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Japanese Parliament: Fukushima a Man-Made Disaster
Bootsy Collins writes "The predominant narrative of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has been that the accident was caused by a one-in-a-million tsunami, an event so unlikely that TEPCO could not reasonably have been expected to plan for it. However, a Parliamentary inquiry in Japan has concluded that this description is flawed — that the disaster was preventable through a reasonable and justifiable level of preparation, and that initial responses were horribly bungled. The inquiry report points a finger at collusion between industry executives and regulators in Japan as well as 'the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture.' It also raises the question of whether the failed units at Fukushimi Daiichi were already damaged by the earthquake before the tsunami even hit, going so far as to say that 'We cannot rule out the possibility that a small-scale LOCA (loss-of-coolant accident) occurred at the reactor No 1 in particular.' This is an explosive question in quake-prone Japan, appearing in the news just as Japan begins to restart reactors that have been shut down nationwide since the disaster."
stop blaming random "acts of God" for setups man created.
example: I stack 36 pounds of plutonium blocks in the back yard because I want to send ten atoms to all my friends. I just so happened to use an aluminum pan to hold it, and also tossed in a little polonium and a beryllium copper golf club because that crap was in my way.
and the town blows up.
what kind of "act of God" was that?
same thing for Fukushima.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I would rather the government built and ran them. I trust government workers to stick to engineering spec and scientific guideline more then a company where a CEO will make a larger bonus by putting off storage costs another year.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think /. is turning Japanese, I really think so.
Anyone who thought a tsunami hitting Japan was one in a million need to have there head examined.
Or as least, have their math examined. This was just a issue of bad statistical calculations, along with bad disaster planning.
This just confirms two major an so far insurmountable problems that people have been pointing out.
1. No amount of upgrades will deal with chronic underfunding, poor management and incompetence. New designs don't deal with these problems either because it is next to impossible. There has to be ongoing maintenance and investment, and you have to have a firm date for decomissioning which you don't extend past. All the time for-profit businesses are running the plants this is impossible, even with the existing massive subsidies.
2. The best reactor designs in the world are only good up to about a 7.9 on the Richter scale. The epicentre of this one was a long way from Fukushima but may still have damanged it. If there is one closer to a nuclear plant the outcome is basically undefined and we are just crossing our fingers.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Although Parliament elections in August/Sept. are just about certain the replacement for the PM will be no better able to understand the basics [regarding anything] nor capable to change the 'Nuclear Village Culture' because the new PM will be the candidate of the Nuclear Village Culture.
So it is just a matter of time before the next Government/Industry made disaster, which has already been made and is just waiting for the right moment to occur.
Feeling that squeeze now, aren't ya Japan?
Get the reactors back on you fruitloops. Reactors are safe, the idiots who made Fukushima weren't.
Or let me rephrase that, most reactor designs are safe.
there are lots of reports out and coming, and lots of boiling down hundreds of pages of complex investigation into 20 column-inches, from which, boiled with a pinch of pepper and lots of HappyTalk, you get a 20 second news story.
there are already lots of pages of technical shortcomings, outright ignorance, wishful thinking, dotcom business plans, and pinhead idiots in custom suits strutting before and hiding afterwards trying to protect their secret overseas banking accounts in the wild over this.
Fukushima is pretty much a complete cluster-fuck, a manual of "don't do this" in every direction.
but the Japanese way is one or two men take the blame, grab the sword, and everybody else moves happy through the streets now that the demons are purged.
this report points out the 800-pound gorilla in the corner, whistling past the graveyard, hoping to not attract attention.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There has been a tsunami that killed over 10000 people and demolished multiple cities and dozens of chemical plants and factories. If this was a man-made disaster where the fuck was the planning to prevent it? Why are we still talking about the nuclear plant, where at most a couple of dozen people will die in the next hundred years?
Sure, we could have done more to prevent the damage in Fukushima, like build units from a newer generation (fukushima daichi's sister plant survived the same tsunami, but was slightly younger and thus had much less problems), have better oversight, regulation, emergency response etc. However, that is like asking what could have been done better about shark deaths in Nevada ("noone expected it to happen", "zomg, sharks!"), and totally ignoring deaths by drugs abuse, cancer, transportation accidents and cardiovascular causes in the meantime.
The point is, reinforcing Fukushima would have been a waste of money and effort, money and effort that would have been better spent on building better flood barriers to protect places where people actually live.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why didnt they warn the operators beforehand, that sounds like negligence.
See how that works?
I'm honestly surprised by this.
Not the "it was human error, TEPCO fucked up and could easily have avoided the disaster" part. That was completely expected. I was suspecting as much before they even had it shut down.
Nor am I surprised about the "collusion between industry and regulators". That was also a given.
What I *am* surprised about is that they're admitting to it this quickly. I expected it to be a decade or two before TEPCO or the government would admit that anything but the earthquake/tsunami were to blame. And that they're even blaming their own culture of discipline... wow. That's some harsh self-criticism.
predictable.
"The inquiry report points a finger at collusion between industry executives and regulators"
Anarchists, libertarians, objectivists, classical liberals, and free market economists have all made the explicit case that this is the inevitable outcome of statism applied to the peaceful and voluntary marketplace. The notion that democracy breeds economic fascism has been described in precise detail countless times. These concern has been raised over 100 years ago and have persisted through the years. How long must we suffer the inept domination of central planners before we even consider the arguments why it cannot work? Shall we continue to insist that we just need the right guys in control and then things will be fine? Shall we ignore the evidence and reasoning as to why there is no such person or group of people? Shall we let this corporatist economic environment destroy our civilizations before we decide to stop letting the momentum of history and precedent of popular opinion guide our convictions and begin to actually think critically about the arguments provided? Those who champion more of the same had only credibility with the ignorant. How much longer must even the ignorant be blind to the obvious deception before us?
They are so smart they figured out there was a problem AFTER the fact. If this event could have been avoided then why didn't the Parliament inquire BEFORE the disaster. Oh that's right, it's always easier to point fingers and blame AFTER the fact.
The idea is to be prepared before the accident so that systems fail safe... Having a system that relies on panicked, error prone humans is a dumb way to do business. They thought there systems would fail safe except the disaster was WAY bigger than anything they planned for. Then after the fact politicians who want to sound important point fingers and lay blame.
Seriously, what level of planetary disaster is sufficient for planning purposes? Because, no matter what you plan for, one day something bigger will occur!!!
It is unexcusable to forget to put an answer machine to tell any tsunami to come back after a while. I assume those out-of-the-box nuclear stations do not come prepared. Or maybe they did but they put the message in English thinking tsunamis are like tornadoes.
That's an example of government doing it. Many areas of the former East Germany are toxic cesspools because the government didn't care about proper waste disposal.
When a company does this it has to answer to the government. When a government does this it, in theory only, has to answer to the people. But you have probably noticed how little accountability the government has to the people lately.
Before commenting on this story, people might want to re-read the story about the Onigawa power station's survival that was posted here last March. There's pretty clear evidence that at least some managers of Japanese nuclear-power stations understood the tsunami danger and prepared for it. So the main questions should be: Why wasn't this understood by the entire management chain? And what are they doing to make sure they're preparing for the next such disaster?
I'd think that people in Japan should be checking on which of their power system's managers are busy studying this and related stories, and putting those people in charge of the surviving plants. If they don't, then it's just going to happen again at some unknown future date.
Similar comments would apply in most of the other volcanic zones on the planet. Here in the US, we might be checking to see which managers of critical infrastructure on the West Coast are aware of the story and studying it. We may not have the 1000-year history that the Japanese have, but we do have geological information about similar events along our coast.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Fukushima was an inside job.
Clues: what happened in Fukushima, also happened in Niigata earlier:
FULFORD VS. HAARP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InV0cVH6KZc
Benjamin Fulford reports from Tokyo on a mysterious plasma weapon seen prior to the Niigata earthquake in July, 2007 and red, white and blue lights seen prior to the recent earthquake in China. Both quakes targeted nuclear facilities...coincidence?
Then, just before the Fukushima incident, we see an increase in the magnetic activity caused by haarp (=ionospheric microwave heater) at 2.5 Hz measured by the magnetometer at Gakona. This increase is centered at 2.5 Hz, a frequency that can resonate tectonic plates:
http://www.humanresonance.org/quake_induction1.jpg
As we know from the Niigata incident, HAARP leaves clues such as mysterious plasma clouds visible in the sky (because of the warming effect).
And last, some months after the incident, NASA ( Never A Straight Answer ) creates some downplay BS story about ionospheric heating at Fukushima:
http://www.naturalnews.com/032670_Fukushima_HAARP.html
Recent data released by Dimitar Ouzounov and colleagues from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland highlights some strange atmospheric anomalies over Japan just days before the massive earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11. Seemingly inexplicable and rapid heating of the ionosphere directly above the epicenter reached a maximum only three days prior to the quake, according to satellite observations, suggesting that directed energy emitted from transmitters used in the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) may have been responsible for inducing the quake.
Nasa's downplay theory claims:
Published in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publication Technology Review, the findings are presented alongside a different theory called Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling, which hypothesizes that the heating in the ionosphere may have been caused by the impending earthquake as the fault line released radioactive radon. This theory, of course, is not actually proven, but is instead presented as a possible explanation for the presence of the high-density electrons and emitted infrared radiation that was observed.
Why would they need to explain some theory about why the ionosphere was heated rapidly, if we already know that HAARP is the main known cause for that?
HAARP = ionospheric heater = an array of antennas which are used for heating the ionosphere
Is played at a different level in Japan. Even the most well thought out excuses are dicounted in favor of accountability. I wonder why this hasn't caught on in Europe or the US.
Probably that falling on the sword thing.
nice! but how'd the Israelis cause the tsunami? that's pretty clever of them to blame the earthquake though.
"Since nuclear power is the one technology with the least severe consequences"
[proof damn well required]
It's not a independent investigation, but parlamental - which is reason I don't buy it, because politicians always want to look better in public eye. And current public attitude is fear of nuclear. So let's make it to look like human error, nevermind that it hasn't killed anyone directly, and it was once in a lifetime event.
Mistakes, errors - that's all there. But I would pick a independent scientists and management specialists to vet out them, not politicians.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
No, I'm not talking about political parties. What I mean is, you need some group who are separate and independent from the people responsible for building and operating the reactors, mines, oil wells, etc, who are your regulators. The trick is keeping the regulators from becoming corrupt and losing their independence.
What I mean is, it doesn't matter whether private companies or government, whoever is building and running dangerous facilities NEEDS someone else who is independent looking over their shoulder or they will become complacent, and eventually an incident will occur.
Ask them, if I were to build a nuclear plant in an earth quake prone area, would that be a good idea or bad idea? Most likely they will all agree it's not a good idea. No matter how well the place is built to with stand any, ultimately, you do not want to fudge with mother nature.