San Onofre Leaking Again! 10/22/2012
San Onofre is leaking again!
Fact San Onofre turned on unit 2 at 70% capacity as a test, now there is a gas hydrogen leak. Is it radioactive? We are told "no it is not radioactive."
Isn't that what they said in January with the last leak then they changed their story a few days later stating it was a "minuscule" radioactive leak.
The current leak in a "small" pipe leading to the "generator" that cools unit 2. Yet the plant says it has nothing to do with starting up unit 2 as a test. How safe is a failing broken down reactor, to start up at 70% capacity, especially if the pipe that leads to the generator to cool it is leaking? It is like trying to cool down a house on fire, with a leaking fire hose.
2+2=4 Does it not?
How small is small?
What about the rest of the plant and it's operation right now. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt. The "small" pipe is not leaking radioactive material. How is the rest of unit 2 performing right now ? WE KNOW it has the same design as the failed other unit !
It is time to shut down San Onofre. It is not only about the 8 million people living close to the plant, but as we have seen, and measured with Fukushima; A nuclear accident "can" physically touch people, plants, animals, air, water, and land as far as 5,000 miles away.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/regulators-no-threat-from-lea...
CH4 (methane) is an odorless gas
For the record
METHANE (CH4) is a flammable, colorless, odorless gas. H2S, mercaptan and other impurities/additives produce the offensive odor.
http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp?GasID=41
http://www.usmra.com/minegasqa.htm
http://www.advgas.com/pdfs/Methane.pdf
http://www.fortisbc.com/NaturalGas/GasSafety/Pages/Gas-leaks.aspx
http://www.sdstate.edu/abe/wri/water-quality/upload/Odor-Questions.pdf
Merely one more, in a LONG list of Farnsworth Fables.
Facts Matter!
MagLev Bearings
Bearing ‘Go to Guy’
Farnsworth is rather obviously an uninformed ‘loose-cannon’, making unsubstantiated (totally bogus) charges. I gather from his “workers unite” diatribe that he is a ‘progressive’ AKA socialist-communist-collectivist to the core. No useful solutions there … IMHO.
Economic engineers will responsibly review the available options. Bearings are not my field. However, I do have one question. Are maglev (magnetic levitation) bearings presently suitable for economic applications in power plant alternators?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation
Just curious
I smell hydrogen - no, it must be methane from all the BS...
So what do we have here? Hydrogen-cooled BEARINGS in all our generators?? Don't you at least want to talk about rotors and stators? The wiki ref for "hydrogen-cooled turbo generator" says
"Generally, three cooling approaches are used. For generators up to 300 MW, air cooling can be used. Between 250-450 MW hydrogen cooling is employed. For the highest power generators, up to 1800 MW, hydrogen and water cooling is used; the rotor is hydrogen-cooled, the stator windings are made of hollow copper tubes cooled with water circulating through them."
This wiki entry also claims
"Based on the air-cooled turbo generator, gaseous hydrogen went into service as a coolant in the rotor and the stator in 1937 at Dayton, Ohio, in October by the Dayton Power & Light Co[2] allowing an increase in specific utilization and a 99.0% efficiency."
Following the link to their reference [2], we find
"1928 The first application of hydrogen cooling of synchronous con-
densers of the New England Power Co. is installed in June
at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The machine is rated at 12,500
kva and operated at 13,800 volts. The use of hydrogen for
cooling purposes is superior to air as it conducts heat away
from the condenser much faster than air, it reduces noise,
and it creates less friction, thus reducing the losses of the
machine.
1937 The first hydrogen-cooled turbo-generator is put in service at
Dayton, Ohio, in October by the Dayton Power & Light Co.
The generator is rated at 33,333 kva and runs 3,600 rpm.
The use of hydrogen for cooling purposes is superior to air
as it conducts heat away from the generator much faster than
air; it reduces noise and creates less friction, thus reducing
the loss of the machine (see 1928) . "
See Wiki ref [2] at http://www.archive.org/stream/chronologicalhis00natirich/chronologicalhi...
So an interested reader is led to conclude that hydrogen has been used as a coolant in generating stations since 1928, when their output was thousands of times lower than the modern ones of over 250 Megawatts which use hydrogen (rrriiiggghhhttt!!!) But Daddy, isn't hydrogen explosive? Yes, Virginia. Couldn't they use helium, which is not explosive? Yes, Virginia, but helium is expensive. But Daddy, don't they use helium in toy balloons for safety? Wouldn't it make sense to use helium in such a critical application? And isn't the rapidly rising price of helium a very recent event? Yes, Virginia, but that's not the way our system works. Daddy, what's that awful smell? BS, Virginia, pure BS! Just be glad NPPs don't produce methane instead of hydrogen - then they'd be telling us it makes a wonderful coolant!
Professor Farnsworth
Make a proposal
Farnsworth,
The HL&P Deep Water (Green's Bayou) plant was constructed prior to WWII and was hydrogen cooled.
http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/Communities/History/Landmarks/5562.pdf
I appreciate (some) of your work; particularly zapping Schicklgruber. That was an excellent use of your time-machine and raygun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSGQPzS0p5E
Futurama Professor Farnsworth kills Hitler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGKxWatPkd0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XafPI4aL4U
Gotta dig deep to please Farnsworth.
"Our Friend Hydrogen"
I followed your ASME link and sure enough, the words "hydrogen cooled" appear, with nary a word of explanation, in the mechanical spec section. It's funny that no elaboration is provided, since the major triumph for HL&P was apparently, from this document, saving money by eliminating the building that typically housed the generators in those days. This was discussed in depth. Anyone who wants to explore the new BRAWM meme of "Our Friend Hydrogen" might want to read this from the 08/11/2011 Beverly Hills Courier:
"Explosion Rips Through Building In Sylmar; Two Injured Critically
(CNS) Posted Wednesday August 10, 2011 @ 9:32am
Two people, one of them a Los Angeles firefighter, were hospitalized today with critical injuries they suffered when an explosion ripped through a building in Sylmar housing an alternative-energy business, tearing off the roof.
Firefighter Timothy Larson underwent surgery Tuesday night at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Larson is on disability from the Fire Department and lost an arm and a leg in the blast, according to ABC7.
Also reported to be at Holy Cross was one person with critical facial injuries. A third person suffered minor injuries.
The explosion at the 7,400-square foot facility at 12349 Gladstone Ave. around 4:20 p.m. Tuesday was heard as far as a mile away, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey.
The two critically injured victims were thrown from the building into an alley.
All the injured, including a person who initially walked away from the explosion and then returned, worked in the building.
Scores of firefighters searched the building before determining that no one was trapped in the rubble.
Humphrey said the stricken building housed "an alternative fuel business involved in the extraction of hydrogen from water."
He said the process involved two pressure cylinders that have 20-inch diameters and are as high as 8 feet tall. It was not immediately clear if they were related to the explosion.
Witnesses "described a thunderous explosion that sent a rolling steel door and other elements ... across the alleyway, throwing debris. We had people staggering from the scene and many others who reportedly were knocked off their feet in nearby businesses," Humphrey told NBC4.
No fire followed the blast.
Cuah Beltran works across the street from the building where the blast occurred.
"You could actually feel it in your body," he told NBC4. "It was incredible. It sounded like a sonic boom. And all of a sudden we just see this big giant cloud of like metal, it looked like metal or foil up in the air, hundreds of feet up in the air."
The family of the injured firefighter is a partial owner of the business, Rainbow of Hope, an alternative fuel company, and has experienced work-related tragedy in the past.
Last June, at a warehouse in Simi Valley where the Larsons were running an alternative fuel company, Realm Industries, an explosion killed Larson's 28-year-old brother, Tyson, ABC7 reported.
The owner of the building in Sylmar told the station he was told the company was trying to find a way to produce safe drinking water for third world countries but would not be doing the dangerous extraction process on his property.
"We heard they had a problem in Simi and we questioned them about it. We were told they had other properties where they did that activity," said building owner Dick Werth.
Copyright © 2011 City News Service"
Professor Farnsworth
Deep Water Unit
Farnsworth,
The EARLIER HL&P Deep Water Unit alternator, mentioned in the provided reference, ALSO used hydrogen cooled bearings. However, I did not turn up an internet document to prove that point.
Bearings are not my field, though I have specified bearings a few times. I neither favor nor oppose, one cooling method over another, or one bearing technology over another. Nor do I have any particular preference for one coolant over another in mechanical equipment.
There are entire industries and engineering specialties that deal with such matters.
There are lots of valid concerns about the San Onofre nuclear plant, such as seawall height and seismic design. Alternator bearing designs are probably not among those valid concerns. Alternator bearing design is sort of a 'cookie cutter' maintenance issue.
IMHO
I'm sorry, but there's still a funny smell...
Pardon me for repeating this wiki quote from my post above:
"Generally, three cooling approaches are used. For generators up to 300 MW, air cooling can be used. Between 250-450 MW hydrogen cooling is employed. For the highest power generators, up to 1800 MW, hydrogen and water cooling is used; the rotor is hydrogen-cooled, the stator windings are made of hollow copper tubes cooled with water circulating through them."
Is your reference to "hydrogen cooled bearings" consistent with the above? It appears to say that for generators between 250-450 MW hydrogen cools both rotor and stator, and above 450 MW hydrogen cools only the rotor. Obviously, the rotor has bearings (and windings, where the heat is produced). There are other applications that require a cooling system for bearings, such as a jet turbine, but these use circulating oil. In fact, 1/3 of an automobile engine's cooling needs are met by oil circulation. WHY would the power industry have felt the need to adopt such an inherently DANGEROUS cooling scheme as hydrogen when AIR is an adequate coolant up to 300 MW, and HL&P was around 60 MW? And we're talking about GASEOUS hydrogen btw, which may make sense as far as cooling rotors and stators, but NOT bearings, imho.
Professor Farnsworth
Read about it!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-cooled_turbo_generator
The use of gaseous hydrogen as a coolant is based on its properties, namely low density, high specific heat, and the highest thermal conductivity (at 0.168 W/(m·K)) of all gases; it is 7-10 times better at cooling than air. Another advantage of hydrogen is its easy detection by hydrogen sensors. A hydrogen-cooled generator can be significantly smaller, and therefore less expensive, than an air-cooled one. For stator cooling, water can be used.
Hydrogen has very low viscosity, a favorable property for reducing drag losses in the rotor; these losses can be significant, as the rotors have large diameter and high rotational speed. Every reduction in the purity of the hydrogen coolant increases windage losses in the turbine; as air is 14 times more dense than hydrogen, each 1% of air corresponds to about 14% increase of density of the coolant and the associated increase of viscosity and drag. A purity drop from 97 to 95% in a large generator can increase windage losses by 32%; this equals to 685 kW for a 907 MW generator.[6] The windage losses also increase heat losses of the generator and the associated cooling problems
PATHETIC Scientific IGNORANCE from Farnsworth; as per USUAL
Once again, "Professor" Fransworth demonstrates that he doesn't have a handle on why hydrogen is / is not used in various applications.
The determination as to which coolant to use is NOT a function of the total plant output. Farnsworth points out that air cooling would be used in a 200 Mw generator ( < 300 Mw, as per Farnsworth ). However, a plant that employed TWO 200 Mw generators would fall in the 250 - 450 Mw range where Farnsworth tells us is the sole providence of hydrogen.
In point of fact, it is NOT the total power output as per Farnsworth's simplistic model.
The determination is made on the basis of the expected heat fluxes; the need power dissipation per unit area.
Of all the gases; Hydrogen has the highest thermal conductivity; which is why it does a better job than Helium in the cases where maximum thermal conductivity of the coolant is needed.
Hydrogen cooling hasn't had a history of being particularly dangerous. Hydrogen cooling is employed in a very large number of power plants, and has anyone ever heard of this choice being particularly dangerous? The hydrogen coolants are in sealed systems, and when there is the occasional leak; it is detected and the system shutdown. The quantities used are moderate so that one never gets an explosive concentration in a volume the size of a normal powerplant turbine-generator hall.
Farnsworth adds the imho ( in my humble opinion ) to his post above.
It's not his "humble" opinion; it's more like his WORTHLESS opinion, because is once again trumpeting his ignorance of science for all to see on this forum.
Take a class
Rule In or Rule Out
As indicated, the use of hydrogen dates WAY back, and bearings are NOT my specialty, work experience or even general personal interest.
The hydrogen explanation by plant engineering, with the concurrence of the internationally experienced electrical engineering (Power) specialty professor, was suitable.
The topic is mostly of interest to mechanical engineers rather than 'sparkies'.
If there is a history of problems, I am not aware of it.
It requires some effort to become familiar with all the details of an established technology.
Do the work yourself.
If the matter concerned and/or worried me, I would; however your concerns do NOT convince me there is a problem worthy of my personal effort.
So do the work yourself.
That smell - could it be Brown's Gas?
What I suspect, unfortunately, is that BRAWM's "Our Friend Hydrogen" meme is part of a ploy to indoctrinate a new generation of NPP drones. If their lives were of much value to The Elite, helium would be used for the coolant. However, their lives are NOT as dear as helium is, and there is more hydrogen fuming out of these delapidated NPPs than they know what to do with. Hence the "Our Friend Hydrogen" meme.
Professor Farnsworth
Trivial Pursuits
Farnsworth,
Have you done ANY research into H2 bearing: failure modes, heat exchange, friction, historical failures, fires ....
Do SOME gawdam WORK you whiny, LAZY POS!
Do you SUSPECT:
That GRAMPS engineers 'screwed the pooch' in 1928?
That 1928 era engineers were stupid, or poorly trained?
In my experience and observation, they were quite competent even brilliant/gifted.
So, show us something ... anything ... to justify your whiny drivel about material characteristics.
Thanks for your NEOconcession!
I have found your last post to be a fairly typical neocon concession - henceforth, in the interest of efficiency, why don't we call it a NEOconcession? And every time we turn on a light or use an appliance, statistically, we will be stacking the odds against some luckless NPP drone returning home from work. Oohooh, that smell...
Professor Farnsworth
Hydrogen gas used to cool bearings.
Hydrogen gas isn't used in the reactor.
The hydrogen gas in question is used to cool the bearings in the turbine and the electrical generator - the SAME as in a fossil fuel plant. This leak is coming from the Rankine steam cycle portion of the plant, and not from the NSSS - Nuclear Steam Supply System.
A fossil fuel plant could have had the same trouble they are reporting at San Onofre.
Confirm
Confirm,
Concentrated (~ 100%) hydrogen gas is routinely used to cool generator/alternator bearings at conventional electrical generation plants.
Hydrogen gas leaks rather rapidly out of a child's balloon. It is very difficult to completely seal hydrogen gas in or out of any container. It is however an excellent heat exchange gas.
Hence its use.
I am not familiar with the nuclear power plant or details of this leak. I am merely confirming that hydrogen gas is a coolent in conventional power plants. The high concentration will not explode because there is virtually no oxygen in the synchronous alternator bearings.
Hydrogen's Bad Rap -
I, for one, feel that hydrogen has received undeservedly bad press over the years. With the world's growing shortage of helium, I feel it is time to expand the role of this valuable element in our everyday lives. Hooray for hydrogen!
Paul von Hindenburg
Electrolysis
The primary action in CHARGING an electrochemical battery is electrolysis. ALL batteries generate hydrogen and oxygen while charging.
You GREENIES just LUV big batteries in cars, and elsewhere; and batteries just LUV to explode.
We have all kinds of recombination tricks, but the INHERENT nature of the battery charging process is explosive.
Also you GREENIES want hydrogen fuel in fuel cells and automobiles. And AGAIN the inherent nature of these devices involve explosives in close proximity to civilians.
Deal with it! While it is POSSIBLE for the hydrogen coolant in a bearing race to explode, it is a vanishingly rare event. And it would occur in a heavily shrouded generator housing.
Find something REAL to worry about, like 104 aging nuclear reactors operating in the USA. Ooops, make that 101 or thereabouts.
Move On!
LOL
Cute, even funny.
Most engineers are surprised upon learning that H2 is used as a coolant in large alternators/generators. I certainly was, years ago.
However, note that motor oil and anti-freeze are flammable; and virtually every automobile on the road uses both as coolants. Not very many radiator explosions occur. I can't think of one having ever occurred.
A few pounds of H2 coolant is used in a 100 Ton mechanical device. It appears that hydrogen gas has been determined to be the BEST AVAILABLE engineering solution to the cooling challenge.
I am sure that nitrogen and H2O have been used ... somewhere ... some time.
But not here, and not lately.
Still, a cute joke
LOL
Engineers are not surprised...
Most engineers are surprised upon learning that H2 is used as a coolant in large alternators/generators. ...
It appears that hydrogen gas has been determined to be the BEST AVAILABLE engineering solution to the cooling challenge.
Which is why, counter to the first statement; most engineers ARE NOT surprised that H2 is used in large industrial bearings. They learned about that in engineering school.
Surprised
We were surprised
Some YEARS ago, the Electrical Engineering Students in a graduate level electrical POWER engineering (specialty) class visited a coal fired electrical power plant. The boilers were originally fired by shovel, though the plant was subsequently automated.
There were some practicing electrical power engineers and some 'straight-through' students.
If memory serves, we were ALL surprised to learn that H2 was the turbine cooling gas. There were quite a few questions on the matter.
So the episode is still vivid, after being in lots of other plants over time.
So what?