Posted on 03/15/2011 8:00:10 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
As fears rise in Japan about nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant, the first and best line of defense are the reactor's six inch thick steel-walled chambers, made by a company that still forges samurai swords by hand. Japan Steel Works is the world's only volume builder of nuclear reactor vessels, the steel container that holds radioactive fuel, and in case of a meltdown, prevents that fuel from leaking and triggering a catastrophe. Founded in 1907 and rebuilt following World War II, it supplied nearly all of the vessels used in Japan's 54 nuclear power plants, including the containers at the Fukushima Daiichi plants designed by General Electric and Toshiba.
While those vessels were made from steel plates bolted and welded together, modern designs require Japan Steel Works to forge containers from a single ingot that can weigh up to 600 tons. It's a slow process that takes months at a time, using the company's 14,000-ton press to shape a special steel alloy that's been purified to maximize its strength. These methods also minimize seams that can give way in case of a meltdown, where nuclear fuel can reach 2,000 degrees Celsius.
Although Japan Steel Works is a major corporation with 5,000 employees, it also maintains a samurai sword blacksmith, in a small shack on a hill above the factory in Muroran, where a single craftsman still hammers steel into broadswords, as the company has done since 1917.
The expertly crafted swords, which sell for about 1 million yen when finished, are forged from a single 2.2-lb. lump of Tamahagane steel, the traditional material that's rarely used today.
"Samurai swords contain the essence of steelmaking technology,'' Japan Steel Works CEO Masahisa Nagata told Bloomberg in 2008.
The Fukushima disaster spawned by last week's tsunami pose the greatest challenge ever to a Japan Steel Works nuclear vessel. Unfortunately for Japan, the accident hit the nation's oldest operating nuclear reactors; the vessel in Fukushima 1 was made by JSW in 1967, based on a General Electric's Mark 1 design for boiling water reactors that has been criticized in the past for potentially being prone to failure.
Of the three reactors in crisis at the Fukushima plant, the one in the most danger of failure appears to be reactor number 2, which suffered an explosion on Monday. Japanese government officials gave conflicting statements about whether that explosion — likely caused by steam venting off the nuclear rods — damaged the vessel, although radiation levels outside the plant were falling Tuesday. Due to the damage from the explosions and overheating, none of the three reactors will ever work again.
Experts around the world also differ about the chances of disaster, but several say if Japanese officials can stabilize the reactors, the worst might be averted. Let's hope we never find out just how strong the steel of these samurai sword-forging metal craftsmen truly is.
(Photo Credits: Shutterstock; Fukushima plant, Digital Globe; others, Japan Steel Works)
I hope the Japanese steel holds because you know anything General Electric makes is junk. GE is a corrupt, scum, Obam company.
I watched a SPECIAL on the guy, including the step by step of crafting a sword, on TV. I imagine many people saw it.
Very interesting, and THANKS for the article !
BTTT
Those guys still hammer katana from hamakagane? That’s interesting. Folded steel, hammered until it is hot enough to throw in the fire, only to be pulled out and folded again. Then when it is ready they split it and put another piece of steel inside, hammer and burn some more until the carbon is evenly distributed so the piece has a hard cutting side and a softer backbone for flexibility. Just the proper number of iterations and then quenched, that creates the curve in the blade. Then polished and sharpened, and assembled into a katana, along with it’s shorter mate called wakizashi. Both are then dressed with a plain saya to be sent to have a formal saya constructed, and they become daisho. The long and short sword pair.
Fascinating technology, a couple of feet of razor sharp fighting steel. I’d doubt they are easy to get outside the islands of Japan, acutally illegal to export. Fine workmanship. I once watched a Japanese troup of swordmakers do their thing in Irving, TX, while they traveled to the US to exhibit their skills. Only did it two places here in our country. Most awesome craftmanship and product.
Can’t be more than a dozen men still alive who know how to make those beasts.
I wonder if there’s a fruitninja connection.
1 million yen, so about $12k Canadian, not bad for such a blade, when some of those made here in North America go for $5-6K, one day I would like to own one, if for nothing else but to support that smith and his company.
There's a bad joke there somewhere.
Seriously, the swordmaking process is amazing, and I wish the Japanese people well as they dig out of this mess. I also hope everybody gets some takeaways on better reactor design from this.
Sword Ping!
Both swords cut the bullet in two. (I love high-speed cameras) However, the Japanese manufactured sword was so hard, so sharp, and so highly polished that slicing the 9mm didn't even leave a mark. The US sword - admittedly the guy hadn't had time to polish it as well as he wanted - also cut the bullet, but left a visible mark. It also looked like the bullet imparted more energy to the sword - it wobbled more on the high speed...
In short, scary sharp. Being a bit of a blade man myself, a Katana is on my list for some day. I think my next fun purchase will be a Kukri though... (considerably less expensive)
I won’t dispute that Japan has had some fantastic metallurgy going back centuries. No doubt. But I haven’t made it much of a secret that I have a particular interest in western swordsmanship, instead of the more familiar eastern stuff. Katanas are nifty... but a good 15th century longsword also had some very fine metallurgy going on, too. The Norse were doing folded steel blades back to the 10th or 11th century. It’s not like Japan had a monopoly on the whole sword concept.
Give me a good longsword, like an Albion, and inside of 20 feet I might even prefer that to a pistol.
One million yen is ~$10,000. There are Katanas that cost more than that, much more, but, honestly, it’s not really the quality of the sword you are buying at that price. For less than $500 you can buy a hand forged, clay tempered katana with 2,000 layers and a beautiful harmon, but made in China. It is surprising, but compared to what was available even in the 1800s, the steel we have now is so much better and so much cheaper. In fact, you can buy a hand forged katana made in China from recycled automotive leaf springs for less than $150 which is vastly superior to all but the best of what Japan produced up through WWII. Still, if you want that last 1/2 of 1% in quality you could pay any amount for it.
My Albion Baron longsword can cut a few inches into a 55-gallon drum without leaving a mark on the edge. That’s how Albion tests their blades before they hilt them.
It’s wicked sharp. I did some test cutting on milk bottles just for fun... it was really amazing. I could take a milk bottle full of water... swing a zwerchhau (a sideways strike more or less horizontally) and shave off one-inch strips of plastic off the thing, one after another, several times. The only water that spilled was the water above the cut. The bottle didn’t move.
Neato. :-)
Katanas got nuthin’ on good western swordcraft. :-)
I have a Cold Steel Kukri.... The blade can cut a man in half. Scary Good! 250.00 new.
Thanks for the sword ping! interesting
As a fan of a sharp piece of steel, I am fascinated by those things. Cold Steel has some nice stuff ... one of these days bro, one of these days.
What do you know about Taiwanese katanas?
I’m torn between a “working blade” Kukri or getting one from Nepal as a show piece... I may have to get one of each. ;-)
You know, back in the day, a traditional katana was tested after being ready for delivery. Blooded, if you will. They chopped some prisoner’s head off. Now days they just chop through a bundle of bamboo sticks.
I like like the cut of your jib boi. Yeah, may we both live long enough to own one of them bad boyz.
Stay safe.
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