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NRC Emails Reveal Confusion In Aftermath of Fukushima

Posted by Unknown on from the doe-suggests-nuking-it-from-orbit dept.

mdsolar writes "The Washington Post is reporting on the NRC response to the Fukushima disaster. Aspects include an abusive relationship with Steven Chu, a secret database on fuel pool fires that was not shared, and a Washington Two Step on Vermont Yankee. Pretty sordid." The NRC website has a bunch of documents relating to their response and attempts to consult the Japanese government (it might take a few months to work through). On a related note, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ran a retrospect on the nuclear situation in 2011.

26 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Republican Bashing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Any excuse to bash the National Republican Committee, I guess.

    ~

  2. They should have worked out... by forkfail · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... every single possible scenario that they could imagine long ago, and then kept looking for more scenarios.

    But - just like they cut corners to reduce construction costs, they really didn't have all their contingency ducks lined up.

    You'd think that this would be one area where sanity at least had a place at the table with business and profit, but I guess not.

    --
    Check your premises.
    1. Re:They should have worked out... by JBMcB · · Score: 2

      Fukushima was designed to withstand earthquakes of greater magnitude than had been recorded in that area, and tsunamis larger than had been recorded in that area. In what way do you believe they were under-engineered (using the best available data at the time of their construction, of course.)

      --
      My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    2. Re:They should have worked out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They should have worked out every single possible scenario that they could imagine long ago, and then kept looking for more scenarios.

      Really? This seems like a ridiculously high bar to have for safety. Should every industry have thousands of engineers sitting around, dreaming up worst-case scenarios, working out the implications, and filing the result away? Car manufacturers should have working groups assessing the outcome of a car colliding with a running jet engine? Figuring out how much resistance the car provides against anthrax? Should architects be worrying about how buildings will withstand collisions with the moon? Should cellphone manufacturers worry about whether the phones will become toxic when exposed to plasma?

      Obviously not. Safety is about resource allocation. It makes sense only to plan for, and build contingencies for, events that have a decent probability of occurring. It also only makes sense to worry about things for which one can reasonably plan a response. And most importantly, you have to pick some cutoff level: some mixture of likelihood and danger below which you say 'that's an acceptable risk'.

      I'm not saying mistakes were not made in the Fukushima case. By all means let's optimize our procedures and planning to minimize mistakes in the future. But I dislike this notion that projects must be 100% safe in order to be undertaken. That's absolutely ridiculous: the only sensible way to handle safety is to decide how much risk/damage is tolerable, and then allocate one's finite resources in an attempt to bring the risk down to that level. (It in particular bothers me that the nuclear industry is expected to have absolutely zero mistakes; whereas other industries are not held to the same standard. I'm not saying we should make the nuclear industry less safe, I'm saying one has to be fair in comparing the scale and scope of mistakes in different sectors.)

    3. Re:They should have worked out... by davester666 · · Score: 2

      They should have planned for everything to happen at once. Like a terrorist attack just the rapture occurs, during a hurricane, as multiple tornadoes approach, with an earthquake that splits the island in two, as a tsunami wave hits.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    4. Re:They should have worked out... by jd · · Score: 2

      Because earthquakes and tsunamis in the area HAD been recorded as much larger than the ones used by the engineers of Fukushima -- just not within a 100 year timeframe. The best-available data actually agreed very well with the events that actually transpired. The best-available data within the selected timeframe did not.

      Your question is therefore the wrong question.

      The correct thing to do is ask a series of questions: What windowing parameters are the correct windowing parameters to use? What timeframe are you going to look over? (Is 100 years too short, since the earthquake and tsunami that hit are extremely regular 500-year cyclic events and occurred very close to peak probability of the next cycle starting?) What sort of probability of event should you consider? (Is it meaningful to talk of a 1-in-a-hundred-years event when the aforementioned cycle has a virtually zero probability of occurring in a 400 year timespan but is a near-certainty in a specific 100 year window? Non-cyclic earthquakes which are genuinely random can sensibly be talked of in that way, but this was not one of those. How do you allow for non-random events in risk management?) What level of probability should be considered and - given the sort of probability may need to be rethought - how do you decide what the actual value is during the forecast operational lifespan? What are the economic costs of this solution versus the costs of fixing the damage in the event of a failure? Given that there is a probability of making the assessment AND suffering a failure anyway, what is the total cost of this solution across all possible events? How does that compare with the total cost of other solutions across all possible events?

      I can tell you with a very high level of confidence that the Japanese engineers were fully-aware that an earthquake plus tsunami on this scale was exceedingly likely at some point in the lifetime of the reactor and have been for over 20 years. I can also tell you that they were fully-aware of the requirements for avoiding the disaster that happened. What I CANNOT tell you is that meeting those requirements prior to the earthquake met the requirement of being the lowest-cost solution across all possible events.

      They were and are totally wrong in claiming it could not be foreseen - it was and they'd had both data and conclusions for two decades. But that does NOT mean they were wrong in not engineering a better solution within that time. That is knowable only if you carry out the complete risk assessment, and I know of no such comprehensive assessment carried out by qualified engineers that is in the public domain.

      Personally, I think they were in the wrong. I think they could have, and should have, made the necessary adjustments according to the data they had. However, whilst I may think this, I cannot KNOW this from what information is public. Doesn't have to be from TEPCO - they might never have performed a comprehensive review either. But sans a comprehensive analysis across all possible events weighted by probability and a reasonable range of solutions, their expense and the permutations of events they would protect against, along with the costs of any given solution failing, we can only make wild guesses in the dark.

      --
      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)
    5. Re:They should have worked out... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Fukushima was designed to withstand earthquakes of greater magnitude than had been recorded in that area, and tsunamis larger than had been recorded in that area. In what way do you believe they were under-engineered (using the best available data at the time of their construction, of course.)

      Sort of true. However, later study on the area's geology indicated that there were tsunami's much higher than originally planned for. TEPCO decided not to do anything about that because it would have involved a multi million dollar upgrade to the sea wall.

      Further, there was later damage to suggest that the reactor did suffer significant damage during the quake, thus damaging the assumption that the original design and engineering was adequate.

      Of course, this would have been a technical footnote in some brief stuffed in a disused lavatory had someone had the presence of mind not to put all the backup generators in the basement.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    6. Re:They should have worked out... by beowulfcluster · · Score: 2

      You'd think that if anyone would know the importance of planning for a Godzilla level event it would be the japanese.

    7. Re:They should have worked out... by jd · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's just too bad that the rest of us cannot be as confident about the stuff you pull out of your ass.

      Too bad you're a troll who can't be assed to actually go do the research. These things were known, it's very well documented, anyone bothering to do the legwork would find as much.

      In other words, you don't have much of a reason to believe they were in the wrong. It's just something you do.

      Translation: You want me to be wrong, but can't be bothered to determine if I am. You just prefer anyone who is different to you to be somehow at fault - even if you don't know what the fault is.

      Which I see you did.

      No, I made no guesses. I stated a method of determining the right course of action, I made no determination as to what the outcome of the method would be. Again, your desire to make other people wrong if they happen to differ from you is transparent. You're a bigot of the highest order.

      I wonder why people keep trying to shoehorn every accident of nuclear power into the format of the plot from the China Syndrome movie?

      Well, as far as I can see, they aren't. So you can wonder all you like. You might as well wonder why people see pink ants climbing up the walls and talking to them. Your wonderings aren't real. Your observations are delusional. You're a paranoid SOB and need to get help.

      Nobody has been able to show in the meantime that TEPCO or the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency did anything wrong with respect to protecting the plant

      That is correct, but only because nobody has actually crunched the numbers. I made no claim that either had done anything wrong with respect to protecting the plant, my claim is that what they did wrong was fail in the design of their test. It did not handle historic events in the area and thus neither did the plant. Had they crunched the right numbers, it may have made ZERO difference to their decision, but we cannot know that until the numbers are crunched. Something nobody, YOU INCLUDED, has done.

      --
      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)
    8. Re:They should have worked out... by Obfuscant · · Score: 2

      If a car (or a thousand) crash, you don't have consequences that span time measured in millenia.

      AP - Linz, Austria, 1918. In a freak accident, Adolph Schicklgruber, 19, son of Alois Hitler, was killed while riding in the 1918 Packard automobile his father had imported and was demonstrating to his fellow customs agents. ...

      UPI - Berlin, 1948. Physicist Albert Einstein announced a breakthrough in the overall theory of matter and energy yesterday at the annual German Physicist Association conference in Berlin. He was assisted in his work by German mathematicians Robert Remak and Otto Blumenthal. "They were absolutely vital in finding the theoretical basis" said Einstein. ...

      AP - Poland, 1955. The Nobel prize committee announced the award of its highest prize in medicine to Polish physician and researcher Wladyslaw Dobrzaniecki for his pioneering research in the cure for cancer and other degenerative diseases. Since his discovery of the main biological pathways leading to carcinomas, the rate of cancer deaths has dropped by 50%, ...

      You were saying, Mr. Godwin?

    9. Re:They should have worked out... by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 2

      "Further, there was later damage to suggest that the reactor did suffer significant damage during the quake, thus damaging the assumption that the original design and engineering was adequate."

      You can't design to withstand 100% of earthquakes. Fukishima was designed so that, based on frequency and strength of quakes, it would have a 99.something% chance of not running into something worse than it could handle; like all nuclear plants are. That was what the engineers were told to do, and they did it; it was designed to withstand an 8.something.

      Then it was noticed that the geology was worse than first thought; quakes bigger than 8.something were more frequent than the engineers had been told. Then it's lifetime was extended; more lifetime, more chances to "win". Then it was hit by a 9.0, the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, and 10x more powerful than the engineers had been instructed to prepare for.

      I'm sure you're all familiar with being given incorrect design requirements and feature creep.

      --
      Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
    10. Re:They should have worked out... by icebike · · Score: 2

      Powered by what? You are in a mandatory shutdown situation. Where do you get the heat to run a turbine?

      How long after a mandatory shutdown until the core is too cold to generate electricity? When you need to cool it (the problem they were running into), you have waste heat. Capture that and you'll have emergency power as long as you need it.

       

      Apparently its not hot enough to generate any significant heat for very long, and boiling water to steam in enough volume to run even a small turbine takes a boat load of heat.

      See this image. The vertical line shows temps dropping all over the reactor immediately after the scram.

      This chart shows that the core was at 4000 degrees at 14:46 at the time of the quake (and scram), and by 15:30 when the wave struck it was at around 250 degrees. You won't produce enough steam to run a turbine with that amount of heat. (If you could there would be no reason for normal operation at 4000 degrees).

      Diesel generators were the right choice. Indeed the only choice. Used in reactors all over the world.

      The location of those generators was wrong. We both agree on that.

      They knew, or should have know it was wrong, just as JD Posted Above. The risk assessment used to design the plant didn't take into account the very strong quake AND the very large wave, because the original design used ONLY a 100 year window. JDs point is that the 100 year window was too short.

      But plant operators are handed a plant to run, and its almost impossible to go back and say this is dangerous, we need to totally rebuild this plant, or move it. That doesn't happen in Japan, and it doesn't happen in the US either.

      Once built, you couldn't make this plant safe. $10,000 doesn't come close. There are 5 reactors on site. Even raising the generators, indeed, the entire plant 50 feet couldn't make it safe against a quake of that magnitude and a tsunami of that size. All it takes is a cooling water pipe to shake and break, or a pump to fail, or salt water contamination of the cooling system.

      It should not have been built there. A proper risk assessment window would have prevented it.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  3. Abusive by mdsolar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The commissioners are abusive and dysfunctional with each other. Little wonder the whole organization can't get along with any other part of the government.

  4. News flash: Engineers don't think of everything by dkleinsc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Of course there was going to be confusion - you're looking at a scenario that nobody had actually handled before. There were smart people with some good guesses about what to do next, but there was no way to test things out ahead of time, because causing a nuclear meltdown for testing purposes is too expensive to even really consider it.

    I'm reasonably certain that if people either at the NRC or in Secretary Chu's group proposed an idea, they most likely had good reasons for thinking it was going to work. There were also good reasons to think that some of those good ideas would be wrong.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  5. AKA Potomac two step by mdsolar · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_two-step

  6. News flash: It's what we pay them to do by mdsolar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We do expect the NRC to know what to do in case of a meltdown. Evidently they take the money but don't do the job.

    1. Re:News flash: It's what we pay them to do by skyraker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's BS. The NRC's job is to ensure operators are operating plants safely. When you are at a meltdown situation, you are already beyond that point. The NRC will do its best to advise, but stations themselves have many contigency plans in place should they reach this point. Three Mile Island was the event that prompted that to happen, and we haven't had a meltdown here since. Chernobyl was a big ball of s**t that only proved the US had better procedures, precautions, and design than the Russians. Fukishima, while a problem, generated confusion primarily because TEPSCO didn't want to tarnish its reputation by revealing how bad it was.

    2. Re:News flash: It's what we pay them to do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No you don't. Two points:

      One: The US NRC is responsible for US licensed reactors, not Japanses reactors. They have no authority over Japanese reactors, are not rsponsibility for them and most importantly they don't know ANYTHING about them. That's like saying your local police office is responsible for solving a crime in Zimbabwe because he's a police office. The US government offered to help the Japanese, amd the Japanese lied and stonewalled them. Yes, lets blame the Americans for this one. Jesus.

      Two: The US NRC is a fee recovery agency, licensees not taxpayer pay for 90% of the US NRCs budget and thats per the law congress passed. The US NRC must get 90% of their budget from licensees, not from the taxpayer. So no dear taxpayer, you don't pay for the US NRC to regulate and you definitely shouldnt expect the US NRC to respond to nuclear emergencies in JAPAN. The US NRC regulates reactors in the US period. The US can not tell Japan what to do with its reactors, nor is the US responsile for solving Japans problems. Nor is the US in any position to know what's going with a Japense reactor, it has no authority to even ask! The US NRC can't even talk directly to the Japenese, only the State department can do that. If you'd bother to read the reports you would know that, the State department was and is in charge of these things. They can ask for other agencies to help, but it's their show and not the US NRC's. Take a civics class kids.

      Three: how would you expect the US NRC to know anything about a reactor they don't regulate and know nothing about? You don't, it's common sense. They got asked to figure out something based on no information, lies and finally bad information from the Japense. Yes, I can see why they might be confused!

      So, to recap, you don't pay for that, the companies that own the reactors do. And the US NRC has nothing to do with Japanese reactors. And it's has no authority to do anything about a disaster in Japan nor is it responsible for this, nor does it know anything about another countries Reactors,. End of story, move on.

    3. Re:News flash: It's what we pay them to do by dkleinsc · · Score: 2

      I don't.

      I expect them to have some idea of what to do in the case of a reactor meltdown in theory, but given that nuclear meltdowns don't happen that often they won't know whether their plans actually work until they have to use them. And while in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    4. Re:News flash: It's what we pay them to do by mdsolar · · Score: 2

      I sure hope you are not saying they should only do what the licensees want (which is what they do). Congress established the fee. The fee could just as well be a tax that goes into general revenue. WE pay for the NRC by those missing revenues.

  7. Re:Nuclear "civil" industry by skyraker · · Score: 2

    Hiroshima was hit with an atomic explosion. Fukishima did not have this. Completely different event. Chernobyl didn't even kill nearly this many, and they actually had their reactor explode. There have been ZERO deaths so far. The only certainty is that the CHANCE of cancer in many of the workers will increase. CHANCE is a big word. This isn't a guarantee that they will all get it. And anti-nuclear activists will always claim that there is a cover-up happening. But maybe you should take a cue from one of the founders of Greenpeace (a big anti-nuke organization) supporting the expansion of nuclear power.

  8. Re:Nuclear "civil" industry by openfrog · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hiroshima was hit with an atomic explosion. Fukishima did not have this. Completely different event. Chernobyl didn't even kill nearly this many, and they actually had their reactor explode. There have been ZERO deaths so far. The only certainty is that the CHANCE of cancer in many of the workers will increase. CHANCE is a big word. This isn't a guarantee that they will all get it.

    Epidemiology 101: Hiroshima and Nagasaki data can be used to calculate how much radiation cause how many deaths in a population and this data is used by everyone, industry, regulators and who you call activists, to do just that. You write "CHANCE" as if what is meant is that there is a chance than mortality increases. No, we use probability because we cannot prove that a given death is caused by the added exposure or the natural occurring one, but over large numbers, we can OBSERVE a definite number of death, that we can definitely ATTRIBUTE to the increased exposure, in a linear relation (there is no safe exposure). There is no CHANCE of increased cancer mortality caused by Fukushima: this is a certainty and it is measurable, thanks in part to the data collected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Why has my post above been modded Flamebait? I merely stated facts, that are recognized by anyone knowledgeable in this field.

  9. Abusive Relationship with Dr. Chu? by KainX · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure where the idea came from that there was any sort of relationship at all with Dr. Chu himself described in this article.

    All he did was gather up some experts in the field and facilitate their advise to the Japanese. That's exactly what the Secretary of Energy should do.

    And yes, some of their suggestions were radical. That's what "brainstorming" means. Coming up with all sorts of ideas and determining as a group which are the good ones and which are the bad ones. Has no one ever seen an episode of House before?

    And Dr. Chu, as far as I can tell, was not himself directly involved in the "Chu group," the at-best-misleading-at-worst-inaccurate term used in the article. So to say anyone had an "abusive relationship" with Dr. Chu is just silly.

    If a US Diplomat gets into a shouting match with a foreign minister, do we accuse Hillary Clinton of being abusive?

    --
    Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
  10. Nuclear plants $5,000 per KW by mspohr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Interesting to see in the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" link from the summary that the "overnight" (without construction interest) cost of a nuclear plant has risen from $1,200 per KW to $5,000 per Kw in the past 10 years. This is more than the current costs for solar or wind power. This economic fact alone doesn't bode well for the nuclear industry.

    --
    I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    1. Re:Nuclear plants $5,000 per KW by mspohr · · Score: 3, Informative

      The "Bulletin" used the term "overnight cost" which I found interesting so I googled it. It refers to the cost of the project without adding in the cost of interest on the money borrowed during construction. It is as if the project was built "overnight".
      We know that nuclear plants have very long construction times (5-10 years) so the overnight cost drastically understates the cost of the project. Solar and wind, on the other hand have much shorter construction times (less than a year in most cases) so the overnight cost is close to the actual cost.
      As far as land costs go, land is cheap (especially in Nevada) and is a very small part of the cost of any power plant. Most solar is installed on existing roofs so no land cost there. Even large scale solar plants like those in the California and Nevada desert don't use much land and the land is a very small part of the cost of the plant.

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
  11. Re:Nuclear "civil" industry by princessAndDragon · · Score: 2

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not very good models to use when comparing to a BWR meltdown. The physics of the contamination dispersion are completely different. Much of the fallout from an atomic bomb is mixed with soil substrates and falls-out relatively close to the bomb impact - leading to a smaller contamination area. In the case of BWR meltdowns, in contrast to an atomic warhead, a much larger portion of deposition takes place 10's,190's and even 1000's of miles from the accident as the contaminates are released as vapors and carried readily in atmospheric jet streams. As for predicting the number of cancers from chernobyl, hiroshima, nagasaki etc, the real tragedy lies in the fact that we do not accurately record the actions of individuals following the event - because exposure boils down to an individuals personal behaviors. It would be like asking all the inhabitants of Northern Japan how much milk they have consumed since Fukushima failure - or more specifically how much milk was consumed, and where was the milk from, between march 11-13, 14,16, 23-24 etc. Without such detailed information we cannot accurately project any one individuals personal risk.