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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.'"
the U.S. Navy is one of the largest and one of the oldest operators of nuclear power plants (by hours critical) and has a spotless safety record
If you don't count there loss of the nuclear submarines USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, the radioactive contamination of the USS Guardfish, or both the USS Puffer and the USS Proteus discharging radioactive water into the oceans.
Not to mention I am sure there are a number of other incidents that haven't been declassified yet.
I don't know how well the US Navy ranks amongst other operators of nuclear power plants, but "spotless" is not an accurate description. They may do very well comparatively and the overall harm may be minimal, but they have made their share of mistakes.