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."

Comments

What about the tsunami?

[Sperbels]

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

Re:Operating system failure

[nemoid]

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.

OK. Let's take the next step in your reasoning.

[Medievalist]

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?