Samurai-Sword Maker May Cool Nuclear Revival 317
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."
sounds like a way to re-start (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:May be a stupid question... (Score:-1, Interesting)
For comparison the new British Airways terminal in London took 20 years from planning to completion.
Sure it's "just a time game", but so is the need for alternative power sources.
Candu (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:4 per year (Score:5, Interesting)
The only one for sure? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:sounds like a way to re-start (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4249332.html [popularmechanics.com]
(and I did hesitate to link to Popular Mechanics, as they are a bit rah rah patriotic for this here, but I doubt very much that they are outright lying)
Change the design (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear engineering may be a lot different since everyone wants to stick with what has worked in the past, but can't getting the parts to build something usually results in a new design in my experience.
Re:4 per year (Score:3, Interesting)
The "practically worthless" swords, from a Japanese perspective, would be anything NOT made in Japan. Most of the cheap wallhangers that you see out there in the marketplace are from China, believe it or not.
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.
Aerospace plants are one thing.... (Score:3, Interesting)
A heavy steel forging operation, OTOH, would face opposition because of the smokestack emissions, and the ingrained idea that we don't need workers who actually MAKE anything anymore, when we can base our entire economy on shuffling money around and suing each other.
Re:Japan, WWII, allied bombing, and nukes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Candu (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:4 per year (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hm (Score:4, Interesting)
Background info (Score:3, Interesting)
http://ameblo.jp/machizukuri-engineer/entry-10070632943.html [ameblo.jp]
An older example of the swords they make (from the Russo-Japanese war):
http://www.e-sword.jp/sale/0650/0650_1006syousai.htm [e-sword.jp]
The company also uses sword-making as a source of research that they apply to other field's of forging
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110001457129/ [nii.ac.jp]
Re:sounds like a way to re-start (Score:4, Interesting)
Not an unexpected fact considering... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)