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Blow-By-Blow Account of the Fukushima Accident
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."
Unlike the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, the chain of failures that led to disaster at Fukushima was caused by an extreme failure in the plants operating systems. It was precisely the kind of occurrence that nuclear-plant designers strive to anticipate in their blueprints and emergency-response officials try to envision in their plans. The struggle to control the stricken plant, with its remarkable heroism, improvisational genius, and heartbreaking failure, will keep the experts busy for years to come. And in the end the calamity will undoubtedly improve nuclear plant design.
Does anyone know what OS they used?
Here come all the anti-nuke morons.
Is anyone else besides me annoyed that Fukushima keeps on overshadowing this incredibly catastrophic tsunami?
How long are we going to be using the phrase "worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl"?
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.
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?
Jesus, what the hell kind of article summary is this? I RTFA, and it's all speculation and conjecture. Almost every word of it.
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 those blasted-out Fukushima Daiichi buildings.
Kriston
... or how close the designers came to creating the worst nuclear disaster ever?
Isn't this the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl? Should the summary read a bit more like 'averting a worse nuclear disaster than Chernobyl'?
Bananas!
Nuclear fission power plants are not economically viable in a free and fair market, which is why the US government uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize it. It's old, obsolete, lame technology that favors entrenched corporate interests and provides an excuse for the ongoing centralization and militarization of commercial power generation.
If you do no other research at all, PLEASE read this: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9740
In 2005, as part of the infamous Cheney sellout of national energy policy in closed-door meetings with entrenched corporate powers, the economic landscape for nuclear was completely restructured.
The Price-Anderson act, originally a "temporary" 10-year measure to encourage the development of a nuclear power industry, was re-enacted - this time until 2025. Libertarians paying attention will note that Price-Anderson is a direct affront to core Libertarian principles - it caps liability for nuclear operators and forces taxpayers opposed to nuclear power to subsidize preventable failures.
Per-watt subsidies for nuclear power were also enacted, in the form of 1.8-cent per kilowatt-hour tax credits from new reactors during the first 8 years of operation (costing a projected $5.7 billion in revenue losses to the U.S. Treasury through 2025). This subsidy is necessary in order for nuclear-generated electricity to stay competitive with methane-powered generators, because of the total inability of the nuclear industry to deliver on the "energy too cheap to meter" promises they've been making since 1948.
In the 1980s government audits of nuclear operators determined that many of them were not setting aside decommissioning costs as required by law. The 2005 energy bill retroactively makes this legal, providing strong disincentives to any responsible operator willing to plan for the future.
Occasionally you will hear claims that government over-regulation of the nuclear industry means that licenses and permits are difficult and expensive to maintain. In reality, the industry itself rewrote the rules for licensing application in the 1980s so that permits are cheap, long-lasting and do not require any real commitment. Later policy revisions go even further and reduce the total paperwork by two thirds as well as increasing the speed of review, removing barriers to approval, and increasing the time a permit is valid to 40 years.
Today, nuclear plant licensing is going strong. The period when no new licenses were applied for closely corresponds to the period when lack of taxpayer subsidies and the lapse of Price-Anderson made building plants economic suicide - and the fact that license applications revived almost immediately after the GWBush administration reintroduced them is strong circumstantial evidence that nuclear operators must fleece taxpayers in order to survive in the US market, just as they do in every other country that uses nuclear power.
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.
Just how hard is it to put a radiation symbol right side up? What a good way to destroy the credibility of your journalism by implying that you've done so little research into this that you don't even know what the symbol for radiation is, let alone what radiation and radioactivity are.
Apple to0. No,
The data in that summary is cherry picked so it doesn't make bad PR for nuclear power.
For instance, they are careful not to mention evidence that rector one was damaged by the earthquake even before the tsunami struck:
http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=18975&sec=1
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-19/fukushima-may-have-leaked-radiation-before-quake.html
>> How long are we going to be using the phrase "worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl"?
True, just simply call it "The worst nuclear disaster"
aaaaaaa
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.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
>> If the emergency generators had been installed on upper floors rather than in basements, for example, the disaster would have stopped before it began
don't think so.
What about earquake damage to these generators ? on upper floors there's more damage. ...
What about the fuel tanks for these generators ? washed away
What about pumps for cooling ? washed away
What about the sea water for cooling these generators ? clogged by debris...
Basically, you can not secure fully a nuke plant against an earthquake and tsunami.
aaaaaaa
"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.
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?
... you definitely need to read it. I will definitely plow through it soon.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
How long are we going to be using the phrase
"worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl"
?
Until the next nuclear disaster bigger than Fukushima.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What does that say about the wisdom of building terrestrial nuclear power plants?
We need to build a impenetrable force field around every power plant?
Best idea so far!
And make sure that bald guy from sector 7G is on the outside of the force field.
let's not forget fukushima CATASTROPHE is still blowing up, or what do you think your geiger is complaining about? ...
background complaints? prolly
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 harm of those meltdowns to the alternatives available at a cost which the public will accept (burning coal or natural gas).
You need two numbers here for comparison, in order to generate even the roughest estimate of the wisdom of building plants. You cannot arrive at an estimate by just saying "natural disasters happen and we can't predict where...", any more than you could determine the relative safety of (say) walking vs driving by noting that lightning strikes occur and kill pedestrians more than drivers.
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 probability of 10% or so. That is a high probability, given such an event would definitely destroy the plant.
Simply do not build cities in locations which are susceptible to tsunamis.
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.
Without adequate cooling, those rods would become hot enough to melt through the steel pressure vessel, and then through the steel containment vessel. That would result in the dreaded core-meltdown scenario, which could lead to the release of clouds of radioactivity that would be carried by winds to sicken or kill masses of people.
Have to assume the rest is BS.
"Now, finally, we have an authoritative account..."
What nonsense. If you lived in Japan, like some of us, you'd have read plenty of authoritative accounts in Japanese long ago.
We are idiots for not spending $10,000 more to elevate electonics to the highest practical level. The pumps with electronics high enough worked. Same as Katrina where the pumps were submerged (not strictly a problem, but the electrics weren't protected or elevated). It wasn't a costly fix. But the standards are such that if you "plan" for a 30m wave by elevating electronics, you are expected to spend billions on other equipment to survive that as well. There's not a good process for designing failures at "minor" levels and allowing for degraded failure modes as the disaster gets worse. You pick the worst thing you want to survive, and design the thing to fail at disaster+1 in many cases (and in this case, it was *almost* survivable, a little more resiliency and there'd have been no meltdown).
Learn to love Alaska
Earthquake - Tsunami, is done and over. All though many are off course still homeless and suffering in one way or another. Fukushima is ongoing, maybe the news reflects this?
As someone living in Japan and relatively close to Fukushima. I can tell you no one here has forgotten about the tsunami and the earthquake, it will be something that will live in our memories forever.
But even though the earth quake damaged my own house, and almost destroyed the neighboring house of my parents in law, my main worry right now is about the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, about whether or not the food is safe for my children. What kind of dose they received during the first couple of days after the accident. What they inhale when the wind is blowing up dust from the fields. And I although I am no nuclear physicist, I do work with several of them, and I have a decent understanding of the issues.
The earth quakes, you learn to live with when you live here. The nuclear accidents, not so much.
What every your opinon about nuclear power in general, the style of government in this country combined with the work culture of never questioning anything and the population accepting anything authorities tell them as truth without question, makes this country highly unsuitable for nuclear power generation, much more so than the tsunamis and earth quakes.
I lived in Europe close enough to the Chernobyl accident when it happened that we had to think about what was safe to eat and not when I grew up. I had hoped my children would not have to experience the same thing. But humans sure like to screw things up.
--
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
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
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 idea.
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 delivered my snark payload, there is merit to considering how this particular danger could be reduced in the future. I wouldn't be surprised to see widespread elevation of back up systems now that this particular threat has been revealed.
One thing to consider is flying in backup generators. If TEPCO had enough generators in a "safe place" (let's say inland and not subject to landslides or flooding) and large cargo helicopters to carry them in, they could have flown in and started putting these generators into service early on in the 24 hour period of the story. I can't tell how much backup power was needed, but Wikipedia mentions a 39 metric ton "set" that generates 2 MW and can be flown in on two (probably difficult) Chinook CH-47C trips.
The ability to deliver backup generators and start setting them up within the period of the battery power supply (something like 8 hours), might be one way to deal with a future Fukushima-like event.
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.
I don't believe you. Something in the basement of an unsafe building will be struck by falling things. Something on the top floor of an unsafe building will be more likely to fall. The failure mode is different, but the people on the first floor of a collapsed building would disagree with your statements of their safety. In fact, when they get to digging, the higher you were the more likely you are to live through it, since you are less likely to be crushed.
There's a whole discipline devoted to this very issue. It's called "engineering".
No, "engineering" is no longer building robust things, but building things as cheaply and weakly as possible without getting sued when something goes wrong.
The ability to deliver backup generators and start setting them up within the period of the battery power supply (something like 8 hours), might be one way to deal with a future Fukushima-like event.
The design was crap. If the generators failed and mains power were cut, then there would be an unavoidable meltdown. That's insanely delicate for a nuclear power plant. Battery power sufficient to get to a full-shutdown would be the *minimum* as waiting for some (hopefully operational) off-site generator to be delivered within 8 hours of a massive national emergency where the helicopters could be out pulling people from the water doesn't seem the best backup plan. But it's better than what they had, which was *no* backup plan. "we'll never lose mains and generators at the same time."
Perhaps your snarky engeineer comment should have been used on those who built Fukushima, not me.
Learn to love Alaska
When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the phone system failed because the backup battery banks and generators were in the basement and were the first to be flooded. The actual telecommunication equipment was on the second floor of the exchanges and wasn't damaged. If they had put the battery banks and backup generators on any other floor except the basement, the phone system would of worked for the majority of the exchanges in New Orleans. Thought that maybe someone in Japan might of noticed this important piece of information for disaster planning...
Perfection has not been achieved which is why there are differences. Also there are none of the plants you describe built and tested so it's vastly premature to do the "pick a design or two and stick with them". There isn't even a completed example of the 1980s design of the Westinghouse AP1000 so we don't really know if it's good enough and we don't know what improvements will be inspired by the experience of running it.
They are not simple machines and are not governed by simple and easy to understand rules. Even the behaviour of the tubes at high temperature and pressure is predicted by about a dozen empirically derived formulas which don't match up at the boundaries of where they are applied.
Or simply eliminating the profit motive by having the government run the plant directly.
Like Chernobyl?
What does that say about the wisdom of building terrestrial nuclear power plants?
We need to build a impenetrable force field around every power plant?
Good passive safety. Even if the diesels had kept working I would not have considered the situation safe. Convective cooling or a thermosyphon would be safer.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
While the official TEPCO story is still that the reactors survived the earthquake, there has been a contrary story since early on in the disaster.
For example:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111025/full/478435a.html
Something in the basement of an unsafe building will be struck by falling things.
Unless it is buried or armored. My view is that falling is harder to engineer a defense against than getting struck.
The design was crap. If the generators failed and mains power were cut, then there would be an unavoidable meltdown. That's insanely delicate for a nuclear power plant. Battery power sufficient to get to a full-shutdown would be the *minimum* as waiting for some (hopefully operational) off-site generator to be delivered within 8 hours of a massive national emergency where the helicopters could be out pulling people from the water doesn't seem the best backup plan. But it's better than what they had, which was *no* backup plan. "we'll never lose mains and generators at the same time."
You can always buy more helicopters and the helicopters which deliver the generators can then be used for other purposes like saving lives. Plus, Chinooks would be a bad choice for picking people out of the water.
The plant probably was pretty nice for a 70s design, but it was still operating in 2011. I think this accident will provide a little more impetus to decommission obsolete reactors.
You can always buy more helicopters
No, you can't. I couldn't buy 1,000,000 chinooks to move generators tomorrow, no matter how much money I had. you can always buy one more helicopter from somewhere, but in the middle of a crisis like that, is that really the right time to break out a purchase order and call the factory to determine the lead time and hope they can get you your order within 6 hours?
Plus, Chinooks would be a bad choice for picking people out of the water.
Having some experience with rescue, I'd say you are wrong. But rather than argue with you about it as personal opinions, try looking it up:http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chinook+water+rescue
Learn to love Alaska
See http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/fission_stories for a growing collection of incidents that almost went wrong.
No, you can't. I couldn't buy 1,000,000 chinooks to move generators tomorrow, no matter how much money I had. you can always buy one more helicopter from somewhere, but in the middle of a crisis like that, is that really the right time to break out a purchase order and call the factory to determine the lead time and hope they can get you your order within 6 hours?
Obviously, you buy them before the disaster.
Having some experience with rescue, I'd say you are wrong. But rather than argue with you about it as personal opinions, try looking it up:http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chinook+water+rescue
That was a remarkably useless Google search. When I googled the term, "HH-47D" I did see that the Chinook variant (which goes by that label) was used for search and rescue.
This report begs to differ with your assessment.
Ignorance frequently leads to astonishment. I assume you work in the nuk-u-lar industry. Want to know more about the history of subterfuge in the atomic power industry? Read We Almost Lost Detroit. Many well meaning people thought nuclear power was safe. To quote Sinclair Lewis: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
That pattern of thought, combined with a general corporate mindset of privatizing profits and socializing losses, is what led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster . Yes - when you have TV images of reactor containment buildings blowing up one after the other, that's pretty much a disaster.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Engineering solutions exist for every problem in the world
Price, quality, service: pick any two:
(1) a high quality solution provided quickly is expensive
(2) a high quality solution provided slowly is cheap
(3) a low quality solution provided quickly is cheap
In the 21st century, given the corporate mindset of privatizing profits and socializing losses, engineering usually delivers #3.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
There's something I seem to remember from the FD coverage, which seems to be completely missing from the IEEE article - wasn't there some additional emergency cooling system in Reactor one, called a torus or toroid - basically a big donut filled with water, which like, cracked and leaked all it's water so it didn't provide the emergency cooling it was supposed to?
If that's the case, isn't that a huge, huge omission from the article?
The fact of the matter is that having a sufficiently secure energy supply is a National Security issue. As such, it makes sense for the government to interfere and do what needs to be done to ensure we have enough energy supply which is independent of foreign sources, to maintain our national security.
I'm completely in favor of the government "interfering" in the energy market to ensure we have enough domestic energy.
Failure to do right in one instance does not justify doing wrong in another. The only tax-funded energy subsidies I strongly favor are for research in the public domain.
Obviously, you buy them before the disaster.
But if you have perfect foresight, there are likely better ways to spend the cash. When you need them, you can't always get them, you have to have proper planning in place before the disaster, in which case, larger walls would have been the cheapest way to protect the plant from this problem.
That was a remarkably useless Google search. When I googled the term, "HH-47D" I did see that the Chinook variant (which goes by that label) was used for search and rescue.
It worked for me. pages and pages of examples of the Chinook being used for water rescue. Haven't you ever watched a documentary on search and rescue? Lots of Chinooks used. Regardless, the point was made, even if you had to correct me rather than concede the point. I'll just take your whiny correction as "yes, I see I was wrong and was posting incorrect opinion as fact, which makes me a dumbass liar."
Learn to love Alaska
It worked for me. pages and pages of examples of the Chinook being used for water rescue.
Pages and pages of rescuing seals in a remarkably risky way. Then there was something about SEALs being rescued, etc. I simply couldn't be bothered to scroll through that stuff until I got to legitimate search and rescue examples. Hard to believe you looked at that search at all, even now. It's a matter of etiquette. If you're going to condescendingly throw out a google link, you should at least look at it.
But if you have perfect foresight
Since we don't, you don't need to even rhetorically consider that assumption.
there are likely better ways to spend the cash. When you need them, you can't always get them, you have to have proper planning in place before the disaster, in which case, larger walls would have been the cheapest way to protect the plant from this problem.
How much higher? You can't use perfect foresight either. And if it's not high enough, or the next accident or act of deliberate sabotage takes out all the generators on site, then what are you going to do?
How come my posts are supported by actual facts and your posts are only supported by your vivid fantasies?
http://www.thenation.com/article/159997/nuclear-dead-end-its-economics-stupid
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/radioactive-corporate-welfare/
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/nuclear-renaissance-is-short-on-largess/
http://www.economist.com/node/14859289
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n1/reg15n1-rothwell.html
Terrestrial nuclear fission plants cannot compete in the marketplace. They are a handout of government money to favored corporations.