Fukushima Nuclear Worker Accidentally Toggles Off Cooling Pumps

An anonymous reader writes "A Tepco employee carelessly pressed a button shutting off cooling pumps that serve the spent fuel pool in reactor #4 — thankfully a backup kicked in before any critical consequences resulted. The question remains just how vulnerable to simple mistakes (such as a single button push) are these spent fuel pools, filled nearly to capacity as they are with over 12,000 spent fuel rods? From the article: 'The latest incident is another reminder of the precarious state of the Fukushima plant, which has suffered a series of mishaps and accidents this year. Earlier this year, Tepco lost power to cool spent uranium fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi plant after a rat tripped an electrical wire.'"

Comments

Safe, clean, and too cheap to meter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently not that vulnerable
since a backup system kicked in to prevent any critical consequences.

Exactly! We need to keep in mind that nothing can possibly go wrong - why, it'd probably take an earthquake to interfere with a nuke plant, and eathquakes and tsunamis are purely mythical.

It's perfectly OK for TEPCO's operators to make mistakes - since nothing can go wrong, and backup systems always work, as proven conclusively by this incident.