Nice article! Quite clear, though I don't think they wrote enough
about the context that was in place when the reactors were designed.
Cheers.
Fil
On 21 March 2011 13:45, ben jonson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> For graphical representation of "Deconstructing Controversial Design":
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/19/world/asia/reactordesign.html
>
>> Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:18:24 -0400
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Status of "design" re Japanese nuclear crisis? Reply to Norman
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Clive et al,
>> My comments are embedded below. Clive's post was shortened; hopefully
>> I didn't remove so much as to weaken his own arguments.
>>
>> On 17 March 2011 08:23, Clive Dilnot <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> > [...]
>> > My original post asked two questions. The first was open—what does the
>> > word “design” mean when it is used in connection with the design of (or
>> > what I would call the configuration) of the Japanese nuclear plants?
>> > What is “design” here? What is that in the nuclear plant or as a quality
>> > of the plant, that causes commentators to talk of its ‘design”?
>>
>> There's 2 questions here.
>> 1. What did "design" mean to those who designed & built the reactor
>> (commissioned in '71, I believe, the design probably dates to the
>> mid-1960's). Things were different then. Answering this question
>> will help understand the context in which the reactor was originally
>> developed. We cannot expect modern thinking and sensibilities to
>> apply to a time that long ago.
>> 2. What does the "design" of the reactor facility mean to us today and
>> how does that modern viewpoint help bring out shortcomings of the
>> thinking 50 years ago?
>>
>> I cannot answer either of these questions in any general sense, for
>> lack of information. But I'd be very interested to read
>> well-documented accounts that do (try to) answer them.
>>
>> In my *personal* view, "to design a nuclear power reactor" means to
>> develop the plan for a facility that uses nuclear fission to generate
>> a constant supply of electricity safely and within economic
>> contraints. I guess the devil is in the details.
>>
>> >
>> > The second question, which asked "to what extent does the failure of the
>> > Fukushima plant throw up the generic failure of purely technological
>> > models of design with respect to the construction, operation and
>> > implication(s) of complex systems?" was both a provocation and a deeply
>> > serious question. This was not aimed at individual engineers, for whom I
>> > have enormous sympathy, but at certain view of “how to design.” So the
>> > intent of the second question was not to skewer some poor bastard for
>> > not anticipating a 10-metre Tsunami (though let us say this is a nuclear
>> > plant in a zone prone to earthquakes, one that has experienced no less
>> > than 308 separate quakes within 200 miles in the last 11 days alone).
>> > Above all, it was not to suggest that the ‘design profession could have
>> > done it better.’ They would not.
>>
>> My understanding was that they designed those particular reactors in
>> light of the best earthquake information they had at the time - which
>> is as much as one could ever possibly expect. They accounted for the
>> modes of vibration they'd recorded in previous earthquakes, and as far
>> as that went, the reactors could have withstood them.
>>
>> I need to wax technological here for a moment, because it is the
>> foundation of the argument. The reactors survived the earthquake, and
>> were properly SCRAMed (shut down in a hurry). They were not
>> undergoing the kind of nuclear reactions that occur during operation.
>> The natural decay of the fuel, however, continued. That's what
>> required them to keep cooling the core. But tsunami knocked out
>> multiple redundant systems to ensure that they could keep the cooling
>> systems running. What's more, the tsunami effectively isolated the
>> plant, so they couldn't run new power lines into the facility. I
>> think this was the straw that broke the camel's back. If the tsunami
>> had *only* knocked out all the electrical systems, I believe they
>> could have easily run new power before the 6-hr battery supply
>> expired. It was the isolation caused by the tsunami that caused the
>> real problems.
>>
>> All this is to indicate that what happened was a "perfect storm" the
>> odds of which are quite astronomical. The practicalities of
>> developing any product are such that at some point one must say: we
>> can't design for *every* eventuality, so we'll design for those of
>> some suitable combination of most-probably and most-severe.
>>
>> I don't think *anyone* could have done it better. Not against the
>> earthquake/tsunami/isolation combo.
>>
>> Whether such a 3-pack of phenomena could have reasonably been
>> predicted and designed for, only time will tell. I'm sure there'll be
>> plenty of investigation and analysis in months to come. Hopefully
>> we'll all get to see it.
>>
>> >
>> > But we are, in all likelihood, facing a nuclear crisis.
>>
>> I disagree. Could you please indicate the evidence you have for this?
>>
>> > [...] The real crisis
>> > then is the political one.
>>
>> It usually is.
>>
>> >
>> > But in relation to Fukushima we also have a technical crisis—a failure
>> > of technical back-up systems and of management and organization that has
>> > put on the table the prospect of a nuclear meltdown.
>>
>> Here, we disagree. Every system - natural or artificial - will fail
>> eventually, given sufficient stress. I really can't see how *any*
>> system could have withstood the power of the events, and I don't even
>> see how they could have been predicted to any degree.
>>
>> Again, I don't discount the possibility that there was a human failure
>> of some sort. But I think, under the circumstances, the failure of
>> the technical systems was totally normal given the severity of the
>> events.
>>
>> >
>> > It is irrelevant that, even in worse case scenarios, “only” the local
>> > population may be affected. Such scientific common-sense is useful to
>> > put the situation in context; it allays the apocalyptic—at least for the
>> > moment. But it also misses the point: the “meaning” of Fukushima is not
>> > in the number of eventual casualties but in the sense that here is a
>> > crisis that should not be occurring; and it should not be occurring (the
>> > public in this case intelligently perceives) because if you are dealing
>> > with technologies which have potential for disaster on the scale of the
>> > nuclear then you had damn well better make sure that you think through
>> > the consequences and implications of deploying this technology.
>>
>> I'm not sure I get the use of "should" in this paragraph. There are
>> lots of things that shouldn't - in the sense of wishing/hoping that
>> they don't - happen. I get the sense, at the end of the paragraph,
>> that Clive is suggesting particular care should be paid to nuclear
>> energy due to its inherent dangers. Surely, nuclear power is not
>> anything to take lightly. But there's plenty of other things
>> currently doing very real damage to people and the environment - WAY
>> more damage that nuclear power has caused so far, or can reasonably be
>> expected to cause, based on the performance of facilities around the
>> world so far.
>>
>> >
>> > In the case of Fukushima, disaster is the making not because of an
>> > “unexpected event” (earthquakes and thus Tsunami in this part of
>> > Japan are no more “unexpected” than icebergs were in the North Atlantic
>> > in April 1912) but because of a lack of resilience in the total system
>> > of which Fukushima is only one small part.
>>
>> You'll get no argument from me that the "system" that includes
>> Fukushima was insufficiently resilient to take the combo of the
>> earthquake, the tsunami, and the resulting isolation of the plant.
>>
>> The problem is that I don't accept that a sufficiently resilient
>> system is at all possible.
>>
>> >
>> > The objective engineering response to this situation is not to lament
>> > the impossibility of the individual engineer thinking through every
>> > possibility—nor to advocate bigger walls.
>>
>> For what it's worth, there are very few engineers in my acquaintance
>> who lament thus.
>>
>> > It is to ask a question about
>> > the system that, in effect, short-changed (doubtless on economic
>> > grounds) the conceptual procedure of thinking through the resilience of
>> > the system. (And which on another level short-changed also the capacity
>> > of local management to respond well to theshort-changing that lead them to concoct ad-hoc solutions (hoses of
>> > seawater as coolant) rather than, from the first moment, focusing also
>> > on re-connecting power, the loss of which is the real or at least the
>> > immediate “culprit” in this scenario. It is this failure that has seen
>> > today pathetic (and failing attempts) to drop water by helicopter over
>> > the plant, 90% of which cannot possibly reach its intended target, and
>> > which (as I write) is about to see attempts by water cannon to spray
>> > water on the reactors! Such ad-hoc responses are perhaps courageous, in
>> > a Heath-Robinson kind of way, but they are also evidence of severe
>> > systemic failure.
>>
>> Again, I do not believe it is possible to "think through the
>> resilience" of the system sufficiently to have predicted and avoided
>> this failure. This particular chain of events was astronomically
>> unlikely. There are I'm sure thousands of other equally astronomical
>> yet devastating chains of events. It's intractable to solve for them
>> all.
>>
>> One way to deal with such problems is to re-conceptualize it. One
>> re-conceptualization of this matter is to stop using nuclear power. I
>> would argue strenuously against that position for all kinds of reasons
>> that don't pertain here & now.
>>
>> Another re-conceptualization is based on recognizing that the usual
>> uranium-based reactor is NOT the only way to go; indeed, it's probably
>> not even the best way to go. I personally really like thorium-based
>> reactors because they produce far less nuclear waste, thorium is
>> something like 1000x more plentiful than uranium, the waste of thorium
>> reactors cannot be weaponized, and in fact many of the waste products
>> of thorium fission are extremely valuable "medical isotopes" that are
>> already in very short supply.
>>
>> And don't underestimate the fire-hose approach. See, for instance,
>> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/latest-reactor-status-at-japan-s-stricken-fukushima-nuclear-plant-table.html.
>>
>> > [...]
>> > One issues here is political. Should private companies be allowed to run
>> > such plants—when as we’ve seen spectacularly this year with the BP
>> > case—the companies instinct is both to cut costs to the bone and to
>> > abandon as rapidly as possible the site of its disasters? The point here
>> > is that such questions today demand to be brought into the total “design”
>> > process. Yet part of what we are talking about here is that while we are
>> > certainly talking in some ways here about “design” (this word referring
>> > to a configurational choice amongst alternatives) “design” is itself a
>> > completely inadequate term (with all the wrong associations) for the
>> > kind of process which needs to be undertaken. So we come back again to
>> > the question: what does it mean to “design” such plants? And what does
>> > the answer to that question tell us about the responsibilities and work
>> > of “design” as a whole?
>>
>> Refer to my personal sense of what it means to design a nuclear
>> facility. It works for me just fine.
>>
>> Having said that, I do agree that designerly thinking would be
>> beneficial to the development of the larger systems of which nuclear
>> facilities are components.
>>
>> I think of the ultimate goal of designing as the achievement of
>> balance. A nuclear facility plays a role in the larger system that
>> contains it by shifting the "way things are" in that system in many
>> different ways. Understanding the "forces" that exist within a
>> system, and that are altered by the introduction of something like a
>> nuclear facility, seems like a pretty important first step.
>>
>> >
>> > Clive
>> >
>> >
>> > Clive Dilnot
>> > Professor of Design Studies
>> > School of Art Design History and Theory
>> > Parsons School of Design,
>> > New School University.
>> > Room #731
>> > 2 E 16th St
>> > New York NY 10011
>> > e [log in to unmask]
>> >
>>
>> Cheers.
>> Fil
>>
>> --
>> Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
>> Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
>> Ryerson University
>> 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
>> M5B 2K3, Canada
>> Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
>> Fax: 416/979-5265
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>> http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
>
--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
|