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Why Tokai No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant Survived March
Kyusaku Natsume writes "In a potentially damning report, the Japanese government panel probing the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown has learned that the nuclear power plant Tokai No.2 avoided station blackout thanks to making a 6.1 m high seawall, but TEPCO failed to do the same in Fukushima. From the article: 'The tsunami that hit the Tokai plant on March 11 were 5.3 to 5.4 meters in height, exceeding the company's earlier estimate but coming in around 30 to 40 cm lower than its revised projection. After the tsunami hit, the Tokai plant lost external power just like Fukushima No. 1 did, because the sea wall was overrun, knocking out one of its three seawater pumps. But its reactors succeeded in achieving cold shutdown because the plant's emergency diesel generator was being cooled by the two seawater pumps that survived intact.'"
Someone want to translate the summary? Or is this to be more evidence of lousy content and even worse editting? "as learnt" really?
Fukushima failed because the design was an inherently flawed, older generation fail deadly reactor. Failure to maintain active cooling led to catastrophe.
This can't happen in newer reactor designs which are currently being blocked by the anti-science kooks inhabiting the public policy debate.
Blame the anti-nuclear movement and their Luddite mentality.
Their position is equivalent to a pathological hatred of newer cars, complete with those new-fangled seatbelts and airbags.
Nuclear policy is made by polls and pundits, not scientists and engineers. We'll always be playing a few cards short of a full deck under such circumstances, whether with nuclear power, or any other significant public policy issue.
So, while fukishima was happening there were 3 other power stations in trouble that no one knew about. There were no news reports about the sea pumps failing in Tokai. Quite amazing that they could surpress the information like this.
Northern Lights are visible in large parts of the United States that don't normally see them. Head outside and check it out.
"In a potentially damning report, the japanese government panel probing the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown has learned that the nuclear power plant Tokai No.2 avoided station blackout thanks to a 6.1 m high seawall, constructed in September 2010. TEPCO, however, failed to do build a wall of similar height in Fukushima."
Somebody feel free to do the rest, but that's as much of it as I'm willing to translate.
And we're not due foresight from folks who transmute elements for money, because money corrupts. The first thing money corrupts is expectations.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"The nuclear meltdown was a success. - If you don't think so you should die of cancer."
What I want to know is why the secondary coolant pumps were housed in tin sheds instead of say a concrete bunker like the primary reactor buildings?
I had just assumed for all these years that something as important as the secondary coolant system would be protected by more then some steel panelling. If they had of placed the secondaries in a concrete bunker on the side of the primary reactor building opposite the ocean then it would take a disaster big enough to crack the reactor building to put them out of commission.
It would probably end up cheaper then building a sea wall.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
A 6m, or even a 12m sea wall would not have helped. The only thing damning about this is the summary.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
[Cut to: Ships Cockpit. The room is flooded with red light and the message "Danger" repeatedly flashes on the screens. Bender snores loudly. Enter Fry and Zoidberg.]
Fry: What's happening?
[Zoidberg turns on another screen that displays the extent of the damage to the tanker. There is a huge gash most of the way along the hull. A gauge at one side of the screen drops as the dark matter levels go down.]
Zoidberg: All 6,000 hulls have been breached!
[Fry falls to his knees.]
Fry: Oh, the fools! If only they'd built it with 6,001 hulls! When will they learn?
Fukushima had multiple hardware failures, correctable design problems, and crappy management. The failure was not just due to a low seawall.
1. Reactor 1's cooling system likely failed due to the quake, not the failure of the backup diesels. This opinion is based on analysis of the remaining sensors, that indicated the reactor was having problems even while the battery-powered cooling was still running. The existing plumbing and wiring had been embrittled from 4 decades of operation in a quake zone and proximity to, well, a nuclear reactor.
2. Design flaw and hardware failure: locating the backup diesel generators in a basement under the reactors, such that they were guaranteed to flood if water entered the area.
3. Design flaw: locating the spent fuel pools directly above the reactors in the same buildings, such that if the reactor had a little problem (hydrogen explosion, or moderated prompt criticality), said fuel would get blown sky-high, which it did in the reactor 3 explosion.
4. Design flaw: no externally located terminals for "connect portable generators HERE", and no rationalization of Japan's two different electrical standards (it's a fucking nuclear power plant that will blow up if not cooled, so support both standards, guys).
5. Management failure: All reactors should have been flooded with seawater immediately after the quake, as soon as the situation on the ground at the site became clear. This might have averted the hydrogen explosion by keeping the reactors cool enough to not oxidize the zirconium fuel-rod cladding. Local personnel correctly identified the situation, remote management denied permission to flood the reactors with seawater (because that basically ends the reactor's productive life). Eventually a local guy did so anyways.
Remain calm! All is well!
Quoting Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC5%8Dkai_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Incidents
Following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami the number 2 reactor was one of eleven nuclear reactors nationwide to be shut down automatically.[4] It was reported on 14 March that a cooling system pump for the number 2 reactor had stopped working.[5] Japan Atomic Power Company stated that there was a second operational pump and cooling was working, but that two of three diesel generators used to power the cooling system were out of order.[6]
Also it remains to see if the reactor will survive politically. The Mayor of Tokai Mura has called on the government to decommission the number 2 reactor which is over 30 years old. There is a population of over one million people living within a 30km radius of the plant. And they have lost their confidence in the governments ability to safely run the plant. The well known Tokai Mura critically accidents a number of years ago probably didn't do much to boost their confidence either.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Perhaps an elevated reinforced concrete platform is sufficient, 5m? Keep it simple?
There is one simple way that would have prevented the tsunami from taking out all emergency generators.
To comply with international standards and have at least four emergency generators per reactor placed around the reactors with adequate spacing between each of them to prevent common cause failure. For purely geometric reasons (to keep the distance between each other) at least one per reactor would have to have been behind the reactor buildings on higher ground. Which exactly how spacing alone mitigates common cause failure.
It would also have been helpful had TEPCO installed Passive Autocatalytic Recombiners in their reactor buildings to catalytically "burn" the hydrogen before it can reach combustible or explosive concentrations. (Those do their job by hanging on the wall. No power required.) Or if they had hardened and filtered containment vents.
Both of those measures were implemented in Sweden, Germany and France some time after the analysis of the Three Mile Island accident, which quite accurately predicted how Fukushima Daiichi turned out, which was deemed unacceptable. Hence the additional safety features. I'm not saying that those are the only countries that implemented such measures, but with those I'm sure. And I stopped making assumptions about those things seven months and two weeks ago.
Try Google Scholar:
http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=Containment+Hydrogen+Control+and+Filtered+Venting+Design+and+Implementation&hl=de&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
You will find that the first page contains only results between 1979 and 2003. This has nothing to do with hindsight. In fact, lots of people had the foresight to implement such measures. TEPCO was not among them.
Note that English is the submitter's third language, so let's just put all the blame on the editors. (Where it should go anyway).
Oh the irony of not wanting the power plant near you on the safe stable land, but instead slightly further away on the perilous seafront.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Making your pipes twice as long means you need a pump at least twice as strong. Make your pipe four times as long and...
Compare spares and maintenance for 25 years ("projected life") + making those long pipes earthquake proof VS the one-time cost of some mild steel girders and some concrete.
>> ordered nuclear power operators to spend every last dime up to the margin of being profitable on extra safety.
Bullshit
If nuclear power was "extra safe", it would not go boom every 10 years !
aaaaaaa
JSBiff, it's clear that you have no idea of the scale of the problem.
when you say :
>> there's no reason a meltdown should be a "disaster"
a meltdown releases such massive amounts of gaseous, liquid, solid materials, that are so radioactive, nothing can safely contain them over the long term. You give the exymple of liquid based reactors. They use a very specific metal alloy, which is the only to resist liquid molten core, and has to be replaced completely after some years.
For the gasses, either you release them, and you pollute massively, or you don't, and pressure rises until boom, and eeven more massive contamination.
Liquid material is also a problem, like can be seen @Fuku.
Now, say you stabilized a molten core. What's next ? you cannot acess the building, yet you have to take it down safely. Millions of tons of concrete that you cannot approach (or be dead instantly) hace to be dismantled and buried, without releasing any dust, or taking rain water, releasing gas.
There is no method today to take it down safely. TMI was not, tchernobyl was not, Fukushima will not be.
For Thorium, that is even more dangerous than water reactors. You have to use sodium, which is flammable, and will spread all your fuel as soon as you have the first fire. Then you have to have a chemical reprocessing running on your molten fuel 24/365 very close to EACH reactor, working on 600C molten metal. This reprocessing will output tons of waste chemicals every hour, all very radioactive. What do you do with it ? .... A fire will spread that and make inhabitable an entire continent. Same risk as fast breeders like superphenix or Monju.
Then you have to handle very dangerous things, like tritiated fluorhydric acid. Tritiated Fluorhydric acid ??? That is CRAZYNESS. Never saw such a dangerous substance !!
Then you have to change all pipes in your plant (reactor and reprocessing) after some years.
Then you want to burn actinides. which means you will have into your fuel (molten 24/365) all actual highly radioactive waste. Uranium, plutonium,
Just forget this crazy idea.
aaaaaaa
Thermosiphon would not work.
The sea was full of debris which clogged every pipe: meltdown.
Furthermore, in a meltdown, you just created two direct water paths from a molten reactore core to the pacific ocean. Fail.
aaaaaaa
Ok, I just found what you were talking about Tritium with regards to LFTR - the Lithium in the Flibe salt will, over time, capture neutrons, and release some tritium. However, I found a post on the energyfromthorium.com forums which discusses the problem, and mentions some ways they can mediate the tritium problem:
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3175&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Tritiated
In short, it looks like a relatively minor problem, with solutions.
If Tokai had been the plant hit by the 15 meter tsunami, then it wouldn't have mattered that its seawalls were slightly higher. Fukushima might still have been flooded since its seawall was only 30-40 centimeters higher than the crest of the tsunami that hit Tokai (though without the holes that the incomplete Tokai seawall had). But I think it's reasonable to expect a different and far less serious outcome for Fukushima given a much smaller tsunami height, less flooding of its backup generators, and far less damage to the surrounding region (such as power lines and road systems).
Then I read the following:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. projected in 2002 that the maximum height of any tsunami that hit Fukushima No. 1 would be 5.7 meters. It then failed to take any reinforcement measures despite further in-house research in 2006 and later.
Although Tepco calculated in 2008 that tsunami higher than 10 meters could hit the nuclear plant â" a height close to the actual waves seen on March 11 â" it only reported its calculation to the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency on March 7, 2011.
While the timing of the presentation of the report mentioned above is suspicious (it might have been sent after the earthquake and records modified to show an earlier date), I don't see anything else here to indicate malfeasance on the part of TEPCO.
This sort of thing doesn't move fast. Further, Fukushima was an obsolete plant in the process of being shutdown. But the quote above makes it sound like TEPCO should have been promptly moving on this, even though there wasn't a reason to.
It may turn out that TEPCO was responsible for negligence that contributed in a significant way to the Fukushima accident, but I'm glad that this news outlet won'tl be making that determination.
so, why not have a spare generator on the roof. (not the coolant pump - the thingy making electricity for it). If your entire reactor is underwater, you're probably screwed anyways.
The nerd rage is not against you, noble four-digit submitter, it is against the editors who are native speakers and should have fixed it.
The Tokai Mura Nuclear Plant was Japan's first nuclear plant.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I should perhaps have mentioned this in my previous post. But the Tokai Mura Criticality accident did not take place on the premises of the power plant. But rather in a Reprocessing plant on the other end of the village(inland), which was operated by JCO (previous JNFC). The entities are officially not connected, but their close proximity, the fact that they were under the same watch dog organizations. And they are all part of the "nuclear village" (Basically the brotherhood of all organizations that have anything to do with nuclear in Japan, holding each others backs). This all means that in the public eyes they are all the same. Many believe that it is just TEPCO failing here, but the entire "nuclear village" (the term is used in daily language, it is not tin foil) has had a long history of lying an deceiving and screwing up badly.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame