Nuclear Disaster In Japan Could Have Been Mitigated, Say Industry Insiders

Hugh Pickens writes "Some insiders from Japan's tightly knit nuclear industry have stepped forward to say that Tepco and regulators had for years ignored warnings of the possibility of a larger-than-expected tsunami in northeastern Japan, and thus failed to take adequate countermeasures, such as raising wave walls or placing backup generators on higher ground. 'March 11 exposed the true nature of Japan's postwar system, that it is led by bureaucrats who stand on the side of industry, not the people,' says Shigeaki Koga, a former director of industrial policy at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Eight years ago, as a member of an influential cabinet office committee on offshore earthquakes in northeastern Japan, Kunihiko Shimazaki, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo, warned that Fukushima's coast was vulnerable to tsunamis more than twice as tall as the forecasts of up to 17 feet put forth by regulators and Tepco, but government bureaucrats running the committee moved quickly to exclude his views from debate as too speculative and 'pending further research.' Then in 2008, Tepco's own engineers made three separate sets of calculations that showed Fukushima Daiichi could be hit by tsunamis as high as 50 feet. 'They completely ignored me in order to save Tepco money,' says Shimazaki."

Comments

Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[daveschroeder]

Stop being afraid of nuclear.

Deaths per terawatt-hour for all energy sources

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

That post is all sorts of stupid.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[darkmeridian]

Stupid to say this as Japan is the first country to get nuked. Twice.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid? Tactless maybe, but it's precisely at moments like this that we need to get a sense of perspective. The TEPCO catastrophe is recent and very visible and people have the natural tendency to ignore things that aren't. But there are invisible killers too, or even just less photogenic ones. A blasted apart nuclear reactor and an enormous exclusion zone are much more impressive than say elevated CO2 levels or coal exhaust (which is also radioactive). Yes. But our actions should be governed by actual expected harm, not by which things produce exciting TV footage.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[rvw]

Stop being afraid of nuclear.

Deaths per terawatt-hour for all energy sources

I live in the Netherlands. We have two nuclear powerplants here, plus a bunch of them close enough in Belgium and Germany. If one of these plants has a serious accident, it could harm millions of people. And even if it isn't a medical problem, as we might be able to move all those people to safer places, the socio-economic problems will be enormous, and the problems we're facing with Greece now will be small compared to this. Look at Japan, where they considered evacuating Tokyo last year. They didn't make this public until recently, but think about that. What if they had to leave Tokyo and stay out for the next 50 years?

There is no other energy source that can create problems on such scale in such a short time.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[TheRaven64]

Absolutely! Appeals to emotion should always carry more weight than statistics!

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[mad flyer]

Lies, big lies and statistics... There is always a retard to get almighty behind some numbers.
Look, the number of unicorn killed by nukular is also quite low. Now look at the clusterfark that the region around the plant is, compare this to the size of Japan and STFU. Or if you want to have fun, calculate how much of Japan would be unlivable if the death per terrawatt-hour was the same as coal.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[polar red]

consider this : if any of these in Holland/Belgium/Germany/France have an accident on fukushima scale, the economy of about 50 million people would be destroyed; taking the rest of the world's economy down with it.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF kind of bullshit is this "nature has no clue", "evolution wasn't meant to", etc. crap you spew?

Yes, radiation "permanently damages" the ecosystem, whether or not we run nuclear reactors. And yet, things seem to work just fine with natural radiation, and even in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster worse than any conceivable failure of any modern reactor, as you try to point out, nature has adapted (not "learned to", you idiot) with only a high estimated mortality rate. It's not a barren zone where nothing can live.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Hentes]

If you have read the article you would have noticed that the statistics were updated with the one death that might have been connected to that accident.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[ColdWetDog]

Well, Mark Twain didn't say "Lies, damned lies and emotions", did he?

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Hentes]

So how many tidal waves do you have there?

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Courageous]

Your measure of merit for equivalency (deaths per terawatt hour) is dubious.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[cryptolemur]

Oh, but people aren't allowed back to Fukushima or the surrounding area not because of the tsunami. It's because of the reactors were left without cooling too long.
People are not allowed back to Chernobyl area because, in the end, the reactor was left wihtout cooling for too long.

See a pattern here?

It's not the tsunami's, or crew making 'human errors', it's the inherent nature of the reactors to go critical and melt when left without cooling. And there's more ways for that to happen than any engineer has ever imagined... even algae growth in the seawater used for the secondary system can force the engineers to shut down the reactor before they run out of cooling water...or heat wave that preheats the same water.
So many external parameters completely out of the control of anybody.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[ductonius]

All I see in your post is a bunch of "ifs", "mights" and "maybes".

Your brain seems to be operating on nothing but ignorant fear. Proof of this is when you said: "There is no other energy source that can create problems on such scale in such a short time."

Hydroelectric dam failure has already created worse disasters in a smaller amount of time. Coal slurry pond failure has also already created larger disasters in shorter periods of time. Normally operating coal plants are creating a larger disaster over a larger area over a longer period of time as we speak. Even if you count the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear energy has killed fewer people per TW/h than any other source of energy.

You seem to show ignorance of both nuclear and conventional energy sources. Your lack of insight and understanding have created a preference for larger assured disasters that you can understand easily over smaller possible disasters that are difficult for you to understand.

I would recommend you inform yourself and reexamine your opinions.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Solandri]

If one of these plants has a serious accident, it could harm millions of people. [...] There is no other energy source that can create problems on such scale in such a short time.

Obviously you haven't looked at the statistics on coal. It's estimated to kill about a million people a year worldwide. But since the deaths are distributed and not attributable to a single accident, people's emotional reasoning considers it safe.

Yes worst-case scenarios do have to be considered. But for some reason they seem to be considered only for nuclear. If we considered them equally for other power technologies, hydro would be regarded as the most dangerous power source, and we'd subject it to more scrutiny and safeguards than nuclear. And worst-case scenarios need to be considered in perspective. If you over-emphasis them, you come to irrationally fear flying and drive instead, even though statistically you are much more likely to die from driving.

In terms of people killed on average, nuclear is the safest technology. In terms of worst-case scenarios, nuclear is not the worst. And in fact our current most-popular technology is worse than the nuclear worst-case. What exactly is the problem?

Look at Japan, where they considered evacuating Tokyo last year. They didn't make this public until recently, but think about that. What if they had to leave Tokyo and stay out for the next 50 years?

Of course they were considering evacuating Tokyo. Considering it is the responsible thing to do. That doesn't mean the scenario is realistic, it just means that the people in charge (government officials) didn't have the background to answer the question, and did the responsible thing and were advised by those who could answer it. Nagasaki and Hiroshima each had an uncontained nuke go off directly above them. They were never abandoned, and both are thriving cities today. There is being cautious about worst-case scenarios (e.g. don't build a nuclear plant near Tokyo). And there is making up reckless and unrealistic sky is falling scenarios to fit your desired conclusion.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[burne]

The last one was some time ago, but it separated the UK from mainland Europe, some 8000 years ago.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide)

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[AmiMoJo]

That analysis is obviously flawed because it only focuses on one factor (deaths) and contains some highly dubious assumptions (lumping dam failures in with hydro is like attributing all road accident fatalities to car stereos).

To make an informed judgement you have to consider health damage done (coal and nuclear are worst), potential risks and the consequences of an accident, social factors, and most importantly of all cost. Nuclear is by far the most heavily subsidised and expensive energy source we have.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[KGIII]

Umm... To be fair, those were not accidents.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[jc42]

Nuclear is by far the most heavily subsidised and expensive energy source we have.

Actually, there's a reason for this. Various people who've dug up the numbers have commented that in the US and many other countries, even if all the material, engineering and construction salaries were zero, a nuclear power plant would still be "uneconomic". The reason is that the paperwork required by the government costs more than the total construction costs of any other kind of power plant. Most of this paperwork is imposed by politicians responding to public fear of the word "nuclear", and most of the actual work is done by flocks of drones who never see more than their tiny piece of the puzzle, so for the most part, it's all just pure expense with no safety impact. It's sorta like the anti-terrorism "security theater" stuff: expensive and ineffective, but required to quiet public fears.

So if we are to have the safest current varieties of power plants, they need to be heavily subsidized to make up for the required bureaucratic paper load.

I've occasionally wondered whether we should just burn the paperwork to generate power. Of course, a lot of it is now computerized, but you'd be surprised how much of that is turned into hard copy and stored forever in archives. Those archives could provide a lot of power.

OTOH, historians centuries in the future might find our massive government archives a valuable source of data about our current insanities ...

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[jez9999]

You do understand the difference between a nuclear bomb and a nuclear power plant, right? Yes? Good, whew. Thought you were going to say something sounding really dumb there.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[arose]

Selective statistics are an appeal to emotion, take a look at the economic costs of Chernobyl instead. That's not the whole picture, but at least it doesn't completely ignore the aftermath where the cause of death isn't completely binary anymore.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[bzipitidoo]

And what I see in your posts is the disingenuous use of a very incomplete picture that considers only one statistic, the number of deaths. By that measure, Hurricane Andrew was insignificant. After all, Andrew killed only 39 people, not much more than one person going postal.

Consider instead the area of land that was rendered unfit for other uses for years. For nuclear power, that's thousands of sq km. Coal mining has been done in a reckless and damaging manner, so it could probably not be said to be zero. Then there's the contamination of groundwater by fracking. And oil spills. But we don't have to get fuel that way. For other sorts of energy, it's zero. At any time, we can remove a dam and put the flooded land back to any other use we want. You should also remember that hydroelectric generation is just one purpose of dams. They also tame floods and store water for the dry times, enabling more agriculture.

Or consider the economic costs. What will the total cost of the Fukushima disaster be? Could be more than $1 trillion. Nuclear does not do so well on that.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[ductonius]

I am far more concerned with human lives than bank accounts and while I realize that the current economic system tends to make the former dependent on the latter, that is not an argument against nuclear power, it's an argument for the restructuring of global finance.

Not all nuclear technologies are equal. Conflating the reactors at Chernobyl or Fukushima with other designs like CANDU or even Magnox which have suffered no major accidents is itself disingenuous. The only argument the anti-nuclear side has is highlighting the worst and ignoring everything that has gone right and is going right with nuclear power while at the same time ignoring the very deadly, very damaging and very real consequences of choosing not to adopt nuclear power.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[bzipitidoo]

Even if you live, losing your home and your land is a lot more traumatic than a "bank account" matter.

I'm not saying that nuclear can't be safe. I'm saying that it won't be run safely. Human nature is the biggest danger. It's like computer security-- the least secure part is the idiot behind the keyboard. After 20 years or more of no accidents, people become complacent. It's very easy to start skimping on maintenance and feel like you are not taking much of a risk. We have a bunch of aging nuclear power plants. Some of them should have been taken off line already. They were not meant to be operated more than 30 or so years. But when the scheduled time to shut down and decommission neared, they asked for and got extensions. They also have a history of keeping less than honest records about minor incidents. They cover things up. We keep doing this, and someday, we'll push it too far and a worn out plant will fail and we'll have another nuclear disaster.

Speaking of conflation, you trot out another classic one when you lump fossil fuel energy with all other sources. Lot of nuclear proponents talk as if coal is the only real alternative. Yes, coal is very bad, with ocean acidification and global warming looming as big, big problems. If the choice was between coal or nuclear, I would pick nuclear despite the dangers.

But there are many more choices than that, and not just choices in energy sources, but also options for much more conservation. US buildings and cities are designed so wastefully. Suburban sprawl full of McMansions really costs us. Why did we do it? In part because subsidized energy made it cheap to drive long distances. In the 20th century we also adopted very energy intensive habits. Cheap power let us indulge in ways that weren't always good. The freezer is wonderful. But clothes dryers are totally unnecessary. A clothes line or rack is a bit slower but gets the clothes just as dry. We've gone nuts with the cleanliness and hygiene. Body odor is now considered unpleasant and offensive, and everyone is expected to have a hot shower every day. The powered lawn mower has enabled us to become fanatical about mowing the grass, and what for? Central heating and A/C is great, but we've become intolerant of so much as a 5 degree swing in temperatures. Then there's the matter of artificial lighting which on the whole is fantastic, but it has been overused and enabled us to screw up our sleeping patterns.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[ductonius]

Human beings are a technological species. Without the things we know and the tools we make, merely reproducing often proves fatal for women. The idea that the future should or even can hold a fewer, not greater number and complexity of human technology is both shortsighted and foolish in the extreme. It condemns millions to short, brutish lives and painful, tortuous deaths. The solution to our problems is an increased knowledge and awareness of the world around us. That is, the solution is an increase in technology, and with that increase of technology is an increased need for energy to process raw materials into the products of technology. The peculiarities of a particular dysfunctional country aside, the solution is always more energy.

Now, where are we going to get it from? Renewables do not scale big enough or fast enough and they aren't available where the energy is needed. They're great for supplemental power where they're available, but they're not the solution. That leaves coal and nuclear.

The energy will come from somewhere. There is no option for "no increased energy production". If you don't pick nuclear you pick coal.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[nitehawk214]

.

There is no other energy source that can create problems on such scale in such a short time.

No, no other power source could possibly cause a disaster on this level.

Let me be perfectly clear on this... over a quarter of a million people died from a single incident.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[bzipitidoo]

Renewables do not scale big enough or fast enough

They don't? Many disagree. Here's A Solar Grand Plan, published in Scientific American, which claims that by 2050 we can get most of our energy from solar. There are many other similar ideas.

If we had to, we most certainly could go 100% green! If we ran out of fossil fuels and uranium next year, we would very quickly have alternatives in place. We wouldn't go back to 17th century technology. We only use coal because it's cheap and easy, not because we have no choice.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[Pieroxy]

100% Green? What rubbish are you smoking these days?

So tell me, how are we going to get electricity on windless nights?

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[ultranova]

There is no other energy source that can create problems on such scale in such a short time.

Except for water power, where a dam bursting can kill hundreds of thousands and wipe out cities. Or wind power, where no wind means no electricity. Or geothermal, where the water used for heat transport dissolves all kinds of interesting chemicals from deep down and spreads them into groundwater should containment fail. Or fossil fuels, the use of which alters the climate of the entire planet in an uncontrollable fashion.

But after hydro, wind, geothermal and fossils, nuclear is clearly the most dangerous energy source.

Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed

[uninformedLuddite]

I would recommend you inform yourself and reexamine your opinions

This isn't /. circa 2006. This is the new /.. The tween /.. Disinformation, ignorance, and uninformed go a long way to fitting in here these daze.

captcha = atrophy (sort of poetic)

Re:But so could anything

[Ardeaem]

Any disaster could be averted with extra millions and millions spent on it, it's just balancing risk and reward.

Come on, don't be dense. The claim here is precisely that they weren't balancing risk and reward - they were overweighting their own immediate gains and underweighting the future risks, which were mostly to other people.

Re:Crank or coverup

[Spy Handler]

there's a big difference between a crank somewhere in the wide world, and your own engineers that you hired for their expertise related to your enterprise.

Universal flaw in The System

[jo42]

true nature of Japan's postwar system, that it is led by bureaucrats who stand on the side of industry

Not just in Japan, but everywhere. Bureaucrats and politicians are in the deep pockets of corporations and don't give a rancid wet fart about "The People" - then they spew so much bullshit at The People to get elected.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[Teckla]

Not just in Japan, but everywhere. Bureaucrats and politicians are in the deep pockets of corporations and don't give a rancid wet fart about "The People" - then they spew so much bullshit at The People to get elected.

Capitalism crushes everything in its path, including democracy and common sense.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[Rayonic]

Capitalism crushes everything in its path, including democracy and common sense.

Yeah, a nuclear disaster would never happen in a non-capitalist country!

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[luis_a_espinal]

Not just in Japan, but everywhere. Bureaucrats and politicians are in the deep pockets of corporations and don't give a rancid wet fart about "The People" - then they spew so much bullshit at The People to get elected.

Capitalism crushes everything in its path, including democracy and common sense.

Funny. I thought capitalism was the only viable economic system that has fostered modern democracy for the last 2 centuries. Stupid history got it all wrong.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[khallow]

Capitalism crushes everything in its path, including democracy and common sense.

Too bad it's not true. Every political and economic system has the same problem, namely, that the people in power often abuse that power. In democratic systems, that power is often in private hands, hence, the complaints about "capitalism".

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[Teckla]

Yeah, a nuclear disaster would never happen in a non-capitalist country!

That is not true, so I guess it's a good thing I didn't say, suggest, or imply it.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[AmiMoJo]

Actually the nuclear industry was in the fortunate position of being needed by politicians to keep the lights on. Take the UK for example, once world leaders in nuclear technology. Our government paid to develop it all because it was promised to be too cheap to meter if only the initial risky and expensive investments could be made, and plus it was a good way to get weapons grade material and show we had advanced nuclear tech. So during the 50s and 60s we paid for it all and ran the plants, but it turned out they were actually very expensive and not at all easy to build and run.

In the early 80s all our energy generation was sold off to private companies and turned into a cash-cow for them. All of it except for nuclear, no-one want that because the costs were too high and the risks to big if anything went wrong (and things had gone wrong in the past). The government was offering them fully functional nuclear plants for free and a guaranteed income, but still no-one was interested. In the end we had to subsidise running the plans, insuring them and all the clean-up work when they were decommissioned*.

So private companies had the government over a barrel. The country needed nuclear and government policy was not to run it ourselves. Now things have changed though and there is little appetite from the voters for nuclear, but lots of demand for green technology. The nuclear lobby is out in force and desperately trying to spin the situation, but people realised that if we just switch the subsidy from nuclear to green then we don't need nuclear any more.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[AmiMoJo]

In other words it's human nature and accidents are inevitable. No new revelations there, every industry understands and accepts that.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[luis_a_espinal]

Nope. Democracy has survived the capitalists, not been fostered by it. Like how Daddy Warbucks is really an abusive bastard who throws his child in danger for his own goals.

Modern democracy and its multiple implementations are a by-product of free market societies. No other economic system has sprouted a modern democratic system. Obviously, capitalism implementations have also sprouted tyrannies, but that is the nature of all economic systems. It is not a nature of them, however, to sprout a democratic system.

Furthermore, just as there are many modern implementations of democracy there are many implementations of capitalism. To say "capitalist this-that democracy" makes absolutely no sense. It is just a slogan.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[luis_a_espinal]

ostered modern democracy for the last 2 centuries.

capital has converged on so few owners now that it is effectively crushing democracy.

In which country? In all capitalist-oriented countries? Besides, capital has always converged on few owners (which Adam Smith warned about it almost three centuries ago.) That is not, on itself, a crushing factor on democracy. What crushes democracy is a lack of social mobility. This is what exists in many other capitalist countries (like Germany, South Korea or Japan), and in others that are finally getting their act together (like Brazil.)

Social mobility (going up and down the social scale across generations) is what we had before in the US (in tandem with capital converged in few potentates). It is its reduction in the last three decades (not capital convergence on the few) that is killing democracy.

Re:Universal flaw in The System

[Raenex]

I guess it's a good thing I didn't say, suggest, or imply it.

It's implied that when you complain about inherit faults of capitalism that the other major systems tried in the last century wouldn't have the same problem.

Re:But so could anything

[realityimpaired]

There's a very simple explanation for Bieber:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia

As you could see in Onagawa and Fukushima Daini

[tp1024]

Of course the disaster could have been mitigated, just by proper placing of emergency generators and having enough of them. 2 per reactor is just not enough, having one of them right next to the coast and the other in the basement in a tsunami-prone area is even worse so.

Common cause failure has been discussed for decades. Those discussions weren't heeded in Fukushima Daiichi, they were in other countries and they were in the other two power plants.

Re:As you could see in Onagawa and Fukushima Daini

[AmiMoJo]

That's human nature. Accept it and then consider if we should be doing certain things given the consequences of an accident and the inevitability of it happening.

Re:As you could see in Onagawa and Fukushima Daini

[Anonymous Coward]

if you'd bother to research the issue, at least reactor 1 was suffering core damage before the tsunami even hit - the earthquake alone was enough to disrupt coolant pipes to the reactor and trigger a meltdown. radioactive xenon was being vented well before the tsunami arrived, and numerous insiders have come forward and admitted as much, however it's in tepco's interests to blame the tsunami.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111025/full/478435a.html

Re:But so could anything

[penix1]

In economic terms it is called "externalizing". Shifting risk to others is the hallmark of capitalist economies. The same is true of any enterprise. If you have a risk, find a way to shift the cost onto someone else. The public is always a good place to shift the risk to. If you get caught with your pants down it is easy enough to declare bankruptcy and emerge a "new" entity to continue shifting the risk. These plants aren't going anywhere and given today's energy demands will be up and running in no time.

Re:Crank or coverup

[burne]

After the fact there's no shortage of people telling you they told you so.

But if somebody tells me a grand total of 13 different backup-generators dotted around the site and five battery-backups might all simultaneously fail due to various reasons he would have an extreremly hard time convincing me.

Engineer or not, if his story depends on assuming a whole chain of unlikely events I'm probably not going to believe him. It's just human nature.

Recovering Regulator Comments

[retroworks]

As a former (environmental) regulator, its always difficult to find the balance between enforcing guarantees against everything imaginable at whatever cost, and providing a balance against the business people who want to pump profits and stock on a quarterly outlook. Regulators are a risk-adverse bunch and tend to think first of how they will look if something goes wrong, and can be guilty of considering every possible scenario as a mandate, which can bankrupt a business. But most businesses also have people who look first and foremost at the impact of a new cost on earnings and the next quarterly stock report. Japan has a bit of a reputation for erring on the side of business, but the important thing is that the lesson is in the press and if anyone else has any OTHER suggestions from their engineers, they should probably take a second look... or people will trust the regulators.

Re:Recovering Regulator Comments

[drinkypoo]

As a former (environmental) regulator, its always difficult to find the balance between enforcing guarantees against everything imaginable at whatever cost, and providing a balance against the business people who want to pump profits and stock on a quarterly outlook.

Fuck the companies. The "balance" is that you do what you can do and if you can't afford to do it then you fuck off and let someone with deeper pockets step in. Balancing risk and reward on an economic basis is how we got Fukushima Daiichi.

Re:Crank or coverup

[Guppy]

But if somebody tells me a grand total of 13 different backup-generators dotted around the site and five battery-backups might all simultaneously fail due to various reasons he would have an extreremly hard time convincing me.

Replace "dotted around the site" with "all the in the same basement". And the depletion of all battery backups again was not independent, with a direct causual link both to the upstream generator failure, as well as the disruption to roads and infrastructure which delayed the arrival of additional resources.

http://www.blog.voximate.com/blog/article/1058/failover-backup-systems-redundant/
"The risk analysis may calculate the risk of each backup generator failing and then estimate the risk of all of them failing simultaneously by multiplying each generator’s risk of failure together, concluding that the risk of them all failing simultaneously is statistically very, very low. However, such an analysis assumes that the backup generators are all independent systems. As this crisis has demonstrated, the backup generators were NOT independent of each other. Because they were all in the same coast-side, sea level location, they all shared the common vulnerability of being shut down simultaneously by the same tsunami. Therefore, the actual risk of them all failing simultaneously due to a tsunami was equal to the risk of a single one of them failing due to a tsunami. Since all thirteen backup generators in actual fact failed when hit by this tsunami, the risk that each backup generator would fail when hit by a tsunami of this size appears to have been 100%."

I already knew this...

[erroneus]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2716225&cid=39299941

We all know this...

[fullback]

Especially those of us living in Japan. Nothing new in this article.

I live about 90 miles from the Fukushima plant and yes, this affects me greatly. About 100,000 people are still living in temporary housing. The economy is in shambles. Our business electric rates are about to skyrocket up 17% and gasoline is about US$6.65 a gallon. With only two reactors online in the entire country, our power situation is going to get desperate if oil costs continues to go up.

It will take a decade to rebuild, and where exactly do you rebuild? The same place, just to see it destroyed again?

You want a real story? This earthquake was not a once-in-a-millennium event. Here is an article from National Geographic about a massive tsunami in the same area in 1896. That's about 100 years ago, not a thousand years ago!

Let's face it, humans are stupid. Particularly the one who "govern."

We're lucky that no one was killed in Fukushima, but our luck ran out on earthquakes and tsunamis. We still have quakes almost every day, and for the first second or two, we don't know if it will be another big one.

Every bad event could probably have been mitigated. Hell, my first marriage could have been mitigated, and that was a rotten disaster.

Re:We all know this...

[tp1024]

The tsunami in 1896 (and the other in 1933) were much less worse than the one of 2011. The flood walls for both cities and nuclear power plants alike were built to defend against exactly those kinds of tsunamis.

Re:We all know this...

[AmiMoJo]

It will take a decade to rebuild, and where exactly do you rebuild? The same place, just to see it destroyed again?

Many destroyed towns are being re-built, but with improved defences such as raising the entire area by 3m.

Re:We all know this...

[khallow]

It will take a decade to rebuild, and where exactly do you rebuild? The same place, just to see it destroyed again?

Actually, yes, the same place. It's worth noting here that Fukushima is no less suitable for nuclear power now than it was before we found out the risks of large tsunami.

You want a real story? This earthquake was not a once-in-a-millennium event. Here is an article from National Geographic about a massive tsunami in the same area in 1896. That's about 100 years ago, not a thousand years ago!

I don't know what the height of the 1896 tsunami was at Fukushima. But my understanding is that it was pretty low, under the current barrier. That appears to be one of the lessons learned in this earthquake, that tsunami can vary a lot and that the actual height of the tsunami can depend not only on where the earthquake happened, but also how the energy of that earthquake was directed.

We're lucky that no one was killed in Fukushima, but our luck ran out on earthquakes and tsunamis. We still have quakes almost every day, and for the first second or two, we don't know if it will be another big one.

I wouldn't call it "luck". These reactors worked and failed as they were intended to, 40-50 years ago when first designed. The emergency response crews did, despite some early bumbling, prevent greater disaster.

It's worth noting that there isn't a story here about the nuclear industry ignoring valid risks. One shouldn't expect a nuclear regulatory agency to change policy on the strength of a single piece of research. Instead, they'll conduct their own research and make changes as their research indicates.

That's why this story is relevant. We find that the research did happen. TEPCO actually had determined that the Fukushima nuclear plant was at risk from an larger than expected tsunami and had reported this to Japan's regulatory agency a few days before the earthquake happened. It indicates some footdragging on the part of TEPCO and the timing of the report is a bit suspicious. (Someone on the government side could have fudged records to indicate that the report was accepted before the earthquake rather than after. No one has apparently caught it yet, if that's what happened.) But for now, what we should expect happened appears to be what did happen.

But who really thinks that we should be responding hastily (rather than with some deliberation) with expensive fixes to difficult to understand and infrequent risks based on little research? What happens if the fix makes another problem (or indeed the very problem it's suppose to fix) worse? What happens if we could lower the cost of the fix substantially (or increase the effectiveness of the fix) by thinking about it a bit longer? What happens if the nuclear plant is expected to shutdown in a couple of years anyway?

Re:We all know this...

[CrimsonAvenger]

TEPCO actually had determined that the Fukushima nuclear plant was at risk from an larger than expected tsunami and had reported this to Japan's regulatory agency a few days before the earthquake happened.

And this is relevant because?

Face it, if we'd been told four days before the tsunami the exact parameters of the tsunami, there's not a whole lot that could have been done to mitigate it.

MAYBE shut the plant down, but it wouldn't have been cooled to ambient in only four days, and the cooling ponds full of old fuel rods would have still been there....

Re:We all know this...

[khallow]

And this is relevant because?

Because it is evidence that the current process actually works to mitigate these risks. The Japan earthquake didn't happen to a nuclear industry that ignored the risk of large tsunami, but to one that was in the initial process of figuring out the risk from such things and how to deal with them.

Face it, if we'd been told four days before the tsunami the exact parameters of the tsunami, there's not a whole lot that could have been done to mitigate it.

Japan would have been able to save the lives of 15,000 or so people and prevent the Fukushima nuclear accident. There may well be a lot of valuable assets that could be moved away from the ocean in that time too. Forewarning of this precise a nature and this far in advance is extremely valuable and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.

MAYBE shut the plant down, but it wouldn't have been cooled to ambient in only four days, and the cooling ponds full of old fuel rods would have still been there....

Four days would have been more than adequate to line up the equipment and staff that they needed to clear the site of debris and keep the reactors cooled after the tsunami (plus four addition days of cooling would have been pretty useful in its own right!). They has somewhere around eight hours after the quake to bring in generating equipment to replace what had been lost. They might even be able to save some of the generators on site.

Plus not having a vast search and rescue problem from the many victims of the tsunami and some lead time on taking care of refugees meant that Japan could focus more resources on the nuclear plants and other infrastructure that was damaged following the quake.

Re:We all know this...

[MrKaos]

Four days would have been more than adequate to line up the equipment and staff that they needed to clear the site of debris and keep the reactors cooled after the tsunami (plus four addition days of cooling would have been pretty useful in its own right!). They has somewhere around eight hours after the quake to bring in generating equipment to replace what had been lost. They might even be able to save some of the generators on site.

Which is all speculation because they didn't have four days they had four minutes and they weren't ready when the Tsunami hit because the seawall wasn't high enough.

It seems like my powers of prediction are better than yours, I told you TEPCO would wear it.

Re:We all know this...

[khallow]

Which is all speculation because they didn't have four days they had four minutes and they weren't ready when the Tsunami hit because the seawall wasn't high enough.

Speculation that is pretty obvious. Even ten seconds of warning about an earthquake can save lives (such as giving warning to surgery rooms or closing gas main valves). This is the main reason that so many people are interested in earthquake prediction.

It seems like my powers of prediction are better than yours, I told you TEPCO would wear it.

Wear what? You hadn't commented earlier in this thread. And Slashdot isn't search engine friendly.

Re:Crank or coverup

[mad flyer]

The fun fact with this accident was the number of people telling you so BEFORE the accident...

And the number of idiot saying it was a 1 in a 1000 year event... while the last huge tsunami at this place was 1100 years before... AND SO WAS FOOKING OVERDUE. And when you check with the previous tsunami in 889 (around) it's exactly the same extend and the same level of flooding.

So it's not even telling so before...

It's just looking back at the previous shrine comemorative of the event and going back to the drawing board...

The bigger problem is that these irresponsible bean counting punks discredited the whole nuclear industry. Areva should ask compensation from Tepco because of potential reduced business opportunities.

Re:But so could anything

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not restricted to capitalist economies.

Have to remind people that Chernobyl, still ranked as the world's worst nuclear disaster happened in the Soviet Union.

Wait for the first Chinese nuclear accident and it will be a whopper. Somehow they managed to copy technology from the West yet stripping out safety measures that exist, aka the high speed train technology they stole from France, yes improperly implemented and stripped out safety features.

Welcome to the real world

[Colin Smith]

If you look back through history you find out that the greatest threat is from our the leaders. Which is pretty much the point of the constitution.

History repeats itself.

[CrackedButter]

Let's not forget this kind of thinking and denial was present at the Chisso Corporation, with the mercury poisoning scandal during the 70s in Minamata, Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

Would You Buy A House

[assertation]

You have a choice between two completely equal houses.

One a single block away from a nuclear power plant. The other without.

Everything else being equal, would you live in the house with the nuclear power plant down the street?

Would you live there if you were raising small children?

Would you live there with a beloved wife, GF or your parents living with you?

Re:Would You Buy A House

[realityimpaired]

Everything else being equal, would you live in the house with the nuclear power plant down the street?

No, but not because of the point you're getting at. Nuclear plants are usually built in industrial areas, and the aesthetics of the area would prevent me from building/buying a house there. They are usually catastrophically ugly.

Take a place like Chalk River, Ontario, however, and I'd have no problem living there, despite the proximity to one of the largest nuclear research labs in the world, and multiple test and production nuclear reactors. Chalk River is in an earthquake-prone area (had a 5.0 not that far away a year ago, and the geological record shows that they've had up to an 8.0 in the past, not to mention being in an area with a lot of leda clay, which has been known to amplify the effects of an earthquake), though it's too far inland to be at any kind of risk for a tsunami.

If the nuclear reactor in your example were somehow rendered invisible, and wouldn't be an eyesore, then I wouldn't have a problem living near it at all. They tend to over-engineer these things, and pay very careful attention to the amount of radiation at curbside. While there's risk associated with a 9.0 earthquake, I'm equally likely to die in said 9.0 earthquake itself. Statistically speaking, I'm far more likely to die from a car accident than I am in a nuclear accident, and I absorb more ionizing radiation during a 5-minute cell phone call than I would spending an entire day next-door to a nuclear plant. Why aren't you asking if people would be willing to drive their car to work, or order a pizza on their cell phone?

We can argue until the cows come home about whether they made design mistakes in Fukushima. There's almost certainly things they could have done differently, but hindsight is always 20/20. Nuclear energy on the whole is quite safe. I'd certainly rather that they were using renewable alternatives, as I'm a tree-hugging dirt-worshipper, but nuclear energy produces a lot less pollution than the non-renewable alternatives, and that pollution causes much more harm to my health on a daily basis than the radiation from a nuclear power plant would.

Re:Would You Buy A House

[CrimsonAvenger]

You have a choice between two completely equal houses. One a single block away from a nuclear power plant. The other without. Everything else being equal, would you live in the house with the nuclear power plant down the street?

Yes. From the top of the oak tree in my front yard (assuming I was light enough and young enough to climb to the top, of course), I could see a nuclear power plant now.

Would you live there if you were raising small children?

I raised my daughter in this house, so yes.

Would you live there with a beloved wife, GF or your parents living with you?

Yes, my wife lives here too...

Sorry, noone ever managed to convince me that "nuclear" was the same as "THE DEBHIL!!!!11!!! AAAAAAH!1!!!"....

Re:Would You Buy A House

[EmagGeek]

I live within the EPZ of a nuclear plant and have no problem with it whatsoever. If anything, our area is far more prepared for a generic emergency than most, and that's actually a good thing.

Not a good comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

If we could live as a modern civilization without power plants at all I'm sure everyone would like that.
but we can't.

Thus, the question is:

You have a choice between two completely equal houses.

One a single block away from a nuclear power plant. *** The other a single block away from a COAL power plant. ***

Everything else being equal, would you live in the house with the nuclear power plant down the street?

Would you live there if you were raising small children?

Would you live there with a beloved wife, GF or your parents living with you?

and with these options in mind, I'd take the nuke every day of the week.

Penny-wise and Pound-foolish, as the saying goes

[JSBiff]

And this disaster is costing Tepco and the Japanese government at least Billions of dollars, quite possibly upwards of a Trillion dollars when all's said and done.

If I were an owner, I'd rather like to protect my investments from Billions of dollars of permanently destroyed plants, cleanup and damage (property and potentially health related) claims by making a few millions of dollars of investments.

For every penny they saved before, they are spending hundreds of dollars now.

Unfortunately...

[DigitalSorceress]

It's easier to just rally people around "nuclear power is bad and inherently dangerous" than to actually step up and take responsibility to do it right.

I still kind of wonder about this one thoguth: it was a horrible disaster - I'm not taking away from that, but this was one of the top ten most powerful earthquakes on record with a pretty devastating tsunami as a follow-up act.

I would think this was just about the worst possible scenario. Considering the extreme nature of the event that led to the nuclear disaster, it sort of makes me feel like nuclear energy isn't really as scary as folks seem to make it out to be.

Maybe I just don't know enough about nuclear energy to be properly scared enough, but I feel like I know enough about it to not be as scared as the anti-nuke folks want me to me.

Re:Yes, nuclear is SAFE

[Idou]

Hate to reply to my own post, but I realize that even with the level of extreme sarcasm I intended to include in my parent post, most ./-ers will take it as sincere and will agree with it without much thought. . .

I wonder if this is how Colbert felt at the Bush correspondence dinner . . .

Re:But so could anything

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the goal of capitalism

^^^^^ The (mindless rhetoric)/meaning ratio of this post approaches infinity.

Yup

[JSBiff]

Not much to write, other than, "yes". Bonus if I can get cheap heat and hot water from the waste heat from the nuclear plant. (See "Cogeneration" and "District Heating").

I might consider otherwise in a place subject to Tsunamis, but we don't get many of those in Ohio (Lakes Erie might be able to generate a small tsunami, but I don't think the Great Lakes can generate anything quite like the ocean, and we're about a thousand miles inland from the nearest ocean, with a large mountain range between us and the beach).

The chance of getting hit wasn't that small

[Hentes]

If the tsunami was a 1 in 1000 years event, then the chance of one of the Fukushima reactors to get hit by it during their lifetime was about 3.5%, which is high enough to cause concern.

Re:The chance of getting hit wasn't that small

[vakuona]

Let's say your statistic is correct, and that what hit Fukushima was the feared 1 in 1000 year event. What damaged has it really caused, long term though? And lest we forget, we are talking about a very old reactor design which was past EOL.

Re:The chance of getting hit wasn't that small

[Hentes]

That is, of course, the big question. As there was no loss of life, the equation is fairly easy: if the total cost of the accident are higher than the cost of proofing/shutting down the reactors times 30, then it was a bad decision to take the risk. But the total cost of the accident are not easy to measure.

Re:The chance of getting hit wasn't that small

[FunkDup]

chance ... was about 3.5%, which is high enough to cause concern.

Exactly. If that cooing system couldn't run autonomously for a week while completely submerged it was built wrong.

stochastic pedantry

[nten]

The quoted article correctly identifies that the individual probabilities of failure were in fact highly coupled and not independent random events. The last statement is a common error though. Just because a tsunami of this size caused each of the generators to fail, does not mean that a tsunami of this size was certain to cause a failure. Because all statistical problems can be phrased as D&D problems (core 2 rules of course), this could be stated that the tsunami needed a 2 to hit and got it, but there was always that 1 it could have rolled and some series of odd but finitely possible events would allow the generators to continue operating. In this case it was not a d20 but a d1e6 or higher, still with a 2 to hit, but the possibility it could have missed does not go to zero simply because it didn't miss.

Engineering for failure

[BAH Humbug]

Unfortunately, some companies and governments don't understand how to respond to failure analysis. Rather than dismissing a once in 1000 year flood or a 9.8 rated earthquake, they must design the system to fail safe in that event. For example, there are nuclear reactor designs that continue to cool the fuel even when all power is lost. Or, if the pressure vessel is breached, there should be an intentional weak spot which will direct radioactive steam and fuel through a known path to minimize radiation release and mix the fuel with materials to slow/stop the nuclear reaction.

Look around and you'll see a mix of responses to failure analysis. The Space Shuttle was poorly designed in that it didn't provide a method for the crew to escape easily and quickly. The Apollo system had an emergency tower rocket that would pull the whole capsule and crew off and away from the giant bomb beneath it.

Commercial airliners can continue to fly when all engines have failed or have run out of fuel.

Our huge dams will fail catastrophically because it is hard to cost effectively build something that can withstand a 10.0 rated earthquake while holding back all that water. Smaller dams would be one response.

Can you build something like the Dubai tower that will fail safe? The fact is that safety is a choice. We choose to build skyscrapers because land in specific cities is very expensive. Are they as safe as a sine story building? No.

People need to balance cost and safety. But too often a relatively small cost which would improve safety is dismissed. What would it have cost to move the diesel generators at the nuclear plant? What did it cost to put airbags and seatbelts in cars? What about having seats face backwards in a plane? Little things can increase survivabity, yet we still don't do them.

Color me unsurprised

[Jawnn]

Regulators completely compromised by (pick your energy) industry players and utterly derelict in the performance of the job the public expected, and desperately needed them to perform. Film at eleven.

Re:Crank or coverup

[backslashdot]

There will always be people predicting disasters. What about the engineers who made predictions that the other power plants would get hit by a meteor and cause a thermonuclear explosion? If you chase every dire prediction nothing would ever get built. Yes sometimes something slips through the cracks .. but overall there is a benefit to ignoring some of the crank stuff unless there is specific evidence that a tsunami was going to strike.

Re:Crank or coverup

[giorgist]

Just because you flipped a heads does not meen you are overdue for tails. A 1 in 1000 year event remains that at any one year. Same goes for asteroids. We are overdue for a 1 in a million year event there as well. We are overdue on pole reversal, ice age and so on ...

20/20 hundsight

[DerekLyons]

It's always easy to cherry pick, and with 20/20 hindsight, find someone whose predictions matched or exceeded what actually happened. Or, to put it another way - if the tsunami hadn't over topped the wall, those being lauded today would instead be laughingstocks for crying wolf.

But, proceed with your Two Minute Hate anyhow.

Re:But so could anything

[Luckyo]

Afaik Chinese are mostly copying Russian tech in this regard, just like they do with weapons.

Nice straw man you've built, there.

[daveschroeder]

It ought to work well as a scarecrow, too.

I also didn't say — or imply — anything which you attribute to me. The simple fact is that other sources of energy — ridiculously and absurdly, even solar — have more deaths per TWh than nuclear. It's a simple fact.

If we're serious about addressing the world's energy needs while moving away from fossil fuels, nuclear MUST be a part of the discussion, because it's not all going to be wind farms, hydro, and solar panels.

It's about energy density. But be my guest and keep vilifying nuclear in the face of the evidence. And speaking of "dense", in case you don't get it, this doesn't mean there shouldn't be safety and oversight. It means we should look at the true risks of nuclear vs. the long term risks from other energy sources, particularly fossil fuels...not only in terms of deaths (which, compared to other energy sources, are minimal), but the risk from unstable geopolitical situations, wars for resources, and so on.

It's not like we're going crazy building new plants in the US; we just approved the first new nuclear plant in three decades. That's ridiculous. Meanwhile, China has at least 25 reactors under construction, with many more planned...

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[DarkOx]

Deaths per terrawatt hour is not a useful metric. Even if that number is certain to be higher with everyone favorite whipping boy, coal or oil, natural gas, solar whatever there is very little that can go wrong with those which would render a large area unlivable all at once. The deaths and health costs they create are spread over time. Society can budget for and deal with those costs and even cope with the occasion colamity.

With neuclear on the other hand the absolute costs might be less but the potential to have bear them all at once exists and it could very well be a back breaker for any society, that is the prespective you have to use.

Think of it like this cancer will over time do more harm to your body than a bullet but you can live with and treat most cancers for a long time, that might not be the case with the bullet.

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[daveschroeder]

My post wasn't a straw man, nor was my reply to yours. For what it's worth, my response was actually intended to be a child of this post (thus my choice of subject, in context), not a generic response to the article. (I wasn't logged in, and when I did and was redirected to the page, the form apparently wasn't posted properly.)

Mea culpa.

But even as a reply directly to this article, my post is still completely on-point: there is no reason to be irrationally afraid of nuclear power, as reared its head again globally after Fukushima. Issues with Fukushima could have been mitigated, AND "look at this blog post" illustrating deaths/TWh of a variety of energy sources. How, specifically, is that not relevant? Nowhere does this imply that a proper and serious discussion of safety, governance, implementation, etc., should not be a part of the process. Except we in the West are barely having even that discussion, and many Western nations are backing away from nuclear power altogether because of political and other pressures. Given that energy needs are going to be a critical and increasing global concern for the foreseeable future, especially in the context of Asia, why is this not a valid discussion to have? Or do we hang ourselves with asinine attitudes like yours, fighting an imaginary absolutist position that no one has?

The other "side", however, does have an absolutist position: "No nuclear anything, ever. SCARY NUCLEAR BAD! You might not see ill health effects for . . . years! You don't know how nuclear is hurting you. The government lies about nuclear." You get my point.

Also, you're continuing in your trend of putting words into my mouth: you're acting as if I think nuclear is oh-so-much more safe than other energy sources, we should therefore ignore any and every safety concern and consideration. Except I said nothing of the sort, nor do I believe that.

And wow — equating a sensible post on why nuclear energy isn't something to be afraid of, albeit accidentally posted as a comment on the article rather than as a reply to another comment, to the Westboro Baptist Church is just — wow, I don't know where to go with that. Why don't you throw Nazis in there too, for good measure.

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[Idou]

For what it's worth, my response was actually intended to be a child of this post . . . not a generic response to the article.

So you made a mistake, just fucking admit it and end it there. Why post anything else? You want to argue about how I interpreted your fuck-up? You have enough karma to have a default 2 score, please learn to post right. When you make a mistake, learn to own up to it upfront to avoid further conflict. No wonder Slashdot is becoming a hell hole . . .

I did not read the rest of your post because you made a fucking mistake, and I am ending this thread here.

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[daveschroeder]

No, I didn't make a mistake — the way slashdot processed my login and redirect to post the comment made a mistake all on its own, none of which changes the validity of the rest of my comment, nor the fact that my comment is actually completely reasonable and on-topic as a direct reply to the article as well.

But thanks: your reply tells me exactly what kind of person you are, and you need look no further than the mirror to figure out why Slashdot sucks.

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[Kavafy]

Deaths per terrawatt hour is not a useful metric. Even if that number is certain to be higher with everyone favorite whipping boy, coal or oil, natural gas, solar whatever there is very little that can go wrong with those which would render a large area unlivable all at once. The deaths and health costs they create are spread over time. Society can budget for and deal with those costs and even cope with the occasion colamity.

With neuclear on the other hand the absolute costs might be less but the potential to have bear them all at once exists and it could very well be a back breaker for any society, that is the prespective you have to use.

This is certainly deserving of +5 insightful, but I disagree with it, and for the following reason: deaths per Twh gives some perspective to an otherwise ridiculously one-sided debate about the dangers of nuclear. If we had had more Gen II nuclear reactors built during the 70s instead of panicking about very unlikely accidents, then our current energy problems would be far, far less troublesome.

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[Kavafy]

You didn't do a very good job of "ending the thread here" though, did you?

Re:Nice straw man you've built, there.

[Idou]

Agree, neither did you : )

Re:But so could anything

[Courageous]

Obviously the risk was that they lost their entire investment, and then that very thing materialized. What can happen here is a sort of delusion, where the assessors of the risk only see the reward, and not the actual risk.. even to themselves. That's why you need objective third parties, even when the risk is only to your business. The fact that there were lots of other people being risked only makes the inability to actually assess risk properly that much more dangerous.

Re:Crank or coverup

[Courageous]

while the last huge tsunami at this place was 1100 years before... AND SO WAS FOOKING OVERDUE

While I appreciate what you are trying to say here, probability doesn't work like this.

The above statement reflects the same sort of erroneous thinking that is expressed by those folks who hover around roulette wheels thinking that if it comes up black 3 times in a row, the fourth time is now more likely to be red.

Not at all true, ...

C//

Negligence, pure and simple

[Kyusaku Natsume]

Only TEPCO's nuclear power stations suffered heavy damage by tsunami in Tohoku's coast. Japan Atomic Power Co's Tokai NPS and Tohoku Electric Co's Hamaoka NPS survived the quake and tsunami with minimum damage. Hamaoka survived despite being closer to the epicenter, and Tokai NPS didn't get much damage thanks to heeding the advice of experts in 2006-2007 that said their seawalls were too low for the tsunamis that could affect the coast and raised them. TEPCO did nothing. It was TEPCO's regulatory capture and negligence what made this ecological and economic disaster to happen.

Re:Negligence, pure and simple

[burne]

Hamaoka survived despite being closer to the epicenter

Dude, what kind of bullshit are you spreading? Fukushima is 156 kilometers from the epicenter, and Hamaoka 565 kilometer. Ignoring costal geometry completely. (Fukushima is close to the epicenter, on the eastcoast of Honshu, Hamaoka is far away, sheltered on the southcoast of Honshu.)

Apart from that, Hamaoka 1 and 2 are permanently shut down since 2009 because of failures in the emergency cooling system in one of the units. Units 3, 4 and 5 are shut down since may 2011, because of very serious concerns over their safety in case of an earthquake. Not helping in convincing otherwise are the 16 incidents in which leaks led to unplanned shutdowns. Hamaoka has been called the most dangerous nuclear plant in Japan. 2 days after their final (?) shutdown CEPC had to announce that 400 tons of seawater has leaked into the primary condensor of unit 5, and five days later they had to announce that seawater has leaked into the primary containment (the reactor vessel itself). Hamaoka has a sand dune as protection, able to withstand a 26 ft tsunami. Fukushima was hit by a 43–49 ft tsunami.

No links, google it yourself, and find your own opinion. ;)

Re:Crank or coverup

[Anonymous Coward]

And the number of idiot saying it was a 1 in a 1000 year event... while the last huge tsunami at this place was 1100 years before... AND SO WAS FOOKING OVERDUE.

Umm, I'm not sure you understand how probability works...

But then again, tectonic drift isn't random. Energy built up from hindered movement eventually has to be released and the historic record does say something about how the plates in a region tend to behave...

Re:Crank or coverup

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely wrong. It is not a random event, it is periodic event with a random component.
This type of event is caused by relative motion between plates - stress builds up in fairly linear manner and is relieved periodically. The probability of a quake rises continuously over time so if there is an average period of 1000 years then risk is rising much faster after 1100 years than it was after 900 years. The annual probability of a quake will eventually get into the 1 in a 100 ( or lower) range and the quake will be consequently bigger due to increased pent up stress.

Re:Crank or coverup

[burne]

"all the in the same basement"

Assuming that TEPCO kept the basic BWR Mark 1 layout, one of the generators would be high up inside the 'heavy' part of the building, opposite the spent fuel pool. In the hydrogen-explosions Units 1, 2 and 3 lost their 'top' which is a relative thin structure (secondary containment). The bottom half of the building (the environmental shield) is much stronger, and houses one of the backup generators, high up in the building. As far as I know the second generator is next to the piping well, underground, between the reactor-building and the generator-hall. The thirteenth generator was located landsite from the high voltage switching area, some distance from the sea.

But the engineers are at fault

[msobkow]

Even though the decisions were made by politicians and businessmen to save money, in the end, it's the engineers who get blamed for "not doing their job" or "being incompetent."

Just like IT, where all our pleas and warnings go unanswered, and we're expected to put in buku overtime to fix the resulting disaster when it eventually does happen like we predicted for months or years before.

Re:But the engineers are at fault

[Rich0]

I hear you and agree to an extent, but there is another valid side to the story. At work there are always people who tend to be more conservative. If we followed their advice we'd never release anything - we'd just test and patch and test and patch. The issue isn't whether there is any risk - just whether there is reasonable risk.

Toss in the huge stakes of a reactor and the low failure rate, and it is hard to say whether a risk is real or not. No doubt tons of engineering studies demonstrate conclusively that the space shuttle has a 1:100k theoretical total failure rate, and yet the real world rate is a few percent.

That said, you do need to be cautious with stuff like this - there is no reason to still be running designs which require active safety systems.

Re:Crank or coverup

[swillden]

That's only true when the annual probabilities are independent. In the case of asteroids, that's probably a reasonable approximation. But tsunamis are generated by earthquakes, and the probability that you have a large earthquake in year n is not independent of whether you had a large earthquake in year n-1. When, specifically, a quake is going to happen is pretty random, but energies build over time until released.

Recipe for Disaster: The Golden Rule

[sehlat]

Whether you call it Regulatory Capture, Crony Capitalism, or "The Golden Rule" (Whoever has the gold makes the rules.), it still comes down to people with decision-making authority seeing and hearing what they want to see and hear rather than paying attention to reality.

Re:Recipe for Disaster: The Golden Rule

[Beeftopia]

"Government of the highest bidder, by the highest bidder, for the highest bidder."

Dungeness versus Aldermaston

[Kupfernigk]

An article in The Guardian this weekend is about the people who live closer than a block to the Dungeness nuclear plant. They like it because there is excellent security for them and their children, it is peaceful, and they have lots of space. (It is also pretty safe).

On the other hand, the UK (in a fit of what I can only describe as mindblowing insanity) has its nuclear weapons plant in the middle of one of the most densely populated areas in the country, and indeed of the planet. A really good disaster at Burgefield would lay waste to some of the most expensive housing in the UK and cause the evacuation of millions of people. Compared to living in the relevant part of the Home Counties, I would far rather live next to the perimeter fence at Dungeness.

People are simply piss-poor at assessing risk, or the entire population for ten kilometres around Burgefield would be marching on Parliament, demanding the cancellation of Trident, and engaging in massive civil disobedience.

Re:Dungeness versus Aldermaston

[Rich0]

By that kind of argument there is no "good" place to stick a reactor.

I think the real question is whether these plants use safe designs, like passive cooling at the very least. Plants with fundamentally unsafe designs should be phased out everywhere, and plants with more modern and safe designs shouldn't be an issue as long as all the usual precautions are followed.

I think a big regulatory problem is that we keep extending the life of rather ancient designs, but we don't allow newer plants to be built. This sort of thing makes no sense from a risk-management perspective...

Re:But so could anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, always. But the tsunami protection at Fukushima wasn't adequate for *historical* tsunami along that coast. How much of a "risk and reward" is it if you can't handle an earthquake frequency on the order of 1 in 1000? Over a 40+ lifetime of a nuclear plant, it's just dumb not to have protections for that kind of scale. The only other rational solution is not to build there if it is too expensive to protect for historical events of that scale. This is a known risk, not something well beyond past experience. They gambled for ~40 years with odds that were pretty good (rare event) and then lost.

Re:Penny-wise and Pound-foolish, as the saying goe

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were an owner, I'd rather like to protect my investments from Billions of dollars of permanently destroyed plants, cleanup and damage (property and potentially health related) claims by making a few millions of dollars of investments.

You would be a rather exceptional owner, then. The overwhelming evidence is that today most owners/corporate management optimize short-term profits at the expense of long-term issues.

Re:But so could anything

[Gertlex]

Afaik Chinese are mostly copying Russian tech in this regard, just like they do with weapons.

Going by Wiki, this is incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#China
They've got a bunch under construction that use French tech from the 90s (CPR-1000), and then they have the AP1000 and EPR which are American and European, respectively. Finally a trio of CNP-600 which I'm not sure what they are... So definitely not Russian tech.

Thanks for piquing my curiosity, though :)

Re:Crank or coverup

[UnknowingFool]

This is not a case of some crank making absurdly rare events like a meteor hitting the plant. Also this wasn't some doomsaying cult, Tepco's own engineers came to the same conclusion. Earthquakes happen all the time in Japan albeit not on the magnitude that happened last year. The 2004 tsunami was a wakeup call in that there are secondary dangers other than just the earthquake itself. Also in this case, one of the remedies (build higher sea walls) would not have disrupted operations. Moving the generators to higher ground would have taken more planning and time but it was not a major disruption.

Will melt down if power lost

[Animats]

What worries me are all those reactors which will melt down if there's a full station blackout. This is a generic problem with all GE Mark I reactors, like Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania. One hour to core damage, 14 hours to meltdown. This has been known since 1972. The US still has 23 such reactors.

There have been some fixes over the years. Fukushima had the emergency venting fix, but it didn't work because, with no power, the vents couldn't be operated. The NRC has insisted that all US Mark I reactors have extra Diesel generators and pumps beyond the original complement. On at least one occasion, they've been needed.

They're on the side of being a retard

[viperidaenz]

If they were on the industries side, they would have protected it. Now the global nuclear power industry is feeling the pain and Tepco has been exposed as being incompetent .

Side of the industry - NOT

[kimvette]

'March 11 exposed the true nature of Japan's postwar system, that it is led by bureaucrats who stand on the side of industry, not the people,' says Shigeaki Koga, a former director of industrial policy at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry.

It's not even on the side of the industry; it's on the side of the quick buck.

Were they on the industry's side, they would have had the long-term health of the nuclear power industry in mind, and be striving to make the public perception of nuclear power match the reality of properly-maintained systems. Instead, the few major nuclear accidents which have occurred taints the perception of ALL nuclear installations across the board, pushing us back toward fossil fuels when instead we should be expanding the use of the latest-generation nuclear reactors, be investing in development of single-home and neighborhood-capacity dorm fridge-sized reactors, and also investing in large-scale thorium reactors. Instead, anything involving the word "nuclear" is now very unpopular politically, and wind power and solar power which are woefully inefficient in the real world are receiving political backing and government subsidies.

They are on the side of only their own personal wallets and get rich quick schemes, not on the side of the industry at all.

Re:Side of the industry - NOT

[kimvette]

Source: God/FSM/Mother Nature

There isn't always enough wind, and there are cloudy days, and then that pesky nighttime.

Re:Proactive

[tqk]

Preventing a problem before it becomes a problem means making a sacrifice of economic resources that could have been devoted to problems that are problems right now. So, you have to make a very strong case to justify the preventative measures.

Which is why IT always gets the short end of the stick when the business side is in control. We can't afford to expend money and resources on maintaining existing systems because the business side always wants to build something new, and since that something new is expected to bring in cash, it obviously is more deserving of money and resources than maintenance.

Pretty soon, IT does nothing but fight fires as one thing after another breaks down and needs an emergency bandaid fix just to keep it running.

!@#$ing brilliant style of management. Both shortsighted and ignorant. Fukushima Style management, where expert opinions are ignored in favour of short term profits.

Flood wall subsidence

[wfstanle]

Not only were the flood walls not high enough but they failed to account for the ground settling because of subsidence. As a result of the earthquake, the actual ground d5opped by as much as five feet in areas. Lets assume that you barely made the flood wall high enough lets say 3 feet higher than the tsunami. Part of the problem was the base of the flood wall was now 5 feet lower than it was before the earthquake. The result would be that the top of the flood wall is now 2 feet lower than the tsunami.

Re:Flood wall subsidence

[rrohbeck]

The tsunami was much taller than their flood wall, almost 50 feet, so it didn't really matter.
Oh and the sea wall of San Onofre in SoCal is 30 feet high. It's not just the Japanese system that's at fault.

Chernobyl didn't melt down.

[gukin]

Chernobyl was and is still the worst nuclear disaster because it didn't melt down, it blew up. Reactor 4 was supposed to be used for an experiment but was shutdown before the experiment could take place. However to try the experiment, the reactor was started up without letting the Xenon-135 decay to the point were the reactor could be started safely.

Nevertheless the reactor was started in a VERY unstable state, it soon "burned through" the Xenon-135 and the reactor power output rose to ten times it's rated limit and the containment vessel exploded, blowing fuel across the countryside. Following that, the moderator, graphite, burned spewing even more fuel into the atmosphere.

Chernobyl was human error, avoidable but human error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Now if there had been serious fires in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima, Chernobyl would have paled in comparison.

Re:Chernobyl didn't melt down.

[jrumney]

Fukushima isn't over yet. The spent fuel pool of reactor 4 contains a large amount of plutonium from the two reactors that were under maintenance at the time of the earthquake. The crane used to transfer fuel from the spent fuel pool was damaged in the earthquake, and scheduled to be fixed by December 2013. Meanwhile, the structure has been damaged to the point where it can now only withstand an earthquake up to magnitude 7.0. The probability of an aftershock of that magnitude occurring this year has been estimated at 70%, and within the next three years at 98%.

Just keep the reactor running.

[Skapare]

They didn't know it at the time, but they could have just kept the reactor running as a source of power for keeping the pumps working.

In the future, build nuclear plants underwater. That way they are already prepared for tsunamis.

Re:Crank or coverup

[bidule]

That's only true when the annual probabilities are independent. In the case of asteroids, that's probably a reasonable approximation. But tsunamis are generated by earthquakes, and the probability that you have a large earthquake in year n is not independent of whether you had a large earthquake in year n-1. When, specifically, a quake is going to happen is pretty random, but energies build over time until released.

Still, I don't think being 100 years overdue makes any sense.

The first approximation of energy released is how many times you roll 1d6 until you hit 6 and release the energy, where rolling 20 times or more and releasing 20+ units of energy happens 2.6% of the time.

The second approach is how often do you hit a snag that can support 100+ years of energy buildup. If it happens every 1000 years, such a snag has around 1:900 of happening and being at least "100 years overdue" happens 90% of the time. Completely back of the envelope, so don't believe any of it.

Re:Penny-wise and Pound-foolish, as the saying goe

[mspohr]

The "owners" are the shareholders who were clueless about the risks. Everyone told them everything was just fine. The owners trusted their assets to the "managers" who put their short term interests (profit) ahead of protecting the assets.
This is how modern capitalism works. The managers (high paid execs) get the profits, everyone else gets the shaft. (Wall street managers did very well before and after the 2008 crash... asset owners... not so well.)

Re:children shouldn't play with sharp knives

[Anonymous Coward]

Using your same reasoning, we shouldn't play with coal or oil either. Unfortunately, thats what nuclear gets replaced with.

Re:But so could anything

[sjames]

Chernobyl had many problems, but risk shifting wasn't one of them.However, like Japan, it was a failure of management rather than technology (though the technology was poor as well in Chernobyl).

Re:Crank or coverup

[sjames]

We may actually be overdue for a pole reversal or ice age. The overdue thing is only a fallacy for random-like events.

Re:Penny-wise and Pound-foolish, as the saying goe

[rrohbeck]

If I were an owner, I'd rather like to protect my investments from Billions of dollars of permanently destroyed plants, cleanup and damage (property and potentially health related) claims by making a few millions of dollars of investments.

Why, if the cost of an accident is borne by the taxpayer? If not, you ask the government for a bailout since the cost is much too high for you.
Now, if seppuku was still required you'd have a point, but if the worst consequences for you are having to apologize in public and a golden handshake you'd be stupid to reduce profits (and your bonus) by investing in safety.

Re:But so could anything

[DaveGod]

It is not restricted to capitalist economies.

Or to economies. It's a people thing.

Re:But so could anything

[dov_0]

Any disaster could be averted with extra millions and millions spent on it, it's just balancing risk and reward.

Come on, don't be dense. The claim here is precisely that they weren't balancing risk and reward - they were overweighting their own immediate gains and underweighting the future risks, which were mostly to other people.

So a country rebuilt by the USA after WWII ended up with an industry based oligarcy? How surprising!

Re:But so could anything

[lennier]

Obviously the risk was that they lost their entire investment, and then that very thing materialized.

"Hold on a second! This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it!"

Scarily enough, this was a case where even taking off and nuking the site from orbit wouldn't have helped.

Re:But so could anything

[siddesu]

Japan was not "rebuilt by USA" in any significant way. US barely kept the Japanese from starving for a few years past WWII. The biggest US contribution to the Japanese economy post-WWII was military spending for the Korean wars, but, of course, they got things in return for that.

Re:Crank or coverup

[swillden]

It's definitely a complex question, and one that I don't think anyone really understands. What I do know is that seismologists do talk about big quakes being "overdue". Not so much in the sense that there's some increased expectation of having a quake, but that there's good reason to expect that when the next quake hits it's likely to be a big one.

Re:Crank or coverup

[Courageous]

You therefore have handy some bit of science, such as that coming out of the Pacific Disaster Center, that will have, prior to the event asserted some sort of probability for the event in 1:N in low number years?

*queue sound of crickets chirping*

Re:Crank or coverup

[Courageous]

Sort of. While it's true that the tectonic plates are slowly doing their business, there's huge standard deviation in the outcomes, and even a larger error ellipse for the locations where earthquakes will occur and cause a tsunami of such concern. Speaking post hoc about the event in language that portrays knowledge of the event in the way described is just plain silly.

Mindless Penny-Pinching

[mosb1000]

It's like the BP pipeline spill in Alaska. Originally the engineers who designed and built it said the whole thing need to be ex-rayed and inspected periodically (I don't recall the period but it was like 5 or 10 years). After the spill, they found only 20% of it had ever been inspected. Various managers would cut certain department budgets by an arbitrary percentage to save costs and earn bonuses, and the cuts would be kicked down the line to managers who did not have the authority to question them. In the end, cutting the maintenance budget meant that large sections of pipe would never be inspected, and a leak was a foregone conclusion. But the arbitrary nature of the cuts meant that the managers had no idea that's what they were ordering.

This is hardly an isolated incident of it. People count on a kind of institutional intelligence to catch these things, but it's actually all a fantasy. Once you take the authority to make decisions away from the people doing the work, things inevitably fall through the cracks. Sometimes even surprisingly large things, like inspecting a pipeline or maintaing adequate flood protection goes completely unnoticed by upper management.

Re:Mindless Penny-Pinching

[Courageous]

The short story is, only those most closely connected with a problem have much of a chance of optimizing it well. There are exceptions, but. Well, not really.

The context we're discussing is particularly ironic. I say this, because here we're citing the number one reason why central planning committees (and ergo, socialism/state-communism, et al) fail in the midst of a discussion about how large capitalist interests fail. I've thought for a long time that capitalism versus socialism discussion isn't really the right discussion at all.

C//

shoulda/woulda/couldas don't count

[crutchy]

hindsight is a marvelous thing. if these "insiders" really knew anything they would have done more to prevent such a catastrophe. otherwise their negligence would make them accessories. nobody likes to be a whistleblower, but to sit on info and then come out and say "i told you so" after the fact is just fucking retarded.

i think they're full of shit.

humans make mistakes, and many are greedy, lying, ignorant and negligent, so don't say i didn't warn you about all future catastrophes.

GP should say Onagawa NPS, not Hamaoka

[Kyusaku Natsume]

Severe slip of the mind, I shouldn't post in the morning after working a double shift. I meant Tohoku Denryoku's Onagawa NPS that was far closer to the epicenter, see Japan's Atomic Industrial Forum map of situation of NPS's in Japan:
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS02_1330597193P.pdf

Now, Chuden's Hamaoka NPS is in the process to being reinforced against tsunami and quakes, at least it is what the company says.
http://hamaoka.chuden.jp/english/provision/index.html

Aside the dunes, the operator plans to build a 18 m tall sea wall behind the dunes, and increase the eight of dunes to 20 m; they claim that the station is designed to withstand a quake of 1000 gal with the reinforcement work that ended in march 2008, well above the japanese standard of 800 gal. Certainly, all this work is not done by the goodness of the owner's hearts, but doesn't make sense to the company to not try to quell the claims of Hamaoka being called the most dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan, better try to convince citizens of the safety and security of the station and restart operation instead of keeping it in cold shutdown.

I beg your pardon?

[Kupfernigk]

I said nothing about the location of nuclear plants (in fact my local plant at Hinckley Point is in a pretty good place and I supported its upgrade.) There are plenty of good places...isolated enough to provide security and reduce the impact of a major disaster, good access to cooling water, terrain not too difficult for pylons. A nuclear weapons facility, on the other hand, is NOT a nuclear reactor. It is a place where physically very small subcritical masses of plutonium get assembled into bombs along with very large quantities of tritium, where quantities of interesting potential neutron emitters are stored, and where there are significant quantities of very high flame propagation speed conventional explosives. The USA has more sense than to stick them into what, by US standards, is a densely populated urban area.

Be careful of making straw men; they burn easily.