In either 1995 or 1996, there was a commercial scale liquid sodium cooled fast Breeder Reactor nuclear power plant in its beginning stages of operation in Japan. The plant’s name was Monju. It was in operation at approximately 40% capacity when I went there on a special tour which was arranged for me while I was Foreign Service officer posted to Japan. About 2 weeks or so after I was there, while it was still operating at 40 percent of capacity, the facility underwent a loss of 5 tons of liquid sodium coolant. The liquid sodium leaked into an unused interior space in the reactor building. For whatever reason, the leak was not detected for some amount of time after it had begun. By some miracle, the liquid sodium did not burn. Instead it put out a substantial amount of smoke. I do not specifically recall how long it took the plant’s operating staff and other related Japanese utility and nuclear personnel to bring the situation under control, or what they had to do specifically. But I do know that the Monju facility was immediately shut down, never again to be restarted. Prior to this accident the Japanese had ambitious plans and capital investment in the idea of basing their economy on a system of fast breeder reactors operating on reprocessed nuclear fuel. Those plans were shelved then and there. This event took place 15 or so years before the 2011 Magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that overwhelmed the cooling system at the Pressurized water reactors powering Tokyo Electric Power Company’s nuclear power plants at the Japanese coastal city of Fukushima. Japan had to restart their previously morhballed nuclear plants to make up for lost generating capacity due to the resulting Fukushima meltdowns and the lack of any operating capacity of an advanced technology such as LMFBRs.
FME = FOD in the aviation industry. Had one helicopter I was working on that I dropped a washer in the flight control tube. Tore the whole thing apart looking for it. Next morning I made the TI jump for joy when I presented him with the missing washer. It had fallen and tucked itself in my boot laces! FOD accounted for!
And when you found it, you exclaimed, "Well, F me running!". ;) Still, better to keep looking and eventually find it than to fly and find where it went on the fast way down.
Most famous FOD incident was when an ordinary plane dropped a metal strap on the runway before a Concorde flight . Strap cut the Concorde tires at speed, causing the cut up rubber to puncture the wing fuel tanks, escalating into a massive fuel fire killing everyone, including the people the Concorde crashed on top of .
Ah yes, the good old "FUCKME" process (I am fully aware it stands for Foreign Material Exclusion) but if you accidentally dropped something or acted in a wrong way in an FME controlled zone, you would probably also say.. "Ah, god damn, fuck me, there goes my job!".
Just as much, as exploding dangerous hydrocarbons in a machine dedicated to move around in your country, operated by amateurs. :D Did you know that liquid sodium was considered a possible replacement for gasoline in ICEs to reduce exhaust emissions?
@@frankt2658 Did you know that you're wrong? Liquid sodium as a fuel makes no sense. What *is* done is hollow valves cooled with liquid sodium. That would allow the burn process to be hotter, which means that the mix could be leaner.
@@samiraperi467Right, the sodium is in the primary heat exchange loop, then you probably have a secondary water loop. And a tertiary open “loop” for actually driving the turbine.
My Grandfather worked at Ameren UE (now just Ameren) for 30 years as a tech in the METLAB he made sure all the tools were fixed/calibrated properly for the guys actually doing the maintenance. He has told me the story about FERMI and other interesting stories. He also helped at FERMI plant several times when they needed help. He has traveled to at least 4 different plants during Outages.
Thank you for this explanation. I have some experience as a boiler operator on a historic ship and I have been fascinated by steam power and propulsion since forever. It seems inevitable that sooner or later, and regardless of the level of care, maintenance and inspection, sooner or later a tube in your boiler/steam generator/condenser is going to leak, usually where it is attached to the tube sheet, as a result of thermal stress, erosion or something else. Large numbers of PWR and BWR power plants have had steam generator leaks. It mystifies me how any sane engineer is going to put water under high pressure on the inside of dozens or hundreds of tubes of a steam generator and sodium on the outside of these tubes and expect the two never to come together over the lifetime of the plant. It requires a level of perfection that is not achievable this side of heaven. Am I missing something?
Very interesting review of a channel whose videos I’ve watched fairly extensively. You’ve explained what a curie is too. I get mixed up with nuclear measurements - there are so many! Curies, grays, roentgens and sieverts to mention a few.
Plainly difficult is one of those channels that does a good job of breaking down complex topics, much like yourself. Would like to see more reactions of there vids!
Love your nuclear videos! Went school right at, and visited Swedish R1 (Reactor One). And previously I went to high school at Forsmark, living half a mile from the plant, and in fact having lunch in Plant 3:s cafeteria. I remember the huge display proudly showing the current GW produced.
That zirconium plate was not really a foreign object in the sense of being something accidentally dropped or misplaced into the reactor. According to “We Almost Lost Detroit” (which I read), It was a last-minute addition to enhance protection of a pylon designed to prevent molten fuel from pooling in a critical geometry and was not even on the construction drawings.
The safety rods in that reactor had to be completely withdrawn to allow startup, insertion killed the reaction just as certainly as full control rod insertion and were an additional safety measure. Given the era in which that reactor was designed and built, unusually cautious design that was picked up in similar models later. Containment was literally capable of containing safely a maximum potential blast of reactor components from failure of 5 tons of TNT (I kid you not). Sounds like not a lot for some, but we're talking about containing that explosion within and now allowing anything out, not withstanding an external blast, which is trivial in comparison. The US had three sodium cooled reactor meltdowns, Fermi 1 and its upgrade, forget the name of the one in LA, all of course sensationalized in various books that were rife with disinformation (they're still looking for mythical tritium in LA, as well as fission products in significant quantities (although, background was a fair bit higher on the site than the surrounding area and the original contractor was, well, use your own assortment of profane words)). If you think only two control rods are bad, do look up the SL-1... With a positive void coefficient. Withdrawing the central rod too far turned that thing into the bottle water rocket from hell. Killed three, one of whom was pinned to the containment ceiling by a control rod plug. Oh, the power of lousy design, shoddy implementation and casual acceptance of the same to create the worst water hammer in human history until Chernobyl. BTW, TMI is literally a few miles downriver from me, literally walking distance to the bridge and visitor center (it's not like I'd get anything beyond a headache from security on the island, given its shutdown status, but the visitor center is still open).
Wasn't that the one where one of the workers remains consisted of a single piece of bone determined to be a fragment of skull they found lodged in the ceiling? Or am I thinking of a different Plainly Difficult industrial incident video?
Fermi-1's "foreign material" was actually part of the core catcher. It wasn't properly fastened and the coolant dragged it up to the bottom of the core.
Another technology that is now applied are vibration and 'loose-part' monitors. The idea simply to have sensitive detectors mounted on key pieces of equipment and 'listen' for 'things rattling around." I remember that San Onofre steam generator replacement ran into a lot of problems because of excessive vibration. The concern being that high vibration from flow forces will cause tubing and support brackets to break.
I used the vibration spectrum from a system in a PWR that ran excore detector signals through a FFT algorithm to detect unusual vibrations of reactor components. I used this to determine the chronology of a failure of a thermal shield. I correlated this timeline with Loose Parts Monitor alarms. The company spent a LOT of money paying Combustion Engineering to analyze the same data and they came to the exact same conclusions! I later worked at San Onofre. I don’t recall if the Loose Parts Monitor picked up anything as that was more of tube fretting wear against their supports rather than loose objects moving around. I was part of the team that did the Chapter 15 calculations for the various proposed reduced operating power levels with the repaired generators. We were close to getting NRC approval for restart when Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit requiring complete relicensing of the plant. Southern California Edison threw in the towel and pulled the plug. I think they got an offer of financial leniency from Jerry Brown and the Public Utility Commission to grease tge skids.
Scram comes from old reactor tests I'm told there was a control rod in the reactor pulled out by a rope and when operational there was a guy with a big knife who if needed could cut the rope dropping the gravity fed control rod They called this guy scram Single Control Rod Axe Man
Also consider doing a review about Kyle Hill what's behind the biggest door and the RTNS2 rotating target neutron source. Would love to see what you think of that.
I live in Amherstburg Ontario...down wind and down stream from the Enrico Fermi II power plant and it's been fascinating everytime I look across the water and see the steam coming out of the stacks. Please don't melt down lol
Did I understand you to say that PWR plants do not have two loops, I think you mean BWR plants only have one loop. Which makes for major maintenance headaches. PWR plants still have steam generators and secondary loops. We had a FOD issue at the Nautilus plant at Idaho Falls, but on the steam side of the plant. A hammer head on a welding hammer came off and flew down the main steam pipe ahead of the turbine. X-rays did not work on the heavy steel piping so they started cutting inspection hole in the pipe, they cut a lot of hole before finding the head. Each hole had to be patched and certified.
I'll note that CANDU reactors are considerably more expensive to build than PWR or BWR reactors, and yet, there's plenty of them in the world. They don't have to be shut-down to re-fuel, with fuel-handling being done "robotically" (yes, even in the 1960s when the first CANDU reactors came on-line). I lived across the bay from Pickering A1 while it was being built. They burn mostly U238, with some bundles having low-encriched U238 in them. They DO require a massive load of heavy water to act as a moderator, but they have on-site heavy-water separators. The actual reactor takes a lot longer to build, due to the structure of the calandria and the many many many calandria tubes that all need to be individually "plumbed" for moderator/coolant. They have their own issues -- hydrogen embrittlement of the zirconium fuel bundles was an issue early on. They also produce trtium, which has to be dealt with.
When I interviewed at Detroit Edison in 1982, they still had the sodium stored onsite. Nice people but I had to climb over a snowbank to get to my car to drive to the interview.
Well was there residential housing next to Fermi 1? If not that may be why it did not get the same coverage. Three mile island had local civilians on tv exclaiming their fears.
Werry similar reason A1 Jaslovské Bohunice meltdown (carbon dioxide coolant, heavy water moderated chanel reactor),... once, when unpacking fuel assembly workers noticet sack of Silicagel ripped open, vacuum cleane everything they saw, but didnt notice several crystals whitin asembly. After insetion into core, those crystals cloged coolant, causing fuel assembly overheat, and partialy melt, damaging Channel and causing contamination of both coolant and moderator loops....
Yeah, Plainly Difficult does a lot of serious research which shows in his released videos. And which shows in your reaction video. No corrections. Thank you for sharing your professional wisdom and opinion on this. I just subsrcibed and will take a look at your other videos during the next few weeks. Nonetheless, I would love to see your reaction on "The gosts of Tokaimura" by "That Chernobyl Guy". It´s not directly related to running a nuclear reactor and the respective problems/incidents, it´s about a criticallity incident in an uranium enrichment facility and it´s aftermath in seven videos. I believe, you´ve heard about that one. Happened in september 1999 in Japan.
What matters for the thermal efficiency are the temperature of the working fluid at entry to the turbine and the temperature of the working fluid at the exit of the turbine.
Are breeder reactors less efficient, due to the neutron energies needed for breeding fuel and fissioning fuel being rather different? I was under the impression that you need to make the fuel in a breeder, reprocess it, and then use it a separate reactor. (And for that matter - if you have a reprocess plant you can use normal nuclear waste, not just stuff you make.)
I'll admit, I have no idea! But I can guarantee you'll get there if you apply yourself and don't give up! I'm guessing it's 4 years for a bachelor's degree followed by an internship of sorts
It’s one of the hardest undergraduate engineering degrees to get. I would also include Chemical Engineering in that category. Those that go into the less popular disciplines (NE, Chem E, Aero E) seem to be more motivated than the average student in the more popular disciplines but that’s just my opinion.
The wild years of small scale reactor experimentation in the fifties was a time to remember even this day. If I can recommend, see James Mahaffey's books, they are educational and just fun. I visited the French Superphénix breeding reactor during an energy production pause in 1993. Small breeders may even have become commercially viable if we hadn't fallen into the so called Rickover trap of PWRs (and I have nothing against PWRs or BWRs), but big breeders were always a fever dream. Superphénix was never what it was meant to be. Although the safety crises were more economical than dangerous, the total energy production was truly a disappointment. The systems was certainly impressive, but the reactor was put out of its misery in 1998.
Annoyingly, there have been repeated global medical and industrial radioisotope shortages when the few remaining breeder reactors are shut down. But cancer is good for you, so we'll just not bother with that cobalt-60 treatment. And that blood pressure that gave you a stroke because of your thyroid is out of control? Consider it a stroke of luck. That chemical plant leak because of a defective weld went undetected because of no industrial x-ray of the joint? Part of life, get over those dissolved lungs.
The early aviation, auto and home computer industries could see a high rate of innovation because these devices could be made from easily obtained materials and components and literally assembled in a garage. Not so with anything nuclear. This is offset somewhat by the availability of high quality simulation and modeling tools but the jump from a concept that works on the computer to an actual working prototype that can be built on a predictable schedule and cost is enormous.
@@KevinBalch-dt8ot well, while David Hahn didn't quite get to build his home made breeder reactor, he did accumulate enough to make a God awful mess sufficient to become a superfund site. Something I chuckle over, given I have an Americium source temporarily residing on my desk, pending installation into a small display chamber that'll be a cloud chamber once properly cooled. Although, one's enough for me, thank you. I was a bit surprised though, the newer detector that failed that I removed it from has a much smaller source than one I examined a couple of decades ago, but had identical circuitry. The detector had failed because of defective battery contacts, lost tension and hence, connection to the unit. While I could have repaired it by spreading the contacts to make contact, it is a safety component, so I just had the management replace the unit and the worker just handed me the defective unit.
To be fair about the wording of that FME 2 Man Lockout signage: there is a usage for the word "man" to mean "any human" and it's probably the shortest word that can be read as such. That said, it only adds 2 letters to make the sign say FME 2 Human Lockout, which seems like it wouldn't have that much of an impact on sign size or readability. Though I imagine such signs have a fair bit of bureaucracy built into the process of rewording them such that size and clarity aren't compromised, and nobody's gotten the ball rolling on that. Hopefully that's because women in the industry feel they're well respected enough overall that they don't see the signage as a problem rather than it being they feel they have to put up with it or face mockery for causing that much fuss over a 2 letter change to the signage.
The pipes and vessels will have an auxiliary heating system. Typically this would be either electric heating cables wrapped around the outside, or an outer jacket allowing hot inert gas to be circulated around the sodium equipment.
wasn't molten aluminum used in a similar way as the sodium? I thought I read about submarines powered with a system like that but there were circulation problems with the aluminum or something.
The Soviets had a couple subs with liquid lead/bismuth cooled reactors. The coolant would solidify when the reactor was shut down and they had to use super-heated steam from an outside source to liquefy the coolant so the reactor could be fired up. That system was quickly abandoned.
It is a shame that the media enjoys scare mongering over events like this, I'm glad this particular one didn't result in much outcry, but I have to wonder what the energy generation scene in the US would look like if 3 Mile Island hadn't been used as an anti-nuclear soap box. I think it's important to learn about accidents and to foster a relationship of transparency between nuclear facilities and the public but it's on the public to not freak out when an accident occurs but is handled correctly and safely. If more people knew about the actual risks involved in incidents like this and didn't automatically assume that "nuclear accident" = "Chernobyl Round 2" then people would be better prepared for if/when a truly dangerous event does occur, and wouldn't have their lives disrupted by managed incidents.
Yes, he was fixated on breeder reactors. He was a very bright kid that had a less than optimum home environment. With a good mentor or adult figure, he might have had a promising STEM career.
This is extremely random, and you already do this throughout your reactions, but i was thinking you should do a video where you separate myths from facts. And you'd make it a series called "True or Folse?" Lol
I am not aware of any technology in the modern era of R&D that took more than 20-30 years to get from conception to acceptance in the marketplace. Nuclear fission chain reactions were conceived in the late 1930s and the first reactor demonstrated in the early 1940s. A “commercial” reactor was built in the 1950s. The airplane was invented in 1903 and within 5 years were being sold commercially. The transistor was invented in the late 1940s and by the mid 1959s were being used in industry. Magnetic confinement fusion has been around since the 1950s; inertial confinement since the 1970s. Unless something like cold fusion ends up working out, I doubt fusion will be used for anything but niche applications like space travel. Even if the ITER is successful, it will be a massive job to turn the technology into a commercial power plant that won’t require the skills found in a research facility. You’re still going to have to deal with neutrons which means material damage and proliferation concerns.
There was not the large antinuclear movement among the public or the media at the time. The biggest public opponent of Fermi 1 was UAW president Walter Reuther.
Given this discussion of typical reactor size and coolant margins, could you look at the video of "Copenhagen Atomics" presenting their onion shaped reactor design at the somewhat recent TEAC 12 conference . Video link is th-cam.com/video/QqxvBAJn_vc/w-d-xo.html
1:06 .. i have never understood this ... liquid .. sodium .. you mean that soft grey metal that explodes on contact with water ? as a coolent .. oh brilliant idea, wonderful idea.. what did'nt think to use gasoline? maybe liquid tnt? hell when not just use 100 % oxygen or better yet fluorine ... ... sodium .. of all the metals with to use ..why would you use sodium ... hey maybe we could try a hydrogen oxygen coolant next
Sodium is used for two reasons as far as I know. One is its low neutron cross section, the other is its low melting point. Believe it or not it’s the least dangerous option which has that combination of factors. Only two other metals have lower melting points; Mercury and Potassium. Mercury however also has too low of a boiling point which is why it’s not used while Potassium is just as dangerous as Sodium while being far more expensive. The other material options with low enough boiling points are tin and lead. Tin builds up a crust making it highly impractical. And lead needs to be alloyed with bismuth to get its melting point low enough for most reactors, a process which makes it highly corrosive. Lead-bismuth is actually used in some reactors but due to the alloying process it’s not actually any safer than sodium. It also has a positive void coefficient problem which is not generally a good thing. Edit: Also most reactors use hydrogen oxygen coolant if you think about it. And while no one has ever used gasoline as a coolant a few oil cooled designs have been tested.
Thanks so much for watching! For more about Three Mile Island, please check out: th-cam.com/video/7YaChwAqafw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=_D3uUvtVWgSrit-w
In either 1995 or 1996, there was a commercial scale liquid sodium cooled fast Breeder Reactor nuclear power plant in its beginning stages of operation in Japan. The plant’s name was Monju. It was in operation at approximately 40% capacity when I went there on a special tour which was arranged for me while I was Foreign Service officer posted to Japan. About 2 weeks or so after I was there, while it was still operating at 40 percent of capacity, the facility underwent a loss of 5 tons of liquid sodium coolant. The liquid sodium leaked into an unused interior space in the reactor building. For whatever reason, the leak was not detected for some amount of time after it had begun. By some miracle, the liquid sodium did not burn. Instead it put out a substantial amount of smoke. I do not specifically recall how long it took the plant’s operating staff and other related Japanese utility and nuclear personnel to bring the situation under control, or what they had to do specifically. But I do know that the Monju facility was immediately shut down, never again to be restarted. Prior to this accident the Japanese had ambitious plans and capital investment in the idea of basing their economy on a system of fast breeder reactors operating on reprocessed nuclear fuel. Those plans were shelved then and there. This event took place 15 or so years before the 2011 Magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that overwhelmed the cooling system at the Pressurized water reactors powering Tokyo Electric Power Company’s nuclear power plants at the Japanese coastal city of Fukushima. Japan had to restart their previously morhballed nuclear plants to make up for lost generating capacity due to the resulting Fukushima meltdowns and the lack of any operating capacity of an advanced technology such as LMFBRs.
@@Geoplanetjane
F' Me? I say F' YOU! The FU program is when foreign objects fall Under the reactor.
As much of a serious matter as this is, I loose it every time I hear "F-ME" .. "Not everyone on site is F-Me qualified" 🤣🤣🤣
i may not be f-me certified but i am f-you certified.
Someone understood the assignment 😂 the PC name planning for things happening & the private person on the ground thoughts if something happens. 🤬😐🤣
someone said "F ME" when they found it, the straight laced supervisor asked "Whats that mean..."
I can't stop giggling...
Fme 2 man
"There is no gender bias in usage or inspection of F-me devices" - gold, pure gold
Well, F-me. I did not see that coming.
FME = FOD in the aviation industry. Had one helicopter I was working on that I dropped a washer in the flight control tube. Tore the whole thing apart looking for it. Next morning I made the TI jump for joy when I presented him with the missing washer. It had fallen and tucked itself in my boot laces! FOD accounted for!
And when you found it, you exclaimed, "Well, F me running!". ;)
Still, better to keep looking and eventually find it than to fly and find where it went on the fast way down.
Saved an H-53, found a sheared flight control bolt during fod walk.
Most famous FOD incident was when an ordinary plane dropped a metal strap on the runway before a Concorde flight . Strap cut the Concorde tires at speed, causing the cut up rubber to puncture the wing fuel tanks, escalating into a massive fuel fire killing everyone, including the people the Concorde crashed on top of .
@@Idrinklight44hope you got a bonus for that
Fuck on-demand?
Ah yes, the good old "FUCKME" process (I am fully aware it stands for Foreign Material Exclusion) but if you accidentally dropped something or acted in a wrong way in an FME controlled zone, you would probably also say.. "Ah, god damn, fuck me, there goes my job!".
My first impression of the meaning! 😂
@@maralisil ;)
Similar event as 3MI, but the media didn't accidentally find out and cause panic. That's the biggest difference I see in terms of public perception.
"The reactor is melting down! F me, right?" 😆
large amounts of hot activated liquid sodium sounds like a total nightmare.
Just as much, as exploding dangerous hydrocarbons in a machine dedicated to move around in your country, operated by amateurs. :D
Did you know that liquid sodium was considered a possible replacement for gasoline in ICEs to reduce exhaust emissions?
@@frankt2658 Did you know that you're wrong? Liquid sodium as a fuel makes no sense. What *is* done is hollow valves cooled with liquid sodium. That would allow the burn process to be hotter, which means that the mix could be leaner.
@@samiraperi467Right, the sodium is in the primary heat exchange loop, then you probably have a secondary water loop. And a tertiary open “loop” for actually driving the turbine.
Worked on Wright 1820 cyclone engines, yes the exhaust valve on this engine had sodium@woodendoorgarage
well there is one thing i dont realy get, why use liquid sodium over molten salt.
26:08 "FME: 2 men" sounds like something I would want on a tipsy friday night, not something I would expect on a form
Or F U haha
My Grandfather worked at Ameren UE (now just Ameren) for 30 years as a tech in the METLAB he made sure all the tools were fixed/calibrated properly for the guys actually doing the maintenance. He has told me the story about FERMI and other interesting stories. He also helped at FERMI plant several times when they needed help. He has traveled to at least 4 different plants during Outages.
Be F-me ready on the F-me zones, F-me devices and F-me two men; are we still going on about nuclear plants? LOL 🤣
nuclear pants
“Are you carrying a spent nuclear fuel rod in your pant or are you just happy to see me?”
-Nuclear Engineers.
Are we still using electricity, someone call Terence Howard
FME running procedures good to go.
The worst part about this video is that he did not use his hand as a map. This is a crime against Michigan. Otherwise love Plainly Difficult
Thank you for this explanation.
I have some experience as a boiler operator on a historic ship and I have been fascinated by steam power and propulsion since forever. It seems inevitable that sooner or later, and regardless of the level of care, maintenance and inspection, sooner or later a tube in your boiler/steam generator/condenser is going to leak, usually where it is attached to the tube sheet, as a result of thermal stress, erosion or something else. Large numbers of PWR and BWR power plants have had steam generator leaks.
It mystifies me how any sane engineer is going to put water under high pressure on the inside of dozens or hundreds of tubes of a steam generator and sodium on the outside of these tubes and expect the two never to come together over the lifetime of the plant. It requires a level of perfection that is not achievable this side of heaven. Am I missing something?
Very interesting review of a channel whose videos I’ve watched fairly extensively. You’ve explained what a curie is too. I get mixed up with nuclear measurements - there are so many! Curies, grays, roentgens and sieverts to mention a few.
Plainly difficult is one of those channels that does a good job of breaking down complex topics, much like yourself. Would like to see more reactions of there vids!
Love your nuclear videos! Went school right at, and visited Swedish R1 (Reactor One). And previously I went to high school at Forsmark, living half a mile from the plant, and in fact having lunch in Plant 3:s cafeteria.
I remember the huge display proudly showing the current GW produced.
That zirconium plate was not really a foreign object in the sense of being something accidentally dropped or misplaced into the reactor. According to “We Almost Lost Detroit” (which I read), It was a last-minute addition to enhance protection of a pylon designed to prevent molten fuel from pooling in a critical geometry and was not even on the construction drawings.
Three Mile Island also had a news team visiting, while it happened.
Yes, that's my thought as well. Media coverage probably played a large part.
Not me giggling like a 12 yr old every time he says F-ME
I've never heard of this accident but now I do. Thanks Tyler!
"...and if you drop anything into it, you start off by saying, 'Eff me!"
The safety rods in that reactor had to be completely withdrawn to allow startup, insertion killed the reaction just as certainly as full control rod insertion and were an additional safety measure. Given the era in which that reactor was designed and built, unusually cautious design that was picked up in similar models later. Containment was literally capable of containing safely a maximum potential blast of reactor components from failure of 5 tons of TNT (I kid you not). Sounds like not a lot for some, but we're talking about containing that explosion within and now allowing anything out, not withstanding an external blast, which is trivial in comparison.
The US had three sodium cooled reactor meltdowns, Fermi 1 and its upgrade, forget the name of the one in LA, all of course sensationalized in various books that were rife with disinformation (they're still looking for mythical tritium in LA, as well as fission products in significant quantities (although, background was a fair bit higher on the site than the surrounding area and the original contractor was, well, use your own assortment of profane words)).
If you think only two control rods are bad, do look up the SL-1... With a positive void coefficient. Withdrawing the central rod too far turned that thing into the bottle water rocket from hell.
Killed three, one of whom was pinned to the containment ceiling by a control rod plug.
Oh, the power of lousy design, shoddy implementation and casual acceptance of the same to create the worst water hammer in human history until Chernobyl.
BTW, TMI is literally a few miles downriver from me, literally walking distance to the bridge and visitor center (it's not like I'd get anything beyond a headache from security on the island, given its shutdown status, but the visitor center is still open).
Wasn't that the one where one of the workers remains consisted of a single piece of bone determined to be a fragment of skull they found lodged in the ceiling? Or am I thinking of a different Plainly Difficult industrial incident video?
Santa Suzanna run by Atomics International
Fermi-1's "foreign material" was actually part of the core catcher. It wasn't properly fastened and the coolant dragged it up to the bottom of the core.
Another technology that is now applied are vibration and 'loose-part' monitors. The idea simply to have sensitive detectors mounted on key pieces of equipment and 'listen' for 'things rattling around." I remember that San Onofre steam generator replacement ran into a lot of problems because of excessive vibration. The concern being that high vibration from flow forces will cause tubing and support brackets to break.
I used the vibration spectrum from a system in a PWR that ran excore detector signals through a FFT algorithm to detect unusual vibrations of reactor components. I used this to determine the chronology of a failure of a thermal shield. I correlated this timeline with Loose Parts Monitor alarms. The company spent a LOT of money paying Combustion Engineering to analyze the same data and they came to the exact same conclusions!
I later worked at San Onofre. I don’t recall if the Loose Parts Monitor picked up anything as that was more of tube fretting wear against their supports rather than loose objects moving around. I was part of the team that did the Chapter 15 calculations for the various proposed reduced operating power levels with the repaired generators. We were close to getting NRC approval for restart when Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit requiring complete relicensing of the plant. Southern California Edison threw in the towel and pulled the plug. I think they got an offer of financial leniency from Jerry Brown and the Public Utility Commission to grease tge skids.
Scram comes from old reactor tests I'm told there was a control rod in the reactor pulled out by a rope and when operational there was a guy with a big knife who if needed could cut the rope dropping the gravity fed control rod
They called this guy scram
Single
Control
Rod
Axe
Man
I toured Fermi 2 when I was in elementary - a very cool experience. It was a common school field trip before 9-11.
I wished my elementary did that with my local one, Hope Creek located in Lower Alloways Creek Township, in Salem County, New Jersey.
The Fukushima 50 movie is very good at showing a reactor emergency shutdown and how quickly the power drops
Also consider doing a review about Kyle Hill what's behind the biggest door and the RTNS2 rotating target neutron source. Would love to see what you think of that.
I live in Amherstburg Ontario...down wind and down stream from the Enrico Fermi II power plant and it's been fascinating everytime I look across the water and see the steam coming out of the stacks.
Please don't melt down lol
Did I understand you to say that PWR plants do not have two loops, I think you mean BWR plants only have one loop. Which makes for major maintenance headaches. PWR plants still have steam generators and secondary loops.
We had a FOD issue at the Nautilus plant at Idaho Falls, but on the steam side of the plant. A hammer head on a welding hammer came off and flew down the main steam pipe ahead of the turbine. X-rays did not work on the heavy steel piping so they started cutting inspection hole in the pipe, they cut a lot of hole before finding the head. Each hole had to be patched and certified.
24:52 _"You need to have an F-ME peer."_ Wouldn't that be an F-U?
Technology is never actually lost, it's simply replaced by what's wanted at the moment.
I'll note that CANDU reactors are considerably more expensive to build than PWR or BWR reactors, and yet, there's plenty of them in the world. They don't have to be shut-down to re-fuel, with fuel-handling being done "robotically" (yes, even in the 1960s when the first CANDU reactors came on-line). I lived across the bay from Pickering A1 while it was being built. They burn mostly U238, with some bundles having low-encriched U238 in them. They DO require a massive load of heavy water to act as a moderator, but they have on-site heavy-water separators. The actual reactor takes a lot longer to build, due to the structure of the calandria and the many many many calandria tubes that all need to be individually "plumbed" for moderator/coolant. They have their own issues -- hydrogen embrittlement of the zirconium fuel bundles was an issue early on. They also produce trtium, which has to be dealt with.
When I interviewed at Detroit Edison in 1982, they still had the sodium stored onsite. Nice people but I had to climb over a snowbank to get to my car to drive to the interview.
Well was there residential housing next to Fermi 1? If not that may be why it did not get the same coverage. Three mile island had local civilians on tv exclaiming their fears.
Werry similar reason A1 Jaslovské Bohunice meltdown (carbon dioxide coolant, heavy water moderated chanel reactor),... once, when unpacking fuel assembly workers noticet sack of Silicagel ripped open, vacuum cleane everything they saw, but didnt notice several crystals whitin asembly. After insetion into core, those crystals cloged coolant, causing fuel assembly overheat, and partialy melt, damaging Channel and causing contamination of both coolant and moderator loops....
Would love to see someone cover all the difficulties experienced at Fort Saint Vrain. Very little modern discussion about it.
Is it intentional that you pronounce it like F-ME instead of F M E as a sortofa inside joke :D ?
I always heard it as F M E. Maybe I worked with prudes.
Of course it is.
Yeah, Plainly Difficult does a lot of serious research which shows in his released videos.
And which shows in your reaction video. No corrections.
Thank you for sharing your professional wisdom and opinion on this.
I just subsrcibed and will take a look at your other videos during the next few weeks.
Nonetheless, I would love to see your reaction on "The gosts of Tokaimura" by "That Chernobyl Guy". It´s not directly related to running a nuclear reactor and the respective problems/incidents, it´s about a criticallity incident in an uranium enrichment facility and it´s aftermath in seven videos. I believe, you´ve heard about that one. Happened in september 1999 in Japan.
I got to tour Fermi2 when I worked for DECo (now DTE) back in the day. Needless to say we were not given a tour of Fermi1
2:18 just wondering but could we use molten tungsten as a coolant? .. then again if we did.. what would we make the reactor out of....
How do u want to manage something that has melting temp of 3400°C
What matters for the thermal efficiency are the temperature of the working fluid at entry to the turbine and the temperature of the working fluid at the exit of the turbine.
Are breeder reactors less efficient, due to the neutron energies needed for breeding fuel and fissioning fuel being rather different? I was under the impression that you need to make the fuel in a breeder, reprocess it, and then use it a separate reactor. (And for that matter - if you have a reprocess plant you can use normal nuclear waste, not just stuff you make.)
Also How hard is it to get your nuclear degree? I plan on working at npps in the control room when I'm older
I'll admit, I have no idea! But I can guarantee you'll get there if you apply yourself and don't give up!
I'm guessing it's 4 years for a bachelor's degree followed by an internship of sorts
It’s one of the hardest undergraduate engineering degrees to get. I would also include Chemical Engineering in that category. Those that go into the less popular disciplines (NE, Chem E, Aero E) seem to be more motivated than the average student in the more popular disciplines but that’s just my opinion.
I love Mr. Music's tales of gross criminal negligence!
Hey Google, where can I find a FME zone near me?
That's what I'm talking about.😏🤣
The wild years of small scale reactor experimentation in the fifties was a time to remember even this day. If I can recommend, see James Mahaffey's books, they are educational and just fun.
I visited the French Superphénix breeding reactor during an energy production pause in 1993. Small breeders may even have become commercially viable if we hadn't fallen into the so called Rickover trap of PWRs (and I have nothing against PWRs or BWRs), but big breeders were always a fever dream. Superphénix was never what it was meant to be. Although the safety crises were more economical than dangerous, the total energy production was truly a disappointment. The systems was certainly impressive, but the reactor was put out of its misery in 1998.
Annoyingly, there have been repeated global medical and industrial radioisotope shortages when the few remaining breeder reactors are shut down.
But cancer is good for you, so we'll just not bother with that cobalt-60 treatment. And that blood pressure that gave you a stroke because of your thyroid is out of control? Consider it a stroke of luck. That chemical plant leak because of a defective weld went undetected because of no industrial x-ray of the joint? Part of life, get over those dissolved lungs.
The early aviation, auto and home computer industries could see a high rate of innovation because these devices could be made from easily obtained materials and components and literally assembled in a garage. Not so with anything nuclear. This is offset somewhat by the availability of high quality simulation and modeling tools but the jump from a concept that works on the computer to an actual working prototype that can be built on a predictable schedule and cost is enormous.
@@KevinBalch-dt8ot well, while David Hahn didn't quite get to build his home made breeder reactor, he did accumulate enough to make a God awful mess sufficient to become a superfund site.
Something I chuckle over, given I have an Americium source temporarily residing on my desk, pending installation into a small display chamber that'll be a cloud chamber once properly cooled. Although, one's enough for me, thank you.
I was a bit surprised though, the newer detector that failed that I removed it from has a much smaller source than one I examined a couple of decades ago, but had identical circuitry. The detector had failed because of defective battery contacts, lost tension and hence, connection to the unit.
While I could have repaired it by spreading the contacts to make contact, it is a safety component, so I just had the management replace the unit and the worker just handed me the defective unit.
F-Me High risk.... lolz
If you haven't done it yet, I'd love to see you do a video about the Chalk River accident.
F - ME that sounds like an F-UP meltdown accident! 😅😅
Absolutely love plainly difficults videos!!!!!
To be fair about the wording of that FME 2 Man Lockout signage: there is a usage for the word "man" to mean "any human" and it's probably the shortest word that can be read as such.
That said, it only adds 2 letters to make the sign say FME 2 Human Lockout, which seems like it wouldn't have that much of an impact on sign size or readability. Though I imagine such signs have a fair bit of bureaucracy built into the process of rewording them such that size and clarity aren't compromised, and nobody's gotten the ball rolling on that. Hopefully that's because women in the industry feel they're well respected enough overall that they don't see the signage as a problem rather than it being they feel they have to put up with it or face mockery for causing that much fuss over a 2 letter change to the signage.
Ppl?
How do you start up a system where the coolant is not liquid until its hot, it would be congealed in the pipes.
It did say Sodium, not NaK
The pipes and vessels will have an auxiliary heating system. Typically this would be either electric heating cables wrapped around the outside, or an outer jacket allowing hot inert gas to be circulated around the sodium equipment.
wasn't molten aluminum used in a similar way as the sodium? I thought I read about submarines powered with a system like that but there were circulation problems with the aluminum or something.
The US Navy had a sodium cooled submarine reactor “Sea Wolf” in the 1950s but it turned out PWRs worked better.
The Soviets had a couple subs with liquid lead/bismuth cooled reactors. The coolant would solidify when the reactor was shut down and they had to use super-heated steam from an outside source to liquefy the coolant so the reactor could be fired up. That system was quickly abandoned.
Gotta bone up procedures for FME running methods.
Would you like to check and react to that chernobyl guy's "untold stories - chernobyl unit 2 turbine hall fire" ?
24:03 ask a Chinook pilot😮
Hey, there are constant clicks in your voice recording, do you happen to have a Geiger counter nearby and turned on when recording these?🤔
It is a shame that the media enjoys scare mongering over events like this, I'm glad this particular one didn't result in much outcry, but I have to wonder what the energy generation scene in the US would look like if 3 Mile Island hadn't been used as an anti-nuclear soap box.
I think it's important to learn about accidents and to foster a relationship of transparency between nuclear facilities and the public but it's on the public to not freak out when an accident occurs but is handled correctly and safely. If more people knew about the actual risks involved in incidents like this and didn't automatically assume that "nuclear accident" = "Chernobyl Round 2" then people would be better prepared for if/when a truly dangerous event does occur, and wouldn't have their lives disrupted by managed incidents.
Maybe they should change the FME-2M to FME-2P😂😂😂
26:32 Marking where I paused.
I tried to join your ko-fi group, and I paid PayPal $5 but my membership didnt go through.
Was this the type of reactor the atomic Boy Scout wanted to build?😂 crazy if so…
Yes, he was fixated on breeder reactors. He was a very bright kid that had a less than optimum home environment. With a good mentor or adult figure, he might have had a promising STEM career.
@@KevinBalch-dt8ot Go big or go home right🤷♂️
Yep, quite a sad story in its entirety, to be honest.
This is extremely random, and you already do this throughout your reactions, but i was thinking you should do a video where you separate myths from facts.
And you'd make it a series called "True or Folse?" Lol
13:18 you're talking about demon core stuff
Oh snap, you're basically the real life Homer Simpson. At least his job right?
A am a very mature adult and i am definitely not giggling like a middle schooler about these fme protocols
Theres a strange faint clacking sound when you talk sometimes I only noticed it this video
I pray we are putting the most effort into fusion and not new fission.
I am not aware of any technology in the modern era of R&D that took more than 20-30 years to get from conception to acceptance in the marketplace. Nuclear fission chain reactions were conceived in the late 1930s and the first reactor demonstrated in the early 1940s. A “commercial” reactor was built in the 1950s. The airplane was invented in 1903 and within 5 years were being sold commercially. The transistor was invented in the late 1940s and by the mid 1959s were being used in industry. Magnetic confinement fusion has been around since the 1950s; inertial confinement since the 1970s. Unless something like cold fusion ends up working out, I doubt fusion will be used for anything but niche applications like space travel.
Even if the ITER is successful, it will be a massive job to turn the technology into a commercial power plant that won’t require the skills found in a research facility. You’re still going to have to deal with neutrons which means material damage and proliferation concerns.
You don’t touch another man’s turban dude 😂😂
Well F me, this was interesting
Day 2 of asking tyler to react to the kyle hill glass reactor video
it can make 69mw?!? niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Honestly, the news probably just had something better to talk about. Media has always been weird.
There was not the large antinuclear movement among the public or the media at the time. The biggest public opponent of Fermi 1 was UAW president Walter Reuther.
Im always FME ready
Given this discussion of typical reactor size and coolant margins, could you look at the video of "Copenhagen Atomics" presenting their onion shaped reactor design at the somewhat recent TEAC 12 conference . Video link is th-cam.com/video/QqxvBAJn_vc/w-d-xo.html
F-Me is much better than FOD. 😂😅
Doug Mckenzie.
1:06 .. i have never understood this ... liquid .. sodium .. you mean that soft grey metal that explodes on contact with water ? as a coolent .. oh brilliant idea, wonderful idea.. what did'nt think to use gasoline? maybe liquid tnt? hell when not just use 100 % oxygen or better yet fluorine ... ... sodium .. of all the metals with to use ..why would you use sodium ... hey maybe we could try a hydrogen oxygen coolant next
Sodium is used for two reasons as far as I know. One is its low neutron cross section, the other is its low melting point. Believe it or not it’s the least dangerous option which has that combination of factors. Only two other metals have lower melting points; Mercury and Potassium. Mercury however also has too low of a boiling point which is why it’s not used while Potassium is just as dangerous as Sodium while being far more expensive. The other material options with low enough boiling points are tin and lead. Tin builds up a crust making it highly impractical. And lead needs to be alloyed with bismuth to get its melting point low enough for most reactors, a process which makes it highly corrosive. Lead-bismuth is actually used in some reactors but due to the alloying process it’s not actually any safer than sodium. It also has a positive void coefficient problem which is not generally a good thing.
Edit: Also most reactors use hydrogen oxygen coolant if you think about it. And while no one has ever used gasoline as a coolant a few oil cooled designs have been tested.
Check out radioactive drew
Good shout. Drew has some Fascinating Radioactive _Things!_
I Live near Fermi 1
You just did this video to test TH-cam’s policies didn’t you?
ugh. react “content”
I'd say this is the best as reaction videos can get. Actually adding to the value of the video in subject