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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."
CP/M? TOPS-20? Hard to tell.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is anyone else besides me annoyed that Fukushima keeps on overshadowing this incredibly catastrophic tsunami?
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.
Typically when you're talking about an Industrial Process, the "Operating System" is not a computer OS (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc). But rather, the actual system process (pumping water, generating electricity, etc) that is operating.
Also, did they avert that? It seems like this is, in fact, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Perhaps they averted it being the worst nuclear disaster ever, including Chernobyl, but it would have needed to be a lot less disastrous to not be the worst since. So...unless something worse than this but not as bad as Chernobyl comes along, I suspect we'll keep using it for this event for a long time...but there's a good chance the next disaster will be the "worst nuclear disaster since Fukushima" instead...at least, here's hoping....
Nuclear first, easy question.
My full preference set is wind, solar thermal, solar PV, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, diesel, natural gas, coal.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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"
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.
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.
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?
If the choices are only those two, then definitely nuclear.
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 we're currently limping along at 150%+ of their original design lifetimes, we might have had fewer accidents instead of more.
Now, take a look at West Virginia, and anywhere else we're extracting coal, take a look at the mercury content of our rivers and near-shore waters, how many rivers in the U.S.A. are safe to eat the fish from today? Take a look at the megatons of carbon-dioxide we're releasing while burning coal for electricity. And, Mr. Fusion, where the hell is my Mr. Fusion? You can't rely on knowing where lightning will strike every time you want to go back 30 years now, can you? Oh, I forgot... /seriously
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.
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
The fall of the USSR couldn't have happened at a worse time for the people of the Ukraine...
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?
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, other than that, an act of God.
The failure of the systems was only a symptom
Yep, the symptoms of systems failure in design and planning. Hey, one out of three isn't bad....
If this is the best that a major industrial country can do with nuclear power, perhaps we're not ready to play in the big leagues just yet.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well, considering that Chernobyl was the only 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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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)
Is 1563649 a prime number?
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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 to get a positive breeding ratio. In the case of molten salt reactors they even suggested doing it continuously while the plant is running. Since reprocessing is expensive and adds considerably to the cost of the electricity, you want to minimize the need for it and exploit economies of scale to the full extent. The Plutonium/U238 in a fast neutron spectrum will likely perform better due to the much better neutron economy. Plutonium produces nearly 3 neutrons per fission in a fast spectrum , and the fission/capture ratios in non-fissile nuclei is much better for fast neutrons.
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 fatal flaw. That wave height was the flaw. As far back as recorded history, Japan has been hit by Tsunami waves, they have left their marks on the land. There was a virtual 100 percent certainty that the area would be hit by a wave taller than the seawalls. the Seawalls are part of the system, the system failed. You make the mistake of looking at only one part of the system, that' is why so many systems fail.
People take a cavalier approach to the massive concentration of energy in those plants. One screw-up, and you have an unholy mess. Given that the shore was going to be hit with a tsunami, and the rapidly prohibitive costs of accounting for historical high water marks, any good system will likely site a plant at an elevation very unlikely to ever have a wave. So you take the historical data, add some safety factor, and site the plant along a river inland and above the disaster area. There th eearthquake could have hit, shook the plant, and the reactors would have gone offline, then the emergency generators would kick in, and since they would remain high and dry, the overall system would have worked on design, and cooled the plant At that point, everyone could have nodded to each other, and marvelled how well the system worked.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.