commission (CPUC) hopefully knows better!
But in fact,
much worse could have happened: Your N16 monitors could have been
overwhelmed and their needles pegged if we had experienced a cascade of
tube failures, as your co-presenter last night mentioned several times.
This
is important, because current NRC regulations predict, at most, a
complete single tube rupture (a tube disengagement, I think it's
called?). Regulations do not require the utility to immediately shut
down the plant upon discovery of a small steam generator tube leak.
Current regulations assume that tube leaks are solitary events involving
flow induced vibration, not fluid elastic instability.
SanO's
January 31, 2012 event suggests the industry needs to rethink what a
tube leak indication might mean: How can control room operators
possibly distinguish between a FIV-induced tube leak and a FEI-induced
tube leak? The former is relatively benign, but the latter can result
in a meltdown, and could have at San Onofre that day, if the Unit 3
reactor had been kept running a little bit longer, instead of being
almost immediately shut down (within about 20 minutes, I think we were
told) because the leak was getting worse at an accelerated rate. Leak
acceleration is always a bad sign, but particularly bad if the cause is
FEI.
This analysis strongly suggests that your N16 monitors saved
SoCal from becoming a Fukushima-level event on January 31, 2012. Many
thanks indeed for that!!
Best regards,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
===============================================
(2) Nuclear power promoter James Hansen at Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Oregon this weekend:
===============================================
From: "Mark Robinowitz" <
mark@oilempire.us>
Subject: nuclear power promoter at Public Interest Environmental Law Conference this weekend
This
Saturday, the Public Interest Environmental Law conference at
University of Oregon (You Owe) will feature climatologist and
pro-nuclear power promoter James Hansen.
The conference theme
this year is "Running Into Running Out" yet there is no discussion in
the schedule of events about running out of the concentrated resources
that made industrial civilization possible, which also allowed our
population to grow from under a billion (before petroleum) to seven
billion (at peak petroleum). It's unfortunate that resource depletion
is not politically correct for most of the environmental movement.
There are several panels that focus on alleged plans to export coal,
natural gas and oil through the Northwest, plans that all assume there
is so much fossil fuel available that we can export more of it to
China. These plans ignore the facts that coal peaked in the USA in
1999, conventional natural gas peaked in 1973, the USA imports about
half of Canada's natural gas production, fracking for gas is near or at
peak, and domestic oil production / extraction peaked in 1970. Perhaps
of greatest importance for the Northwest is the Alaska Pipeline
continues to dwindle toward "low flow" shutdown, which might have some
impact on Oregonians who patronize grocery stores that use food delivery
trucks. Solar panels are great but they won't power food shipments
across time zones and international borders. (Nuclear reactors won't do
this, either.)
Hopefully there will be a little more discussion
about energy literacy before gasoline rationing finally arrives. It
would be nice to see environmental groups use their networks to teach
how to relocalize agriculture so we can eat on the energy downslope.
Transition Towns would be a more practical response to our predicament
than sending letters to politicians.
Perhaps the California
agriculture crisis this year will be a transformative event that wakes
up the country to the supply chains of having our food grown far away
from where it is eaten, ideally there will be enough rain and snowpack
for the rest of the rainy season to make this merely urgent and not
catastrophic.
Einstein said the splitting of the atom changed
everything except our way of thinking, thus we drift toward
catastrophe. Passing the limits to growth on a finite planet changed
everything except our way of thinking. I hope future generations are
able to understand why we ignored the warnings.
Mark Robinowitz
-------------
jumping from the frying pan into the nuclear fire
James Hansen wants more nukes
James
Hansen claims small amounts of radioactivity might be beneficial,
biologically, which is a lie. Only time can make nuclear wastes
harmless and non-radioactive.
www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdf
“Baby Lauren and the Kool-Aid” by James Hansen (article advocating increased use of nuclear power)
excerpt:
The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the Pennsylvania
population exposed to radiation by the Three Mile Island accident may
experience one or two resulting cancer deaths; that population will
experience about 40,000 cancer deaths due to other causes. However, the
estimate of 1 - 2 deaths is from the "linear no threshold" (LNT)
approximation, i.e., an assumption that known radiation effects for
large doses continue proportionally for small doses. That assumption is
uncertain there is at least as much anecdotal evidence suggesting
that small radiation doses are beneficial to health (some mentioned
here:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42347) as the contrary. However, no adequate scientific study with proper controls has been made. [not true!!!]
The
“Human Events” article Hansen cites as justification for the hoax of
“hormesis” (small amounts of radioactivity are supposedly good for you)
is an article by Ann Coulter a few days after the meltdowns at
Fukushima. Ms. Coulter has written many nasty articles about Mr. Hansen
yet he cited her to justify the claim that radioactivity has minimal or
even beneficial health impacts, and therefore new nuclear reactors are
acceptable.
Many studies of radiation victims show health effects
are supra linear — small amounts are more toxic per unit of dose than
large amounts.
A good compilation of nuclear radiation impacts
is at www.ratical.org/radiation/ One resource there is the work of Dr.
John Gofman, MD PhD, a veteran of the Manhattan Project and founder of
the biomedical division at Lawrence Livermore. He was forced out of
Livermore for concluding the rush to build nuclear power reactors would
be dangerous.
It's fascinating that Hansen was courageous in
warning about the impacts of climate chaos yet echoes industry’s lies
that new nuclear reactor designs are supposedly safe and can run on
their own waste (they cannot reuse fission products). All reactors make
nuclear wastes that cause genetic damage. Nukes are not a good way to
boil water.
-- Mark Robinowitz, PeakChoice.org
===============================================
(3) Three Mile Island perspective from someone who was there when it happened:
===============================================
From: "HaLevy Libbe" <
Libbe@libbehalevy.com>
Subject: Libbe's ebook
Dear Friends,
I'm
thrilled to announce that my new ebook, Yes, I Glow in the Dark! One
Mile from Three Mile Island to Fukushima and Beyond, launches on Amazon
Kindle on Thursday, February 27, 2014! It's a nuclear memoir that takes
me from being waaaay too close to the Three Mile Island nuclear
accident in 1979 through years of nuclear denial to Fukushima and my
current position as producer/host of Nuclear Hotseat. Told in a breezy,
often "Jon Stewart-esque" manner, it includes important information to
understand our ongoing nuclear risks... and what each of us can do about
it. Here's the url to buy the book:
http://amzn.to/1llNo2w . You can also read the first chapter there if you want a taste of what's to come.
Please support me by buying this ebook.
Here's
how you can also help: send this email to others you think would be
interested. Post the info on sites you visit. Put it on Facebook and
social media. We all need to understand what we're up against with
nuclear interests. This ebook puts a human face on the problems, along
with zippy narrative and unexpected humor to keep the reader engaged.
Thanks for your support. Here's to a successful launch and an unstoppable anti-nuclear future!
Be safe, be well,
Libbe.
Libbe HaLevy, M.A., CAC
Communications and Creativity Expert
Heartistry Communications
The Heart of the Art of Communicating
818-353-8399
===============================================
(4) I want my video back up on You Tube!
===============================================
From: You-Tube:
Regarding your account: Ace Hoffman
The
YouTube Community has flagged one or more of your videos as
inappropriate. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed by the YouTube
Team against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, we have determined
that the following video(s) contain content in violation of these
guidelines, and have been disabled:
Ace Hoffman speaking at the Shut San Onofre rally March 11, 2012
For
more information on YouTube's Community Guidelines and how they are
enforced, please visit the help center
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.
Sincerely,
The YouTube Team
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
So I started a petition:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
author: Ace Hoffman
target: CEO of Google
We've got 3 signatures, help us get to 1,000:
On
February 25, 2014 You Tube removed a video of a public speech I gave at
a Shut San Onofre nuclear power plant rally on March 11, 2011, saying
it violated their "terms of service".
But this was just free
speech in action! The rally was legally permitted and had (calm) police
presence. It was held in the public park south of the reactor site
(which is now permanently closed!).
Several hundred people were
present at the event, including children, young adults and reporters.
More than a dozen people spoke, all spoke the truth, and no riot was
incited by anyone.
The video had been posted at my YT channel for
nearly two years. It is unfathomable what You Tube's reason could be
for removing this video at this time (or any time). The video had 144
views and 3 "likes" at the time of removal. It did not have a single
"thumbs down"!
The exact title of the video that was removed was:
Ace Hoffman speaking at the Shut San Onofre rally March 11, 2012
Please sign my petition asking You Tube (owned by Google) to reinstate this video!
Thank you,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California, USA
Please go here to sign the petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/161/349/695/i-want-my-video-back-up-on-you-tube/
===============================================
(5) Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
===============================================
************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer, The Animated Software Co.
** POB 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018
** U.S. & Canada (800) 551-2726; elsewhere: (760) 720-7261
** home page: www.animatedsoftware.com
** email:
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
** To cease contact, please put "Unsubscribe-me-please" in the subject.
