NEWS: Tokyo Electric To Build US Nuclear Plants: The No-BS Info On Japan’s Disastrous Nuclear Operators

Precisely, perfectly stated.

Not that I'm an expert, but NHK is reporting that radiation around the plant is currently 3 mSv and that two hours' exposure would result in 1 Sievert of exposure. So it seems there might be a different exposure rate here. Or there is conflicting information.

I bet $56,000,000,000 invested in alternative/renewable energy would help.

"But they test for that" is kind of begging the question when the premise of the article is that "the tests are rigged/spoofed."

If I were designing a nuclear reactor in Japan of all places, massive earthquake + tsunami is exactly what I would have in mind for a "worst case scenario." Japan has a bit of history with those two things.

It still amazes me how the focus has completely shifted from a Tsunami killing thousands to a reactor that hasn't. This has been blown way too far out of proportion by American media. Thank you for feeding it by posting this article

Um, fire departments are unable to save buildings all the time because they are on fire.

I think pretty well every thing else has been covered, so I'll leave it at that.

Twelve, since this particular earthquake is in the top 5 biggest earthquakes since they started being recorded, I think it is safe to say that not only was one of this magnitude not expected, but also that the sheer devestation was more than expected. As you said, this is a country that is very used to earthquakes. They've had quite a number of them over the 7.0 mark, with few or no deaths, so they obviously do something right.

I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this article I read just before yours:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html

The way I read this article, he is not debating the safety or non safety of Nuclear vs. Other Power Options. He is simply reporting on the willful mismanagement of a highly complex system. A system that so mismanaged could be disastrous if critical safety systems, such as the containment system, were manufactured inadequately yet falsely passed on inspection. The tone of the article is dramatic. However I see no debate here over power systems, just reporting on corporate fuck-ups.

You have to over engineer these plants X 10

The Pigmen who run the show will never do this.

Look up New Madrid Fault quake zone . The Diablo nuke plant in California should scare the hell out of you.

The weird thing to me is the whole issue is loss of power... at a gigantic power plant. I'm sure there's an obvious answer here, but why is there absolutely no possibility of the plant providing its own power? From what I've read, that is an intentional design decision. Why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-QuA3YurxU

In a nutshell, power generation must be balanced to actual grid demand, and when the grid is destroyed there is nowhere for the generated power to go. These plants generate a huge amount of power, far more than they themselves can use. Ergo, shutdown when this sort of thing happens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission

Pray for Japan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxzQPiy_U1M

Thank you for the concise answer! I understand now.

and i think you're missing the point of my argument. This will not be Chernobyl, there will be no incredible meltdown from outright lack of engineering all together.

The Chernobyl meltdown happened when the plant was still operating, which greatly increased the severity of the meltdown. Both Chernobyl and 3-mile island didn't have a precautionary evacuation, no iodine pills, the engineering just wasn't there. Chernobly and Fukushima are completely different on many different scales from one another, especially when it comes to safety engineering. Comparing this in any matter to the Chernobyl disaster doesn't make sense, at all. I am still talking to people who are under the assumption that a nuclear reactor has the potential to cause a mushroom cloud, and it's just not true. Nuclear reaction and nuclear explosion are not the same thing.

Fukushima went into automatic shut down as soon as the quake hit, as designed. When power was lost, the core was cooled via the diesel generators, they started and ran for about an hour prior to one of the largest tsunamis in recorded history struck a seawall that was engineered for worst case scenario according to previous high magnitude quakes and this was beyond worst case scenario, the tsunami was more intense than anything recorded in history, how do you plan for something that has never happened? What would happen if that generator you installed on a 6 foot platform was engulfed by an 8 foot flood? Your engineering assumes that there will never be more than 6 foot of water in that backyard. That doesn't make you unprepared, it makes you unable to foretell the future.

Anything man builds is susceptible to nature, because there is no way to truly predict what nature has in store for the man-made structure. If you were to engineer it 10x more than what is needed, you would spend billions of dollars preparing for something that could never happen, or you could spend billions of dollars and have it shat all over in ten minutes and then have people tell you that you were unprepared.

The difference between New Orleans and this is that the levies in New Orleans were well known to only be able to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, they were under engineered and it was known. The sea-wall at Fukushima was built with the idea that it could protect the generators from any known tsunami in history and then some. This tsunami was unprecedented in size.

After the generators went out, they then transferred to battery back up for cooling the core while other means of energy were attempted to be located. The batteries lasted about 8 hours and when the auxiliary power generators that were brought on site, they were unable to be used. They then moved to sea water to cool the cores because they weren't worried about saving the reactor any more, they were worried about preventing a melt down.

Anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong and the Nuclear Plant still hasn't emitted more radiation than a coal ash plant does on a yearly basis

We have basic coal fly-ash plants that come no where near the BACT of Nuclear Power Plants and everyone wants to use big scary words like "melt down" which they don't fully understand and "radiation release" with terms like "microsievert" that nobody understands, and rather than take the time to understand them, they panic and think Nuclear Energy is more dangerous than Coal power.

I agree with you, things probably should have been retrofitted to bring Fukushima up to spec and perhaps better redundant engineering. However, when you have a plant that is due to be decommissioned/mothballed and then given a 10 year stay, there may have been plans to retrofit the plant, there may have not been. But so far, this has been contained to a local event, everything has been proactive, rather than reactive. Iodine pills, the evacuation, the declaration to stay indoors. With the amount of destruction that has occurred in Japan, that to me is highly impressive.

The people putting their lives on the line to continue to get the plants to a stabilized condition are nothing less than heroes in my eyes. They're the ones that are going to suffer due to the radiation more than anyone else. To portray them as irresponsible is insulting, especially since the operators really have no ability to redesign or re-engineer anything. They have taken what circumstances they have to work with and done an amazing job.

More than anything is that these plants are 40+ years old, and the engineering that goes into modern plants is 40+ years better. The false presumption that Nuclear Energy in the United States is not safe due to a Nuclear Plant being involved in an unprecedented 9.0 earthquake and followed by a tsunami vastly larger than any tsunami in history is making a huge leap in logic.

...and you're missing mine. I didn't say anything about Chernobyl. I didn't say anything about US nuclear plants.

I said "when the worst case scenario [at that plant] could be several meltdowns", which is most likely what was/is happening.

We'll never know if those backup generators could have handled this problem, kept the reactors cool and prevented the overheating, last-ditch seawater injections, ensuing reactor building explosions, partial core meltdowns, radiation releases and fires...

...because the generators were mounted too low and drowned by water.

Ah, no - not the biggest in history or even the biggest to hit Japan:

http://www.livescience.com/3731-tsunamis-history.html


"We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable."

- VP of the White Star line, 15 Apr. 1912

Design hubris turned out to be a real bitch both times, eh?

Construction of the plant was started in 1967, the plant was commissioned and put into production in 1971 and was built using the response spectrum developed from the Kern county California earthquake of 1952. A 7.3 magnitude earthquake

It successfully survived the 1978 Miyagi earthquake with no damage to the critical parts. The earthquake triggered a small tsunami that did very little damage and didn't travel as near far inland as this one did.

Prediction of the size of tsunamis is near impossible. How does one go about determining a worst case scenario for which there is no limit on the worst case scenario? Do you spend millions if not billions of dollars preparing for something that may never happen or do you look at past historical events and make an educated calculation on what could plausibly happen?

Japan is far ahead of many other countries when it comes to preparedness for earthquakes, seeing as they have lived through many of them and adapted to it accordingly. Building and highway design in California is being copied from Japanese engineering. Preparing for tsunamis is completely different, seeing as that they are virtually unpredictable, a large scale tsunami would wipe out any structure, any where. No country is properly prepared for them, simply because there is no way to prepare for them.

In this case, the sea wall was determined to be enough because due to past historical natural events, there was no indication that a tsunami would cause as much damage as this one did.

So, I guess "SG Blog" is merely a cut and paste bot that will never join the conversation, or defend itself.

What's the point?

Also, if this is "news" wouldn't it be better on the CE board? I'm not seeing this as a conversation on lifestyle.

Sorry, rant over. For now.

... Damn, Stiles already beat me with his edit.

Just to expand a little on what he said, waves 3-4 times higher than what we saw last week have hit the same region at least twice in the last century or so, in 1896 and 1933. It's simply not true to say that there was no precedent for this.

You didn't indicate that this was a Chernobyl like event, but there have been plenty of discussions where it has been mentioned and i am sure it is on the mind of some that were alive when it did happen.

I also understand completely that you didn't say anything about U.S. Nuclear Power plants. But the overall tone i reached from the article is that Nuclear Power Plants in the United States would be unsafe, when they're actually just as safe, if not safer than any other power plant in the United States.

So you kind of get entangled into that response, my apologies for that.

So my question to you is, how do you economically engineer and build something safely for something that 1) May or may not happen and 2) cannot be measured or predicted. If you over-engineer it and nothing ever happens, or something monumentally less happens, you look the fool for wasting the money to engineer and build that safety. If you engineer it with past events in mind, and meet all budget requirements, you look the fool when something monumental like this happens.

I agree with you, like i did agree with you in my previous post, the generators along with the fuel should have been put at a higher level. But they weren't, and the outcome, in my opinion is not going to be as near catastrophic as Chernobyl or 3-Mile Island because we (collectively) have made Nuclear Plants safer and safer as more are built.

This particular situation in Japan can't be used to determine the safety or not-safety of building new plants in the United States, it's not a feasible nor a useful comparison. The engineers and scientists can and definitely will use the events of this disaster in future agendas, up to and including tsunami early warning systems.

I just typed a lengthy reply to this and it didn't post. So if it doesn't post this time, i am unfriending you, i will eat my crappy Chipotle dinner and i will be going to look at tits for the rest of the night.

Predictions of tsunamis and the resulting affects of the tsunamis are not possible. While this is the third tsunami to hit that region in 100 years, they all have different intricacies that make them different from one another. Size, where they formed, how they hit the coast, when they hit the coast, what caused them....they are all different. The destruction they caused is even different. A lesser magnitude earthquake can cause a bigger tsunami if all the events happen in the right order.

Every tsunami at this point is unprecedented, so yes, you are correct, the area has been hit by tsunamis in the past, but they have all acted differently. Preparing for worst case scenario becomes extremely difficult at that point.

So once again, i agree with Stiles, the generators should have been placed higher. I think i have said that three times now.

The whole premise of me being in this discussion is this. The disaster in Japan cannot and should not be used to determine the safety or lack of safety of Nuclear Power plants being built in the United States. The disaster should be used to enhance our current plants and greatly used in the engineering, design and application in future plants. To watch what is going on in Japan and then turn around and say "No Nuclear Plants in the United States from now on" is not fair, by any means.

Conditions and environmental aspects of the United States greatly differ from those in Japan. We have regulatory commissions that while fallible have prosecuted many people for not following Nuclear Procedures. Diablo (as mentioned by another poster) is required to perform seismic studies to ensure it's safety, all while a number of seismic safeties are put into place so that any significant ground movement would result in complete plant shut down.

Nuclear Energy continues to get safer, there have been engineering leaps and bounds in the last decade. It has it's own commission to ensure that it is meeting all requirements set forth by said commission. This is all happening while the coal and oil industry does everything it possibly can to continue polluting.

In my opinion, until other renewable sources are developed or take hold and can cost effectively compare to current power plants, Nuclear is safer and generally better than any other type of power producing plant.

If you're reading this, it posted, if you're not reading this, i am sitting here with a pretty disgruntled look on my face eating my chipotle.

I think that all things considered, this 40 year old plant built on a major, active faultline did remarkably well considering it took one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in modern history and then a sizeable tsunami afterward...

...which is what makes it so very frustrating that the gennies getting drowned is what really turned this into the big, expensive problem that it is. It sure looks like that was the difference here, and mounting the gen sets & fuel tanks higher when the plant was built would have been dirt cheap and dead simple at the time, especially considering the overall cost & complexity of building the entire facility.

I don't think they'll make the same mistake again.

There was more to it than just the generators failing. There isn't just one fail safe, there are several, from several different sources.

and everything you have said is quite true, but also very speculative. While i agree that the generators should have been mounted higher than where they were, there is no proof that the tsunami wouldn't have damaged them, or the taller structures that they were mounted to wouldn't have collapsed under the stress of the earthquake.

I could sit here all day and play armchair engineer, but truth be told, even had the design been different, there is no definitive proof that this would have turned out any different.

While that's true, as I alluded to earlier, we'll never know if any of those variables would have mattered since the generators were mounted too low - a problem both predictable (given Japan's history of large tsunamis) and easily addressed.