Iggy - Any info on the cause of the hydroelectric powerplant explosion in Siberia?

An interesting story, all in all. Allows for good after the fact thinking.

How would one stop a hydroturbine, if its electric load disappeared? I would suppose that it would overspeed in seconds, so anything to stop a turbine, would need to be done quickly and automatically.

Open some sort of a sluice in the line that feeds turbine with water, to divert and dump the water elsewhere, would seem like the only possible solution.

The amount of available options would depend on how quickly the water would overspeed the turbine. Such a calculation should be possible based on available data, such as water column height, turbine mass, and turbine radius.

i

That seems like a safe bet.

I am a little more pessimistic.

i

(...)

Penstock valve?

--Winston

I read a long time ago (so take it for what it's worth) that to stop a water turbine quickly, the best approach was a deflector. The water is diverted from the turbine wheel by a blade until the penstock valving can be closed. If you were to slam the penstock valve closed too fast, the pressure surge from the dynamic head of a huge column of water moving at speed would destroy the penstock, turbine, etc. I think the reference was a Perry's handbook, but this was decades ago.

Hmm. Kind of sounds like what happened.

Pete Keillor

Sure does. It's the very definition of an induced water hammer.

It sounds like you're ahead of the designers there. I'm not even joking this time either.

There are many fuckups, that are very obvious in retrospect, but not necessarily before the fact. Which is not to suggest that the power station was well designed.

A very interesting accident is a shutdown of a large portion of electric grid in northeastern US for several days. Some say now that hackers were responsible, while others cite cascading troubles from not so well thought out control systems.

Another one is the famous AT&T telephone shutdown.

By the way, my dad used to design earthen dams (gravity dams) for hydroelectric power station. Many interesting issues there, such as interaction with permafrost cold weather, and seepage. Some of the ones in the far north, used cooling to keep the cores frozen permanently.

i

ey said that the

I have been following news of this accident in detail. The press release from ITAR-TASS had nothing but vague generalities about the final report (15 Sep 09). If, however, you read ALL the 'body count' notes, you find some interesting details. The most provocative was, 'human factors could have exacerbated the failure' since the event developed in a period of over ONE HOUR. I urge everyone to look at the Brasilian PowerPoint presentation. It is a good starting point for an international discussion.

Based on our experience with Chernobyl, I feel the cause of the several failures will be 'human-caused' and even political in nature. All of the truth is certainly presently in hands of local engineers, but it is not forthcoming to the rest of the world.

We can be assured thet the facts will eventually come out. "Bent machinery never lies". John Kessler

I expected as much. There must be quite the blame-shifting fight going on.

One hour. I thought it just up and exploded. They must have had no idea what was causing the funny noises and vibrations, and were all crowded around looking and arguing. If they had had any idea, they would have run for their lives. Or tried to shut turbine #2 down. Perhaps they tried, and failed.

It will be human caused for sure. I'm betting on neglect and the urge for production at any cost.

Bent machinery may never lie, but for a billion dollars the people that bent the machinery will most assuredly lie. We may not live to hear the truth of this.

Joe Gwinn

Video of HPP failure

Also see wikipedia for good more recent info. Some of the details are ASTOUNDING! I mean WHO would run a unit with six nuts on main tiedown bolts MISSING? And on and on.

A little surfing can reveal some amateur footage in the turbine hall of the incident while still in progress.

I think the actual report will eventually be translated and released. I will check from time to time. JK

I'll look.

Very interesting. I don't recall seeing the flashes in other videos.

I'm not so sure that the real report will come out anytime soon. It has to be career-limiting for someone.

Joe Gwinn

The same country where a couple of guys could actually be ALLOWED to settle a bar bet by trying to see how long a nuclear power reactor could run off the inertia of the turbo-alternator set. Being drunk idiots, nobody considered that while the alternator slowed down, the critically necessary primary loop pumps would ALSO be slowing down, and cooling loop water would overheat and boil. And, so we had the Chernobyl disaster over a bar bet that anybody who was sober would realize was a "really bad idea".

Jon

Thanks, Jon, for the little detail on our favorite nuclear meltdown. As I have said before, it wasn't Reagan who hastened the collapse of USSR, it was the guy who invented VODKA. Did you notice W.H.O. pointing out that alcohol is the second biggest cause of death in the world (I suppose, after 'natural causes'). Also curious...Ex-Soviet states' women don't suffer anywhere close to the male numbers.

Regarding the release of the HPP report, SOMEONE will get a copy, and post a translation to WIKI, and I predict, soon. Keep an eye on WIKI!

John Kessler, Ft. Lauderdale

OK, my friends, the facts seem to be out on the HPP failure. Wikipedia has a detailed report and analysis including some good numbers to back up the report text. We don't know if the information was leaked, or if the old Soviet tradition of secrecy has actually diminished. One thing that hasn't changed is the tradition of shoddy maintenance and operation practices. Enjoy!!

John Kessler Ft. Lauderdale

You can't send a binary file to this group, and an anti-virus measure. Only text.

One solution is to put the file up on the metalworking dropbox, and publish the url.

I am interested. My email is correct.

Thanks,

Joe Gwinn

I have the English-language HPP failure analysis and recommendations. Seems more or less 'unvarnished' facts. Still no mention of WHY there were 300 people at the facility at the moment of failure.

RUSSIANACCIDENT-AUGUST2009-causes-rev1.pdf

I received this PDF/PowerPoint presentation but don't know how to send it to the group. At this point, anyone who wants it can send me an e- mail and I will forward the file.

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

John Kessler