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Samurai-Sword Maker May Cool Nuclear Revival
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Mar 14, 2008 07:56 AM
from the can't-cut-it dept.
from the can't-cut-it dept.
NobleSavage sends a story from Bloomberg about Japan Steel Works Ltd., a company that still makes Samurai swords, and how it may control the fate of the global nuclear-energy renaissance. "There stands the only plant in the world, a survivor of Allied bombing in World War II, capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak. Utilities that won't need the equipment for years are making $100 million down payments now on components Japan Steel makes from 600-ton ingots. Each year the Tokyo-based company can turn out just four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor. Even after it doubles capacity in the next two years, there won't be enough production to meet building plans."
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Hm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hm (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe depleted uranium.
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Re:Hm (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hm (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hm (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Hm (Score:5, Informative)
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Not an unexpected fact considering... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Hm (Score:5, Informative)
That's really reassuring.
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Re:Hm (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hm (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Hm (Score:4, Interesting)
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sounds like a way to re-start (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:sounds like a way to re-start (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:sounds like a way to re-start (Score:4, Interesting)
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Change the design (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Change the design (Score:5, Informative)
The certification process probably makes the design safer, but it also disincentives innovation in ways that would horrify someone used to the rapid pace of consumer electronics.
On the other hand, the kind of reliability standards we see on consumer electronics would horrify me if they ever happened be applied to a nuclear facility or an airplane.
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Re:Change the design (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:sounds like a way to re-start (Score:5, Insightful)
How? We have no industrial base anymore. It's the "information age", we're a "service economy", remember? Actually making steel is, like, so 1970s.
U.S. Steel [wikipedia.org] now makes about as much steel now as it did in 1902. The once-mighty Bethlehem Steel [wikipedia.org]? Gone. National Steel [wikipedia.org]? Kaput.
We traded our ability to make stuff, for our ability to by cheap imports at Wal*Mart.
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Re:sounds like a way to re-start (Score:5, Insightful)
It really doesn't matter where cheap steel is coming from; it isn't particularly profitable to make, and it is the easiest capacity to add, so why should anybody be surprised that American companies aren't trying to compete with cheaper foreign labor for the title of biggest steel company?
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All makes perfect sense, until (Score:5, Insightful)
Until you actually read the article and see that your cheap foreign labour is in Japan? Japan hasn't been cheap in decades.
Oh and where are those Intel chips actually produced?
Read up on Henry Ford and exactly why he allowed his factory workers special loans to buy the cars they produced. If a rabid capatalist understood, why don't you?
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Re:All makes perfect sense, until (Score:5, Insightful)
(and Alcoa and Intel make stuff all over the world; this doesn't change the fact that they have significant production operations in the United States)
I'm wasn't responding to the lamentation that the U.S. is apparently incapable of producing one of these giant forgings, I was responding to the ridiculous idea that all the economic activity of whatever golden age of American industry up and disappeared. It didn't disappear, it shifted to other activity, and when you count things up, there is more industry here than there was 25 or 50 years ago. So yes, as a percentage of our overall economy, heavy industry has dropped, but the economy has grown so much that the actual amount of heavy industry has increased, and instead of just paying people to work in steel mills, we can pay them to do silly things like program computers.
And the U.S. is actually a pretty popular place to do heavy industry. We are politically stable, have cheap, available energy(Coal!) and a good portion of the workforce is highly skilled. We certainly don't have a monopoly on any of those things, but it's hard to argue that we should.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(Though a bit late for a Holocaust cloak, one would think, and perhaps the component is a little large for a wheelbarrow)
Japan, WWII, allied bombing, and nukes (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 Ironic
Re:Japan, WWII, allied bombing, and nukes (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Japan, WWII, allied bombing, and nukes (Score:5, Interesting)
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May be a stupid question... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's nothing (Score:4, Funny)
Candu (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Candu (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Candu (Score:5, Informative)
And the reason why the CANDU was designed was because it runs on natural, unenriched uranium. It had nothing to do with the design of the pressure vessel. When the first CANDU's were being built, the US was still manufacturing PWR pressure vessels and there was no problem in that area.
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Re:Candu (Score:4, Interesting)
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old article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:old article (Score:5, Informative)
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The only one for sure? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The only one for sure? (Score:4, Informative)
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A touch sensationalist (Score:3, Insightful)
I think someone will be on top of this problem when the money is there.
Slightly sensationalist summary I feel (Score:5, Informative)
New nuclear build is not going to grind to a halt because this plant can't keep up.
Re:Slightly sensationalist summary I feel (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nice, but how does it compare (Score:3, Funny)
Doesn't add up (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the forging is described as a cylinder, which leaves the top and bottom of the pressure vessel. How do you weld 30 cm thick steel? ISTR reading about submarine construction (which use a pressure hull maybe a few cm thick) where welding the hull sections had to take place at night because daytime operations would overload the local power grid. These vessels would be even more difficult to weld correctly.
REACTOR vessel vs. CONTAINMENT vessel (Score:5, Informative)
A reactor vessel is a large-room-sized steel vessel, that holds the fuel and steam transfer pipes and so forth and is subjected to huge internal pressures in normal operation.
A containment vessel is the building-sized concrete structure that gives many reactors buildings their impressive dome shape. It is only important in the case of an accident, when it might be subjected to pressures on the order of an atmosphere or so. It is intended to hold in or contain any radioactive materials released after an accident has occurred.
Interestingly enough, in light of his demonization by anti-nuclear factions, it was Edward Teller who was largely responsible for insisting on containment vessels, a nice simple brute-force protection measure.
Every reactor has a reactor vessel, but not all reactors have containment vessels. Some reactors, such as Chernobyl, and, in the United States, GE boiling-water reactors such as the one in Plymouth, Massachusetts have very ordinary-looking block-like buildings rather than containment domes. These reactors are designed to "suppress" pressure in an accident rather than "contain" it, by the use of engineered mechanisms that open valves at the right time and direct steam through big tanks of water, cooling it down and condensing it.
Japan Steel Works a sword maker (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously, Slashdot, isn't this story cool enough without adding misleading sensationalist crap onto it?
More on pressure vessels (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear reactor pressure vessels are a real problem. Most of the larger ones are in fact built up from welded sections. This isn't an easy welding job, and inspection of welds is a big headache. Several Japanese nuclear plants have had problems with cracks in pressure vessel welds, [jnes.go.jp] although in internal reactor components welded to the shell, not the shell itself. So making the pressure vessel and its internal support structures from one big forging makes a better product.
The environment of a reactor pressure vessel is tough. First, there's "embrittlement". Neutrons are constantly blasting apart the atoms in the pressure vessel, and over a period of years, this structural damage adds up. Then there's corrosion. There have been major corrosion problems requiring reactor shutdowns from carbon dioxide and boric acid corrosion inside the pressure vessel. Remember, this is a steam pressure vessel; at steam temperatures and pressures, minor corrosive effects at room temperature become big problems.
High quality welding of thick steel sections is a tough problem. Many approaches have been tried. The general idea is to make a V-shaped notch and fill it in during the welding process. Doing this in a way that's no weaker than the surrounding material is hard. Electric arc welding under an inert gas is the usual approach. Electron beam welding and laser welding have been tried. Then there's the problem of approach angle - welding on a vertical surface is not easy. Quality control requires X-rays, ultrasonic tests, and regulators that aren't corrupt.
So there's much to be said for building the pressure vessel as one big forging. Of course, then there's the problem of delivering a 550-ton object to the job site. There are companies that can do that [diamondheavyhaul.com], if you can find them a clear path [hankstruckpictures.com] from a seaport.
Sword making technology is relevant to the making of big forgings. Swords are built-up forgings. This is unusual in modern metalworking; most modern forged objects, like tools, are banged out in one piece by equipment much larger than the thing being manufactured. Big pressure vessels are built-up forgings; the scale requires it. In Japan, it's considered a good doctoral thesis in metallurgy to improve on sword making technology. So smart people are still thinking about the technology of built-up forgings. Nobody else bothers much.
Here's a US NRC fact sheet. [nrc.gov] on pressure vessels, and a similar European document. [euronuclear.org]
Re:More on pressure vessels (Score:4, Interesting)
If I may pick a nit here, if I understand this right, on average a weld will be stronger than the surrounding metal, the difficulty lies in being certain that that's the case for all of your welds. The problem isn't getting the strength up, but getting the variation down -- and as you point out earlier, non-destructive inspection of welds is a tough problem.
This is the reason that aircraft are still assembled using bolts and rivets -- in theory you could make a lighter aircraft using welds, but there isn't any way to be certain that any particular weld was done right, so we usually stick with a slightly inferior, but more dependable way of doing it.
(Or at least that was the case some years back... it would seem like there must be some way of cracking this problem.)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The 5 year gap is important because during that 5 years, they'd expect to be able to increase capacity while other forgers would still be getting started.
However, the problem is China and its vast natural resources. Japan, unfortunately doesn't have the natural resources to do this cheaply fo
Re:4 per year (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:4 per year (Score:5, Insightful)
The Japanese firms for steel have a really good reputation for forging some of the best parts in the world. Even the Spaniards and Americans can not produce such quality steel.
I don't think I would want to be near a Chinese forged reactor core any time in my life. QC does not seem to be their strong point.
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Re:4 per year (Score:5, Funny)
>any time in my life. QC does not seem to be their strong point.
On the plus side, it is very likely to come coated in lead.
That's good in this case, right?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)