POWER GENERATION
"Electricity is the soul of Universe."John Wesley
about POWER GENERATION
You could say this is where “it” all started for me and “it” refers to my own first “WTF” moment from an epic earth damaging event. The information you are about to read here was so unbelievably crazy to me, when I first learned of it, it literally created an alternate new “F word” for the “WTF” acronym replacing the other “F word” you’re thinking of – more on that later.
From that day thirteen years ago, it seemed to be an endless stream of insane “WTF” soundbites and news articles from climate change to Covid and PFAS to plastic. “WTF” really summarized the “zeitgeist” (defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history…) that we all were feeling more than ever.
Back in 2011 the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was hit by a tidal wave caused from an earthquake under the ocean off of the eastern coast of Japan. The wave of sea water flooded the nuclear plant’s power system, as well as the emergency backup “on site” power generators resulting in the world’s 2nd worst Nuclear accident. Did the quotation marks around “on site” give you a hint to what the true cause of this disaster was. If not, don’t feel bad because the world’s top nuclear physicist and engineers didn’t catch it either. Does this mean you are as smart as a nuclear physicist or are they as dumb as the rest of us. Thankfully neither, however it does mean that humans make mistakes from arrogantly thinking they can easily control nature. This arrogance unfortunately, has often created environmental disasters.
Another way to illustrate this science fact is with a little “analogous trivia” based on science fiction because “Art often imitates Life” and visa versa so bear with me.
Godzilla the movie monster and Godzilla the song are perfect metaphors for our imperfect human nature that can lead to environmental disasters so let me explain. First, Godzilla the monster, according to its original story, got its destructive power from radiation from a Nuclear Power Plant disaster just like the Fukushima disaster. This resulted in Godzilla forever destroying Japanese cities in sci-fi movies, just as Fukushima’s radiation has been destroying the Pacific Ocean in real life. Second, the chorus line of the song Godzilla from B.O.C. says “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man”. Folly means “lack of good sense”, which in this Fukushima scenario was completely lacking any sense regarding the placement of backup emergency generators “on site” at sea level right next to the main power system so that they would both be taken out by a tidal wave. This “WTF” moment should starkly bring you back to reality.
Those in charge of the Fukushima plant, according to some sources, also arrogantly refused any offer to receive new backup generators that could have powered the cooling system in time to prevent the meltdown. They even said they had everything under control and didn’t need any help. It would be so easy here for some of us to think that those Japanese authorities were horribly arrogant and stupid and we Americans would never do that but, unfortunately, we did. We might not have refused help if the same scenario happened in the United States, but we DID place our backup emergency generators “on site” at nearly every Nuclear Power Plant in the U.S. which would have allowed for the exact same disastrous scenario to happen here in America in similar circumstance.
There it is, your “WTF” moment but defined as “What the Fukushima” which sounds so close to the other word, but this one you can say out loud and not get in trouble. This ocean poisoning tragedy is what originally shocked and angered me to my first “WTF” moment. More importantly, I learned of a company that had newly solved the problem, which greatly inspired me with hope and a knowing that we CAN fix our mistakes. This motivated me for the next decade to become obsessed with creating, or co-developing, or sharing any information and technology that could fix as many “WTF” problems safely and sustainably as possible. However, I finally realized that this 13 year accumulation of earth changing, hands on experience and knowledge was not being heard other than my shouting at the television about how to fix the problems I saw every day on the news. Ironically, I was never into social media and haven’t been on face book for over ten years. Nevertheless, I begrudgingly accepted that the only way to get the message out there was to have an epic “interactive blogging website” which I am sure I’m not describing correctly, but here I am and here you are as well so I guess it’s working.
A friend of almost 40 years co-owns Turbine Marine Inc., which was the only company in the entire world that had manufactured a lightweight portable 1.1 Megawatt generator light enough to be helicoptered in to emergency situations. This was EXACTLY what was needed to prevent the same nuclear meltdown from happening here in the U.S. Our Government and Nuclear Regulatory Commission realized that the American Nuclear Industry had done the exact “on site” backup generator design here in the U.S. as was in place in Japan and needed a solution ASAP or every U.S. Nuclear plant would need to be shut down until a solution was in place.
Not General Electric, Caterpillar or any generator company in the world had what was needed except Turbine Marine. Fortunately, using technology developed from years of providing turbine-powered boats for Offshore Racing, Turbine Marine had newly developed a design that would provide the solution, which was to keep the backup generators positioned “off-site” away from the reach of a tidal wave, hurricane or terrorist attack, but close enough to be put in play quickly to re-power the nuclear reactor cooling systems. Three of these small, lightweight but powerful generators could easily be driven or helicoptered in place in minutes to produce the 3.3 Megawatts of power needed to maintain the safe level of cooling for the average nuclear reactor core, up to seven of them for the larger plants. The generators are turbine powered so they can use a variety of fuels.
These generators are the amazing technology providing us with the backup power to our nuclear power plants in the U.S. now. These small, lightweight portable generators are also used by a variety of industries, including the Navy. Detailed data sheets regarding these generators are on this site, or you can go to their website from our link to get a 5% discount on pricing.
