Blow-By-Blow Account of the Fukushima Accident 259
An anonymous reader writes "In the first few days of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, no one outside the power station knew what the hell was happening. In the 9 months since, information has come out in confusing bits and pieces. Now, finally, we have an authoritative account of exactly what went wrong in the first 24 hours of the accident. It's a harrowing tale of creativity, heroism, and catastrophe. One thing I hadn't realized was just how close workers came to averting the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."
What about the tsunami? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the best part for the media, there's no way to prove that any particular cancer that shows up in 40 years wasn't from the accident.
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The dramatically higher rates where?
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The dramatically higher rates where?
Rather early to see them in Japan - the poster probably meant the Ukraine and Belarus, after Chernobyl.
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That would be my best guess, though it's not as if anyone here ever suggested Chernobyl; wasn't a problem.
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Riiiiight. And the dramatically higher cancer rates don't mean a thing if you can't prove that any given case is directly attributable to the radiation exposure that was caused by the event. Do you really, I mean really, believe such a bullshit rationalization?
Yes we expect you to believe such a rationalization because that is the definition of rational. Are you proposing that we base science and policy on emotion and fear instead?
It is because of a primal fear (Score:2)
Radiation is a manifestation of one of our most primal fears: The invisible killer. You can't see it or stop it, it just kills. That is extremely scary to people. Even more so because people understand the phenomena so poorly. Most people don't have the necessary science education to have a good grasp on how it works.
A Tsunami, though fearsome, is perfectly understandable. A big ole' wall of water comes and smashes things and drowns people. Fearsome, but easy to understand.
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This isn't really the media's fault though. The meltdown at Fukushima was seat-of-your-pants action. Everyone would have their eyes glued to TV screens all around the world (of course, I did too).
Granted, it's disproportionate. Fukushima may kill 2000 people from eventual cancer deaths, whereas we have the equivalent of 20 Fukushimas every y
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Meanwhile, starting next week workers at Fukushima Daiichi will stop the use of face masks except in the work areas around the crippled units:
Change to the Rules of Wearing Full Face Masks at the Site of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station [tepco.co.jp]
Still it didn't stop people to post stupid things in this CNNgo article: Journeys to the edge: Tourism in Fukushima makes more sense now [cnngo.com]
Being worried about radioactive iodine from Fukushima Daiichi makes the same sense of being worried about wild siberian tigers in New
Re:What about the tsunami? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a Tsunami; whatever we did, we could not change the existence of the Tsunami, while the Fukushima problems could all have been solved /prevented a lot of different ways.
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If nature wants to wreck your nuclear reactor or hydroelectric dam or coal plant, theres a limit to how much mitigation you can do, I think is the most salient point. Yes, there is more that could have been done, but those conversations tend to spin off into how this must be proof that nuclear is inherently unsafe. Funny that noone ever mentions that about hydro dams, even though FAR FAR more people have died from burst dams in the last ten years than have died to nuclear disasters in the last 50.
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In the long run, a drastic change of direction of the energy policies of the world's industrialized nations may be a bigger news story than 19,000 deaths.
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Is anyone else besides me annoyed that Fukushima keeps on overshadowing this incredibly catastrophic tsunami?
Only the contrarians trying to distinguish themselves.
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Probably, but not me. The Tsunami didn't spew radioactives into the atmosphere which were picked up by the jet stream and distributed around the world, including the hot spent fuel that was stored right there.
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Probably, but not me. The Tsunami didn't spew radioactives into the atmosphere which were picked up by the jet stream and distributed around the world, including the hot spent fuel that was stored right there.
If only the Japanese had a comprehensive storage plan like the USA, we'd all be better off.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42219616/ns/business-us_business/t/us-storage-sites-overfilled-spent-nuclear-fuel/ [msn.com]
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If only the Japanese had a comprehensive storage plan like the USA, we'd all be better off.
Yes, when our crappy old reactors go tits-up and pollute the rest of the world then they can yell at us. I'm not saying we're great. I'm saying that the Tsunami doesn't have quite the global impact that the failure at Fukushima Daiichi does, and that's all.
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If only the Japanese had a comprehensive storage plan like the USA, we'd all be better off.
Yes, when our crappy old reactors go tits-up and pollute the rest of the world then they can yell at us. I'm not saying we're great. I'm saying that the Tsunami doesn't have quite the global impact that the failure at Fukushima Daiichi does, and that's all.
Sure, what possible ill effects could come from 18 million tons of trash floating in the ocean!?
http://www.speakupforblue.com/everything-ocean/what-do-you-do-when-18m-tons-of-plastic-arrive-on-your-coast [speakupforblue.com]
Trash is good for ocean life, right? It gives them something harmless to nibble on while they search for real food.
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Trash is good for ocean life, right? It gives them something harmless to nibble on while they search for real food.
At the rate we're shitting on the ocean with phosphates, CO2, and oil, it's fairly irrelevant, though unfortunate.
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The radiation [wikipedia.org] hasn't killed anyone.
"...Further, the radiation exposure resulting from the accident for most people living in Fukushima is so small compared to background radiation that it may be impossible to find statistically significant evidence of increases in cancer.
As of September 2011, there were no deaths or serious injuries due to direct radiation exposures. Cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures cannot be ruled out, but, according to one expert, might be in the order of 100 cases."
While the tsunami [wikipedia.org] killed over 15,800.
Re:What about the tsunami? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is anyone else besides me annoyed that Fukushima keeps on overshadowing this incredibly catastrophic tsunami?
You should ask again after the Fulushima disaster ends. If Fukushima was a tsunami the water would still be rising.
Too Easy. (Score:2)
Simply do not build cities in locations which are susceptible to tsunamis.
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I wonder... (Score:2)
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Chernobyl Death Toll: 4,000
Fukushima Death Toll: 5
Which one is worse?
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Well, considering that Chernobyl was the only [wikipedia.org] catastrophic nuclear power plant accident in human history until Fukishima, hopefully forever.
For varying degrees of 'catastrophe' sure. If I were a shareholder in the utility that ran Three Mile Island, I might use that word.
And, unfortunately, it is very unlikely that this is the last major nuclear plant disaster. For fun, look to see how many generation 1 nuc plants sit in a geologically active zone.
And how few generation 2 or 3 nuc plants are being built....
And how many generation 1 plants are running well past their design lives.
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I wonder why they use the past tense, since Chernobyl is still an ongoing problem.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2067562,00.html [time.com]
The fall of the USSR couldn't have happened at a worse time for the people of the Ukraine...
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At the present rate, 30-40 years. But that that could change dramatically depending on what they decide to do with aging nuclear power stations.
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How long are we going to be using the phrase "worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl"?
Obviously, that phrase will be used until a disaster worse than Chernobyl happens. I hope that phrase never goes out of style.
oh good grief, get your snark straight! (Score:2)
How long are we going to be using the phrase
"worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl"
?
Until the next nuclear disaster bigger than Fukushima.
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You are suggesting we lie?
Nothing new here (Score:3)
All this was known previously, but you had to read through long reports to get the whole picture. This is a more dramatic summary.
The real issue with Fukushima is that the reactors survived the earthquake and tsunami. What caused the meltdown was loss of electrical power to reactors that required active pumped water cooling and valve control.
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The real issue with Fukushima is that the reactors survived the earthquake and tsunami. What caused the meltdown was loss of electrical power to reactors that required active pumped water cooling and valve control.
Not really. The REAL issue is that multiple risk factors where known to TEPCO and the Japanese government and they failed to mitigate those risks. Risks spanning decades of time.
The main reason for same: Economics.
That's the real lesson. Nuclear Power can be engineered safely. Whether or not it is depends on a host of factors. As I mentioned before, there are a number of first generation nuclear plants with these and other risks that continue to be run because of economic and political pressures.
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Not really. The REAL issue is that multiple risk factors where known to TEPCO and the Japanese government and they failed to mitigate those risks. Risks spanning decades of time.
The main reason for same: Economics.
That's the real lesson. Nuclear Power can be engineered safely. Whether or not it is depends on a host of factors. As I mentioned before, there are a number of first generation nuclear plants with these and other risks that continue to be run because of economic and political pressures.
Economics dictates that owner/operator of a nuclear plant will cut costs wherever possible. In the absence of some truly comprehensive government regulation, including enforcement measures with real teeth, nothing will change.
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I find TEPCO specially to blame, since the Nuclear Power Plants from Tohoku Electric and Japan Atomic Power survived similar or worst conditions than Fukushima Daiichi or Fukushima Daini. TEPCO informed the government that the sea wall would not protect Fukushima Daiichi since they expected a tsunami up to 10 m, more than double of the height of the sea wall. They did know that since 2008 and informed of their study to the government 7th march 2011, maybe 3 years late.
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The point appears to be seriously disputed. The first paragraph of the article you cited claims: "Japan's nuclear safety agency today rejected a claim in British newspaper The Independent that the earthquake itself, not the subsequent tsunami, destroyed cooling systems"
However, even if the claim is true, it's worth remembering that all meltdowns are not created equal. A meltdown which does not breach containment, is like three mile island.
If systems had continued functioning at Fukushima then the sequence o
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Nothing "nut" about it. Have you ever seen what happens when you heat up a glass container and then run cold water over it? That's what the gravity-feed cooling system was doing to reactor #1. If the tsunami had been the three-meter wave predicted rather than the 14-meter wave that actually hit them, leaving that cooling system on would have caused a major radiation release, as thermal stresses would have caused the con
which do you prefer? (Score:2)
Coal or nuclear?
Not that I want to present a false dichotomy, but if you were "preference voting", i.e., listing your preferences in order, aside from the rest of the options, how would you order these two relative to one another?
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Nuclear first, easy question.
My full preference set is wind, solar thermal, solar PV, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, diesel, natural gas, coal.
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Nuclear first, easy question.
My full preference set is wind, solar thermal, solar PV, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, diesel, natural gas, coal.
Why diesel ahead of the cheaper and cleaner natural gas? We also seem to have lots more natural gas than oil.
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Because getting natural gas involves fracking. Otherwise natural gas would be ahead of diesel. There is a similar caveat to geothermal, some plants operate in a way that brings underground toxins to the surface when the turbines are cleaned.
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Natural gas may burn clean, but it sure as hell doesn't extract clean.
You clearly don't live on top of the Marcellus like I do.
I'll take a nuclear plant a mile away from me over the commencement of fracking operations any day of the week.
Much of it is due to a clear difference in attitude between the nuclear and gas industries:
Nuclear: "If we fuck up, bad things will happen. So we are going to constantly improve safety designs to prevent bad things from happening."
Gas drilling industry: "We're clean. We
Re:which do you prefer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear.
Build them in job lots, and decommission 2 GW of coal plants for every 3 GW of nuclear we build.
And pick a design or two and stick with them. Rather than making every single one of them unique. Preferably Fourth Generation, but Late Third would suffice.
And seriously start looking at thorium designs. And breeder reactors.
So better make that four designs - one conventional, on thorium, one that can be converted from conventional to thorium, and one breeder. Cover all the bases.
And then try our best to make the people who complain about nuclear power sound like they're in favour of Global Warming continuing unchecked. Just like the anti-nuke knotheads act like people who favour nuclear power are in favour of more Chernobyls.
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Sounds like you want a CANDU reactor.
They can run on natural Uranium,slightly enriched Uranium , MOX , U-233/Thorium , and for the case of Thorium and U-233 they can be run in a self-sufficient breeder mode.
Personally I'm somewhat sceptical to thorium however. Margins on neutron economy are so tight that reprocessing would have to be done frequently t
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Oh, coal, definitely, if we're burning it on MARS!
Seriously, look at France's nuclear program, rewind the U.S. and rest of the world back to 1975 and take a different road - following in France's footsteps and building all new generating capacity from nuclear power. One might argue that we'd have had another nuclear disaster or two between then and now if we had built so many more plants, I'd counterpoint that if we had built so many more new tech based updated plants, we could have retired the ones that w
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West Virginia isn't the only place scarred by coal mining, and MegaWatt hours generated vs. Megatons of earth strip-mined, nuclear beats coal. My main reference to France was their breeder reactors which make fuel for the next generation of plants without further mining.
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France gets most of its Uranium from central Africa. All mining of Uranium ceased in France around 2001.
The volume of Uranium required, for a given amount of power, is about 1 million times smaller than the volume of coal required for the same amount of power. Of course Uranium is at a lesser concentration (about 2%), so you must correct for that. Still, you can estimate the comparative damage to the environment from Ura
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Coal or nuclear?
Not that I want to present a false dichotomy, but if you were "preference voting", i.e., listing your preferences in order, aside from the rest of the options, how would you order these two relative to one another?
Since coal and nuclear plants can vary quite a bit regarding chance of and magnitude of potential disasters, normal pollution raters and various other factors, I think you have to compare specific plant designs rather than simply lumping all coal and nuclear plants into two groups. We don't have any good way to replace all coal plants any time soon, but I think we need new, safe nuclear plants as well as more wind, hydroelectric, and solar plants to minimize the need for coal ones. The Fukushima disaster wa
Obligatory Three Mile Island comparison (Score:2)
Three Mile Island sustained an explosion about ten times stronger than the explosions that blew apart the Fukushima Daiichi units. The Three Mile Island containment building involved in the accident sits completely undamaged over thirty years later.
This is the benefit of containment buildings which were not only built to contain radioactivity but also built to survive impact by a Boeing 707.
Why don't all reactors have strong, steel-reinforced concrete containment buildings? I see shattered, wooden studs on
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I see shattered, wooden studs on those blasted-out Fukushima Daiichi buildings.
And a good thing too. Sometimes the best thing to do with a hydrogen explosion is give its energy somewhere to go.
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Sometimes the best thing to do with a hydrogen explosion is give its energy somewhere to go.
Or not. See the OP.
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What does the undamaged roof buy us?
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That's what the containment vessel is for. The containment building keeps the rain out so workers don't need umbrellas on wet days.
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If this report is as good as the one on TMI... (Score:2)
... you definitely need to read it. I will definitely plow through it soon.
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Fukushima had a GE Mark I containment, which is far weaker than the containment at most PWRs. Mark I containment was controversial, and considered possibly too weak, even when it was introduced in ~1965 when safety standards for nuclear plants were vastly lower. (Some engineers publicly resigned from GE around 1970 and protested that Mark I was too weak; it was a big news item for awhile).
Boiling water reactors generally have mu
Or how close ... (Score:2)
... or how close the designers came to creating the worst nuclear disaster ever?
Radiation Symbol (Score:2)
Disaster planning (Score:2)
It comes down to cost. Trying the plan for that last 5% of disasters that only happen 1% of the time is cost prohibitive. At some point, sad as it may seem, money does become more important than the consequences. I don't think Fukishama will be the last, nor the worst, disaster this population ever sees but it will make engineers a little more careful. For a while.
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It is the worst since Chernobyl (Score:2)
"One thing I hadn't realized was just how close workers came to averting the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."
It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. It was very close to being worse than Chernobyl.
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That's a meaningless phrase though. A few days after the whole Chernobyl thing died down, I dropped an ionization style smoke detector on my foot. it was OMFG THE WORST NUCLEAR ACCIDENT SINCE CHERNOBYL!!!!!!!!!!!!
It made me say ow and everything.
As for WORSE than Chernobyl? Not really much chance of that. It could have been worse than it turned out, but it wasn't at all likely to be worse than Chernobyl.
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"One thing I hadn't realized was just how close workers came to averting the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."
It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Yes, and that is what the anonymous submitter said. I don't think you parsed the sentence correctly.
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Do you have any support for this claim?
From what I can tell, efforts to control things at Fukushima essentially failed completely. They had full station blackout; they were not able to restore power; no important systems worked other than power-less emergency core cooling at 2 and 3, and then only for awhile; generators brought in were of the wrong kind; etc etc. All they did successfully, was vent and spray w
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I read the summary as saying that it was almost *not* the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. But then, the TFA doesn't really say that -- there was very little that could have been done once the earthquake happened to prevent most of what came afterward.
Failsafe reactors (Score:2)
How about redesigning reactor vessels so that rods would be physically separated by a sufficient distance when loss of power occurs?
Perhaps a model where robotic arms push against giant springs to brings rods closer together, for the reaction to take place.
loss of control , or loss of power would automatically cause the springs to push the arms back and separate out the rods in space, thus stopping the reaction.
I am no physicist, and perhaps reactors would have to be gigantic for this to work, but it's an i
Re:Operating system failure (Score:4, Funny)
CP/M? TOPS-20? Hard to tell.
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Re:Operating system failure (Score:4, Insightful)
At 3:27 p.m. the first tsunami wave surged into the man-made harbor protecting Fukushima Dai-ichi, rushing past a tidal gauge that measured a water height of 4 meters above normal. At 3:35 another set of much higher waves rolled in and obliterated the gauge. The water rushed over the seawalls and swept toward the plant. It smashed into the seawater pumps used in the heat-removal systems, then burst open the large doors on the turbine buildings and submerged power panels that controlled the operation of pumps, valves, and other equipment. Weeks later, TEPCO employees would measure the water stains on the buildings and estimate the monstrous tsunami's height at 14 meters.
In the basements of turbine and reactor buildings, 6 of the 12 diesel generators shuddered to a halt as the floodwaters inundated them. Five other generators cut out when their power distribution panels were drenched. Only one generator, on the first floor of a building near unit 6, kept going; unlike the others, all of its equipment was above the water line. Reactor 6 and its sister unit, reactor 5, would weather the crisis without serious damage, thanks in part to that generator.
Blame the sea walls if you want, or the tidal wave, or the earthquake. But the disaster was not caused by a failure of the plants operating systems. The failure of the systems was only a symptom.
OK. Let's take the next step in your reasoning. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right; the disaster was caused by a normal event. Natural disasters have happened thousands of times in the past and will happen again tens of thousands of times in the future. They cannot be prevented and are mostly unpredictable as well (although we're getting better at the prediction part).
What does that say about the wisdom of building terrestrial nuclear power plants?
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It says little or nothing about the wisdom of building plants. You still do not have enough information (from that alone) to determine if plants are safer or more dangerous than alternatives. You must look at the rate of occurrence for large earthquakes (like 9.0) and above, and for other massive natural disasters. Then you must look at the distribution of plants and estimate the number of meltdowns. Then you must compare the h
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We are idiots for not spending $10,000 more to elevate electonics to the highest practical level.
I figure you're at least two and probably three orders of magnitude too low on that guess. In addition, one of the reasons the electrical systems were probably as low as they could get them was because of earthquake hazard. The higher up important systems are, the more likely they are to get damaged by earthquakes IMHO. But because they already had seawalls, they didn't see the need to place that equipment up high.
There's not a good process for designing failures at "minor" levels and allowing for degraded failure modes as the disaster gets worse.
There's a whole discipline devoted to this very issue. It's called "engineering".
Have deliv
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How about blaming poor design decisions? ALL of the generators in the BASEMENT next to the OCEAN. Sounds like a good plan to exactly whom?
How about the FAILURE of TEPCO to change out the electrically activated hydrogen filters for passive ones, like some their engineers and a bunch of outside consultants suggested years ago?
How about FAILURE of TEPCO and the Japanese Government to update their geologic risk assessment despite recommendations from internal and external staff on multiple occasions.
Yep, othe
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FTFY. And the answer would be: post-war Japan in the 1960s.
I've read before that conception to commission is a ten year process for a nuclear power plant, so much of the initial design would be early 1960s. I'd guess contracts for specialized machinery are being tendered by the mid 1960s. By then, procurement wheels in motion combined with slide rules and manual blueprints and uninvented fax machines put a big crimp on safety rethink. The logistics for this kind
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New Orleans not a good comparison.
The important parts of New Orleans (the Bulk Material Port and the Oil terminal) were both well enough protected. The Port shipped out almost all of the US corn and wheat exports a few months after Katrina. IIRC the Oil terminal was running inside of six weeks.
The real problem with New Orleans is that the 'at risk' value was low. Katrina was urban renewal. New Orleans is better for it having happened. You are pissed at me because you know it's true. It's a terrible pla
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Systems are not just just taking a reactor offline. It has to remain safe afterwards. But when the generators fail because they've been drowned is about as much fail as you can have.
The total systems themselves had a
Frequency/Probability (Score:3)
Based on the geologic record of the site, and our understanding of plate tectonics, the probability of this event happening at some point in time was somewhere around 100%. The frequency of such events is such that one would be expected every few hundred years. If the plant is expected to operate for 20-30 years, this translates to a lifetime
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I may be wrong about this, but as I read it, the term "operating systems" (plural) seems to refer to the systems that actually operate the nuclear plant. Your question would make sense to me if the original article had read, "operating system" (singular).
Having said all that, I would guess Windows.
You've been atomically WHOOSHED!
(It WAS a joke son, laugh)
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The summary even fed them a line to make a quip about...
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Actually, the Fukushima Accident has shattered the credibility of nuclear power more than any of us could ever do, so we'll just let the details speak for themselves.
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One of the largest tsunamis in the last century, which killed over 10,000 people, also lead to an industrial disaster with 5 fatalities (none of which were related to radiation). How does that in any way "shatter the credibility" of nuclear power?
(Source: http://thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/9537-no-fukushima-radiation-deaths-no-surprises [thenewamerican.com])
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Qué?
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"If" you read the article you would have read the following:
"Only one generator, on the first floor of a building near unit 6, kept going; unlike the others, all of its equipment was above the water line. Reactor 6 and its sister unit, reactor 5, would weather the crisis without serious damage, thanks in part to that generator."
You'd also known that most of the emergency power survived the quake but the flood quickly took them out. Therefore they didn't protect the nuclear plant from a possible tsunami a
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Nuclear fission power plants are not economically viable in a free and fair market
What free market? Nuclear primarily competes with coal, where the main costs (pollution) are entirely socialized.
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Nuclear fission power plants are not economically viable in a free and fair market,
Yes, they are. However, in a closed market, where public pressure can block a sensible business decision, where lawsuits will be filed to drive up costs as a deterrent, then you are right, nuclear fission power plants are not economically profitable. If you had the $10,000,000,000 to build one, you'd make more putting that into other investments.
If you believe in capitalism, free markets, or representative government all this should offend you. The White House and the neo-con wing of the Republican party forced an unconsenting electorate to sponsor a huge market distortion - potentially driving market-selected options out of the competition - in order for their corporate buddies to plunder the public pocketbook.
Yeah, but are you talking about coal subsidies, oil subsidies, corn subsidies, or nuclear subsidies, and could you rank those in order of which they consume my fe
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Interesting; you claim that anti-nuclear "fucktards" are actively preventing the shutdown of nuclear power plants?
The claim was that they are actively preventing the improvement of obsolete plants by replacing old ones with new ones, which (for a given load of electricity, does mean that the fucktards are actively preventing the shutdown of unsafe nuclear plants).
The operators want to shut them down, but anti-nuclear fucktards won't let them!
Yes! The operators say:
I want to shut this plant down. I need to build a replacement. I will build a nuke to replace a nuke, but the new one will be cheaper and safer. I'll shut down the old one as soon as the new one is built. Will you let me shut down t
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There were a few points in the timeline where a different decision would have prevented the meltdown entirely, or kept it contained to the reactor building. Most of those decisions (the big ones being the design and location of various emergency systems) were made before the earthquake. However, two of the decisions made after the quake could have changed things significantly:
1) If the operators had left the gravity-feed cooling system on, it would have kept reactor #1 cool and prevented a meltdown after
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> Isn't this the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl?
Yes. As the submitter said.
> Should the summary read a bit more like 'averting a worse nuclear disaster than Chernobyl'?
No. Basically, all their efforts failed, so it was as bad as it could have been. And it was still much less severe than Chernobyl.