How To Monitor Leaky Radioactive Water Tanks 111
freaklabs writes "The radioactive water leaks are getting worse at Fukushima Dai-Ichi. In a recent New York Times article, it was mentioned that TEPCO didn't have a reliable way to monitor the water storage tanks for leaks. I decided to write a tutorial on how to wirelessly monitor water levels in storage tanks."
slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
I guarantee that there is frustrated engineer with a workable solution who spends half of all
his days trying to argue for the installation of monitoring equipment, but the organization
- doesn't really want to monitor the tanks
- is too incompetent to execute anything
- has a turf war over who is supposed to be monitoring the tanks
- is hung up on acquisition/budget issues
- is hung up on safety protocols
Re:Hardening (Score:3, Informative)
I got to the site. Nope, no consideration at all that there's enough ionizing radiation to saturate all the transistors. And here I was foolishly thinking that a nice analog electromechanical system was described...
Re:Solar Perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
The radiation in these tanks is easily stopped by the tank wall. (Its almost solely Beta radiation). So climbing the tank is not particularly a problem.
Water is always being pumped into and out of these tanks (they are used to circulate cooling water for shut down reactors and the separation plant where radioactive elements are separated). As such, water level in the tank is not static, there are surges as pumps start and stop, etc. Think of the tank as a buffer in a continuous flowing circuit. There are systems to make sure there is always sufficient water in the circuit, and water may be added at locations far removed from the actual tank. Its vitally important to make sure there is adequate cooling water, it can never be allowed to run dry.
When you view it this way, missing a couple hundred gallons over the course of a month is not something you can count on detecting by monitoring water lever in a tank, because it fluctuates naturally, loss will be automatically compensated by new water additions.
So thanks for playing along, but I believe this issue is best left to the big boys,(even the ones you might, in your make-believe environment, consider to be incompetent). The problem is much more complex than you know, and won't be solved with your cute little lash-up toys.
Contact TEPCO, Now! (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, what an amazing totally thought out plan!
I love how you thought about radiation causing random flipped bits, the need for adaquete power and shielding, etc.
Amazing, I didn't know the Arudino was rad-hardened and certified for use in safety critical industrial applications. I will instruct everyone I know to use the Arduino for everything. Why pay hundreds of thousands when I can get all the rad-safety and life-safety cerified components for pennies on the dollar!
Thx but no thx (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry mate...
I used to hack for a company that would do this for about $25 a month + installation fees and hardware costs. Although if someone had used the words "nuclear" we'd probably have consuled a lawyer and said hell no.
Complete with certified electricians, low power, cellular, satellite, and 802.x plans, off site data storage, backups, recovery, control, and a pretty little website that could get you the data a dozen different ways including read into your ear over the phone. For the big boys some of our stuff was even in escrow.
But you see, you didn't use radiation hardened electronics.
You're using an arduino which even in its deep sleep is consuming at least 4x as much power as we did while awake nearly a decade ago. And you've got no backup or emergency cry. Or thermistor, or cut off, or sensor stabilization routine...
Look, it's a noble effort for a home hacker, and the proof of concept if you didn't believe it was possible is cute.... and to somebody who can't go corporate I can see why you'd use this at home ...
But you really haven't addressed any of the core engineering issues, and have added an additional maintenance problem.
Now frankly, this case is so straightforward it's nothing a competent engineer and developer can't solve -- you've got the mostly right sensors, you just need to package it up properly. And that is the problem. You're going to pay a small fortune for the certifications you'll need to touch that industry.
Also, as others have said -- the problem isn't that they can't fix it. It's that TEPCO is culturally poisoned. But maybe the VP of engineering will save some face by falling on his sword.
Re:Contact TEPCO, Now! (Score:2, Informative)
Note that an Arduino is a lot more than an ATmega. There's a USB interface chip (usually a smaller AVR, but it's SMT, so harder to replace than the socketed ATmega), there's a voltage regulator, there's a clock source of some sort, etc. How sure are you these elements will do fine in your supposedly "radiation hardened Arduino"?
Re:slashvertisement (Score:4, Informative)
No what he's doing is putting home made crap in an industrial environment it's not suited for.
If they wanted wireless tank level measurement they would:
1. Pick up the phone.
2. Call Yokogawa
3. Have wireless installed within a few weeks and for the cost of around $2k per tank which is a rounding error compared to the cost of the cleanup effort.
There's no technical problem that's preventing this.