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Blow-By-Blow Account of the Fukushima Accident

Posted by Soulskill on from the caused-by-late-tps-reports dept.

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."

9 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. What about the tsunami? by Sperbels · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is anyone else besides me annoyed that Fukushima keeps on overshadowing this incredibly catastrophic tsunami?

    1. Re:What about the tsunami? by PIBM · · Score: 3, 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.

    2. Re:What about the tsunami? by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:What about the tsunami? by houghi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People thank God for some of the people who survived. Perhaps we could blame God for the deaths as well.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    4. Re:What about the tsunami? by khallow · · Score: 1, Insightful

      In other words, blame is a popular game. Second guessing always happens after a major disaster. I think it's worth recalling the lesson of the IEEE article, "learn by disaster" (more accurately termed "learn by mistake"). One sometimes has to experience disasters and mistakes in order to know what the real problems are.

    5. Re:What about the tsunami? by PNutts · · Score: 3, 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.

  2. Re:which do you prefer? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, 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.

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  3. Re:Operating system failure by nemoid · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Oh, and FWIW -- it wasn't a failure of the plant's operating systems, nor their backup systems. As the article describes -- every single one of the plant's failsafe mechanisms and backup systems performed flawlessly. If the article wanted to be honest, it would have read "The disaster at Fukushima was caused by the tidal waves which took out the plant's emergency systems" or something similar.

    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.

  4. OK. Let's take the next step in your reasoning. by Medievalist · · Score: 4, 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?