SRE Core Recovery (1961)
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- Опубліковано 22 вер 2015
- Credit: U.S. Department of Energy - Accident Recovery (November 1961) - Description of the 1959 SRE core damage accident and the procedures used to remove damaged fuel and refurbish the SRE for continued operation
Atomics International SNAP-10A Program
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A
Sodium Reactor Experiment
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_...
SNAP-10A was an experimental nuclear reactor launched into space in 1965. The Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power Program (SNAP) reactor was developed under the SNAPSHOT program overseen by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Atomics International, then a division of North American Aviation was the prime contractor for the SNAP-10A development. Most of the systems development and reactor testing was conducted at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Ventura County, California using a number of specialized facilities. A United States Department of Energy video depicting the development and fabrication of the SNAP-10A is available.
The company also developed and tested other compact nuclear reactors including the SNAP Experimental Reactor (SER), SNAP-2, SNAP-8 Developmental Reactor (SNAP8-DR) and SNAP-8 Experimental Reactor (SNAP-8ER) units at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Atomics International also built and operated the Sodium Reactor Experiment, the first U.S. nuclear power plant to supply electricity to a public power system.
The testing and development involving radioactive materials caused environmental contamination at the former Atomics International Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) facilities. The United States Department of Energy is responsible for the identification and cleanup of the radioactive contamination. (The SSFL was also used for the unrelated testing and development of rocket engines by Rocketdyne primarily for NASA.) The DOE website supporting the site cleanup details the historical development of nuclear energy at SSFL including additional SNAP testing and development information.
These are really interesting video documentaries. Thank you. 60 years ago !
I can just imagine we will have thermonuclear fusion reactors as common as refrigerators are and just about that size for a complete heating/electrical supply for a large family home using about an ounce of deuterium gas for a months worth !
Standing on the shoulders of these giants of the nuclear industry of yesterday ! 😃
With electricity too cheap to meter. I fear that your underestimating the ignorant Luddite tendencies of the average citizen. Personally, I see them huddled around a Smokey open hearth fire burning books!😂. I like your vision better.
This is an LMFBR (Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor), where the coolant is liquid sodium.
So the supply of tetralin wasn't being monitored (ie 2 to 10 gal leaked over time). Given the predictable/probable failure of the seal and catastrophic ramification of the reaction seems like an operational/design fault not to keep track of this liquid's consumption.
Somewhat of a "Titanic" syndrome: we built it so well it can't fail.
@@adamjhuber That's absurd - it was an _experimental_ reactor, they _never_ expected it to be perfect. It was built to discover the kinds of difficulties and faults that may emerge whilst operating a reactor of this design type.
@Robert Arnold
As an experimental reactor, its job was to ascertain the various faults which could be "predictable/probable" with a commercial, or large scale, implementation of such a design.
Perhaps they _were_ monitoring the tetralin consumption but had different ideas about why that amount was being lost, and where it was going (yet another reason for testing design concepts via an _experimental_ reactor).
If you were paying attention, you'd realise that the _actual_ error in design, particularly for an experimental setup, was insufficient monitoring of heat distribution (poor layout of thermocouples, insufficient number of thermocouples) and insufficient monitoring of coolant flow for individual channels.
Had the excessive heat in the blocked channels been known about, they would have realised that the channels weren't flowing correctly, which, upon investigation, would've lead to the discovery of blockages linked to a tetralin leak.
_That_ was the true flaw here - the lack of a precise thermal map of the core - which is unacceptable in an experimental system (that should be gathering as much data as possible).
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 The "true flaw" was building and operating an _experimental_ nuclear reactor in a populous area, _uphill_ from ranches, homes, and a resident camp / retreat, all of which receive contaminated effluent from the SRE site to this day and beyond.
@@-oiiio-3993 I can’t disagree with that.
The music reminds me of nuclear disasters of old... Ahhh, that was the day.
@@widescreennavel Nothing says imminent death like that classic obo, clarinet combo. Maybe in F minor?
@21:16 - On the worker's hat - "Your safety is our business - Atomics International". Ironic.
It's better than new.
Any time you hear the words "hot sodium is pumped through a heat exchanger" you know you've completely screwed up.
They really liked stainless steel.
( 9:54 ) . . . and Vise Grips !
Sodium and normal steel don’t mix well
This concept being considered along with Thorium again.
Good idea safe clean energy.
A lot of work there....
My gosh...
Tutta salute, poi senti che musica!
Anybody else getting a Sealab vibe?
The so called safe dosages that were 'established by the AEC' were largely guesswork and extrapolations - based on what was exigent at the time. Their data came from numerous ethically dubious human experiments on poor, dying cancer patients - and some who it turned out were not actually dying at all! These troubled experimental series were supplemented by extremely intensive post-mortem examinations on the relatively few massive accidental occupational exposures - some mindbogglingly high; 12,000 rads or more. Fortunately though it seems that the linear dose/response assumption was incorrect at the very bottom edge of the scale. There does seem to be a precipitous cut-off point where small levels of radiation do no harm, although the precise safe level varies quite a lot from person to person. This phenomena has been seen extremely clearly in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and is beginning to be seen again around Fukushima.
Nonetheless I don't think I would have wanted to be one of those chaps clambering around on top of the biological shield, only protected from the irradiated fuel gases by 1960's polymer technology!!! Not a respirator or clean air supply in sight you will notice. The evolutions where they rotated the entire thing with hand-jacks were especially risky in my opinion. I only hope each and everyone of those poor sods was receiving gratuitously obscene danger-money!!!
Actually cancer linked to Chernobyl turned out to be much lower than reported.
No cancer linked to Japan incident .
To much hysteria and ignorance drives misinformation online when our biggest threat is fossil fuel s.
I am a thyroid cancer victim from a radiological accident and very well educated in this technology.
The youth today are pro nuclear power mostly thankfully.
Fusion ITER project and pebble bed fuel reactors are the new safe energy of the future.
Big oil coal gas spread misinformation and fear mongering to an uneducated public to squash competition from nuclear energy.
Florida is powered by nuke for decades..
Disney Land uses it...
@@MitzvosGolem1 You're right about how the traditional fuel companies spread misinformation about nuclear. But I'm not sure that the younger generations are more pro-nuclear than past ones.
Most people I know my age don't seem to be any better and will push the same misconceptions.
@@kingofaesthetics9407 Head of green peace now pro nuke exposed what he found out about big oil coal spreading lies about nuke power after three mile island 1979.
Poisoned the public's mind against nukes for decades.
Now younger green peace not against carbon free energy as much.
Small micro reactors being proposed.
No these chaps were glowing in the dark and wifes complained couldn't sleep at night . The workers were deliberately dosed in highly radioactive waves ,even the workers cleaning spent fuel rods before placing them in casks over time they suffered from kidney cancer.
I love oil and nuclear ❤. Greenies, get a life or live on a primitive island. Be sure to leave your cloths off the island and for goodness sake, don't kill animals for clothing.
Almeno a quel tempo, si faceva della sperimentazione: oggi molto meno😢
The diagram of the SRE core, looks like a dry cell battery diagram, its like they based the reactor off an old battery laying around
The exploration of all frontiers involves significant risk. The fact that risk exists must never be allowed to curtail such exploration however. It looks like they took the precautions thought reasonable at the time and it is patently unfair for anyone to denigrate these brave men and women for not following standards not known until 50 years into the future. I am thankful for people willing to take these risks so that the rest of us can have the energy we need. Now we need to acelerate the building of new nuke plants.
@Kake Uh, why build reactors that are "nearly impossible to melt down", when you can build reactors that are absolutely impossible to melt down, like molten salt liquid fuel reactors - LFTRs, for example?!?
P.S. Yes, I'm aware these have similar fuel processing needs to the reactors you're suggesting.
It was reckless and idiotic to build and operate an experimental nuclear reactor in a populous area, uphill from ranches, homes, and a resident camp / retreat, all of which receive contaminated effluent from the SRE site to this day and beyond.
@@-oiiio-3993 Morals don't really have that much of place in science. It was hardly the worst thing, look at the shit they did at the Hanford Site.
@@connerstines1578 The point made in my post is valid.
If you believe _"morals don't really have that much of place in science,"_ how do you feel about Josef Mengele and others who performed heinous 'experiments' on inmates of concentration camps?
Are they to be admired and / or applauded for any 'advancements' made?
@@-oiiio-3993 I didn't applaud anybody, I was stating how things are.
Hmm. The "Fail Safe" procedures were still in their infancy also. Certain sloppy practices eventually led to the "Three Mile Island" serious accident in 1979. Three Mile Island was the first (known) commercial nuclear power accident. Worth looking up.
Thankyou.
Quantum Physics. Next?
All LWRs should be shut-down after TMI accident, but they weren't.
Some time after Czarnobyl happen, then Fukushima in 2011 :(
@Blood Beryl Uh, TMI has nothing to do with "common sense", dopey! It is, however, _common knowledge._
No. Chemical alert system and no diverter valves ? Looks pretty simple to be holding all that deadly ....death
omg...i live where this thing is built...they started it up again!?
Cancer for you.
This reactor was a useful experiment, the idea used to be to go fast, break things, figure out what went wrong and correct your mistakes. Failure is an excellent teacher. Sodium-cooled reactors are a legit concept and someone needed to make one.
The greatest failure was putting it at SSFL instead of BFE Idaho where other test reactors like SL-1were. The consequences of catastrophic failure like a fuel meltdown are substantially less when you aren’t on the edge of a major metropolitan area.
Also, not only has this reactor been decommissioned, the building where it used to be and everything associated with it are gone. It is marked on GoogleMaps as “SRE Experiment”, or something like that. And yes, SSFL is a major polluted site. The SRE wasn’t as bad as the hot cells where they reprocessed spent fuel.
@@Duvallmd what do you think they did with the sodium that was in the reactor. It was burned in an open pit at the ssfl. It hasn't left or been cleaned up.
darryl haynes I’m not a nuclear physicist, but sodium is a pretty inert substance from a radioactivity standpoint. According to Wikipedia the only stable isotope is Sodium-23, and if it absorbs a neutron it becomes sodium-24, which decays to a stable magnesium-24 with a 15 hour half-life. In short, 150 hours after you turn off the reactor (10 half-lives), you are back to a non-radioactive material.
Now, the meltdown and whatever leaked out of the fuel will still be a contaminant unless they filter/absorb it out of the sodium. Sodium is more reactive than toxic, we have sodium salts on our dinner table.
"We're gonna leave out the part where we vented highly radioactive gas into the atmosphere and didn't tell anyone. Hope Simi Valley likes cancer, lots and lots of cancer."
Everyone vents, that's an open secret in the industry
Radiation is a ridiculously poor cancer causing agent. It has minuscule effects, that's why there is no wide scale Chernobyl catastrophe, or Fukushima catastrophe
@@cainabel2553 Tell that to all the people in Simi & Chatsworth who got cancer. The numbers are ridiculously high. One city block had cancer cases in 8 of 10 households.
@@SilverC8andDroppedC10 What type of cancer? What cause possibly cause it?
@@SilverC8andDroppedC10 Have you got any actual sources to support this claim?
We know now that this was the worst relese in US history despite the lies told in the documentary regarding safe venting, permissible limits etc.
The Russians aren't the only ones with secrets & lies.
worst that we know off
More and more energy to make more and more crap we don't need to make more and more money that doesn't exist to further enrich a handful of people who could never spend what they already have. Welcome to the American dream.
gb5uq Well said - thanks
And Now We have FUKUSHIMA Everyone
Is recovery just a softer word for meltdown?
no.
No because they were literally recovering the damaged fuel so they could refurbish the reactor.
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Bad trip there cowboy?
Umm... ok...
Reckless fools.
Seems like every reactor built has a meltdown at some point-in-time.
@@christopherwojtan750 I agree and that's exactly why we need to leave this technology alone. Humans are always going to be humans, so that's not going to change. And if these reactors are state of the art, then nothing to change there. So, if we go forward, we go forward with the same flawed scenario. The cost to our planet is just to great everytime one of these melts down.
Then there's the fact that in every one of these meltdowns, the actual meltdown is just the beginning of human error that occurs. It continues to compound exponentially with the lies, the cover ups, and the expanding, extended exposure of the environment and the population to deadly radioactive elements all while those responsible are busy passing the buck and covering their own asses. Case in point, I just became aware of the SSFL SRE Meltdown in 1959. As if a meltdown isn't bad enough, that wasn't the only "accident" they had, just the biggest one we've found out about. Additionally, they tested rocket engines there that they would rinse down with the most toxic substances and just let it run into the dirt. Did I mention how they handled the barrels of radioactive sodium ? They'd put it in a little row boat, then launch that into an open air pond and shoot holes into it, causing the Na+ & H2O to come into contact, therefore violently explode- sending radioactive material into the open air! My parents grew up in Canoga Park, I was born in Canoga Park and grew up in the Valley, my kids grew up in the Valley. And we never knew, those fuckers! We never knew! IT'S STILL NOT CLEANED UP. IT CONTINUES TO LEACH RADIATION AND JET FUEL INTO THE GROUND WATER!
Humans can't be trusted to play God, they've proven that everytime the opportunity presents itself.
see and we are all still alive
And that is blatantly false. Most reactors built have had long service lives with no meltdown or other form of failure that would pose a safety risk to the public or reactor crew.
It's a shame how these videos attract such ignorant people.
@@angeliquerider-mitchell2538 The fact you're saying we should "leave the technology alone" despite the fact it is one of the statistically cleanest and safest forms of power production available and has also provided the medical field with multiple forms of treatments for cancers just shows how ignorant and backwards you are.
@@angeliquerider-mitchell2538 You mean the US should leave this technology alone. You also have to remember the distinction between experimental and commercial reactors; and there's also the historical, geographical and political context to consider. SSFL is a radioactive bin fire, and was THE "Wild West" of Cold War technology, but anti-communist paranoia has more to do with that unforgivable neglect than nuclear science.
Only one commercial reactor has has a "meltdown"; the No 4 unit of VI Lenin NPP in Ukrainian SSR in 1986.
This was how "the Glob" was formed. Propaganda. Trust us. We know what were doing.
Do you have factual information to the contrary. If the facts presented are wrong as you know it, why do you not present those here. They may not know what they are talking about from your perspective but you haven't presented anything authoritative as a counter. You can't counter information with mistrust and speculation. Paranoia isn't fact.
this nerds are corrupt
SATAN IS AN AMAZING CREATURE .. STAY VIGILANT
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What a bullshit and wasting of time. For me coolant should be:
- safe to touch
- inert (no air/water reaction)
- inert in higher temperature (800°C)
- stable (do not decompose) and liquid even overheated (1000+ °C)
- do NOT react with fuel, water, air and contruction material, even overheated
Sodium pass?