NRC Emails Reveal Confusion In Aftermath of Fukushima

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.

Comments

They should have worked out...

[forkfail]

... 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.

Re:They should have worked out...

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:They should have worked out...

[jd]

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.

Abusive

[mdsolar]

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.

News flash: Engineers don't think of everything

[dkleinsc]

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.

AKA Potomac two step

[mdsolar]

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

News flash: It's what we pay them to do

[mdsolar]

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.

Re:News flash: It's what we pay them to do

[skyraker]

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.

Re:News flash: It's what we pay them to do

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nuclear "civil" industry

[openfrog]

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.

Nuclear plants $5,000 per KW

[mspohr]

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.

Re:Nuclear plants $5,000 per KW

[mspohr]

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.