iContradict

Problem statement

Japan declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of one of the most powerful earthquakes. Thousands of residents were evacuated as workers struggled to get the reactors under control to prevent meltdowns. Operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant's Unit 1 scrambled ferociously to tamp down heat and pressure inside the reactor after the 8.9 magnitude quake and the tsunami that followed cut off electricity to the site and disabled emergency generators, knocking out the main cooling system. The major faults in the system were-

• The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the six-reactor Daiichi site in northeastern Japan, announced that it had lost cooling ability at a second reactor there and three units at its nearby Fukushima Daiichi site.
• Japan's nuclear safety agency said the situation was most dire at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 1, where pressure had risen to twice what is consider the normal level. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that diesel generators that normally would have kept cooling systems running at Fukushima Daiichi had been disabled by tsunami flooding.
• Officials at the Daiichi facility began venting radioactive vapors from the unit to relieve pressure inside the reactor case. The loss of electricity had delayed that effort for several hours. Plant workers there labored to cool down the reactor core, but there was no prospect for immediate success. They were temporarily cooling the reactor with a secondary system, but it wasn't working as well as the primary one, according to Yuji Kakizaki, an official at the Japanese nuclear safety agency.
• Even once a reactor is shut down, radioactive byproducts give off heat that can ultimately produce volatile hydrogen gas, melt radioactive fuel, or even breach the containment building in a full meltdown belching radioactivity into the surroundings, according to technical and government authorities. Despite plans for the intentional release of radioactivity, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the 40-year-old plant was not leaking radiation.
• The Daiichi site is located in Onahama city, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. The 460-megawatt Unit 1 began operating in 1971 and is the oldest at the site. It is a boiling water reactor that drives the turbine with radioactive water, unlike pressurized water reactors usually found in the United States. Japanese regulators decided in February to allow it to run another 10 years. The temperature inside the reactor wasn't reported, but Japanese regulators said it wasn't dropping as quickly as they wanted.
• Loss of coolant is the most serious type of accident at a nuclear power plant. "They are busy trying to get coolant to the core area," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "The big thing is trying to get power to the cooling systems."High-pressure pumps can temporarily cool a reactor in this state with battery power, even when electricity is down, according to Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who used to work in the U.S. nuclear industry. They can open and close relief valves needed to control pressure. Batteries would go dead within hours but could be replaced. If temperatures were to keep rising to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it could set off a chemical reaction that begins to embrittle the metallic zirconium that sheathes the radioactive uranium fuel. That reaction releases hydrogen, which can explode when cooling water finally floods back into the reactor. If the reactor temperature keeps reaches around 4,000 degrees, the fuel could melt outright, and the reactor could slump right into the bottom of the containment building in a partial meltdown. Then the crucial question would be whether the building would stay intact. "The last line of defense is that containment – and that's got to hold," Gundersen said. If it doesn't, the radioactive load inside the reactor can pour out into the surroundings.

As Japan is one of the most seismically active nations in the world, it has strict sets of regulations designed to limit the impact of quakes on nuclear power plants. These standards call for constructing plants on solid bedrock to reduce shaking. Even so, 10 of Japan's 54 commercial reactors were shut down because of the quake, and Tokyo Electric Power said it had to reduce power generation. Japan gets about 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

The above is the detailed overview for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Similar to this are the events related to the Chernobyl disaster, Three mile island accident, Bhopal gas tragedy etc. Further gross are the consequences of nuclear weapon testing like the Tsar Bomba which is the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.

Task

Round 1

We want the teams to give a power point presentation on the problem statement given above keeping in mind the three following taglines

• Taming the nuclear genie.
• Nuclear genie at work.
• Genie out of the box.

The three taglines should be explicitly used in the presentation. The interpretation of these taglines completely depends upon the respective teams. The most innovative and effective use of these taglines and their cohesion along with the content of the presentation will be taken into consideration. (Preferably a model of an ideal nuclear power plant, need for nuclear energy etc. are some of the points to be included in the presentation)

Time limit-15 minutes per team.

Round 2

A tentative group discussion round with the judge. (The qualifying round completely depends on the sole discretion of the judge and is an on-spot round. Therefore subject to changes)

Note

• Team size - 3-5 member team (members can be Ug students from any college).
• Round 1 and round 2 which will be held at JU campus. Teams will be required to come to the university campus to give a power point presentation followed by a final selection round.

Highlights

A guest lecture by Dr. Alok Mishra- the honorable deputy country director of India for Westinghouse (Dr. Alok Mishra has obtained his PhD in Reliability Engineering. He

was working as Scientific Officer in Nuclear Corporation of Indian Ltd. (NPCIL), Department of Atomic Energy

(DAE) in the earlier days of his Career. His area of work includes deterministic and probabilistic safety analysis.)

Prizes

1^st prize worth INR 10,000

2^nd prize worth INR 6,000

3^rd prize worth INR 4,000

Contacts

Priya Patel

Contact no.-9836929096

(Srijan organizing committee)