Slashdot Mirror
TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe Get Splashed With Radioactive Water
An anonymous reader writes "A day after TEPCO workers mistakenly turned off cooling pumps serving the spent pool at reactor #4 at the crippled nuclear plant comes a new accident — 6 workers apparently removed the wrong pipe from a primary filtration system and were doused with highly radioactive water. They were wearing protection yet such continuing mishaps and 'small mistakes' are becoming a pattern at the facility."
http://imgur.com/5fYFq3P
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
there is no shame in calling a friend for help.
The most troublesome thing about this nuclear pipe water tipping incident is that there is nothing funny about it. What possible humor is there in this? Shall we call the place "Tipco" or something? Shall we make jokes about the water itself, and say silly things like, "Oh, they spilled water? Hopefully it wasn't heavy water! Get it? Hehe." Dumb stuff like that. Or talk about the fact that at least they were wearing protection. So they won't get a disease. Surely, that joke would be pregnant with humor. This is the trouble with posting on Happy Hump Day.
If they keep this up, we'll have 3 eyed fish in no time.
I hear circus music every time I read a story about TEPCO.
Line Up! Drug tests all 'round.
Failing that, DNA tests to see if Mom and Dad were siblings may provide shocking revelations.
. . . the boys should not be trusted with nuclear anything. They know how to take notes and make lists, but when it comes to handling risk, they're clueless.
I once found a radioactive test sample in a dumpster when I worked for a medical device manuf. in Tokyo - there are many more stories to go along with that one. Like how we were told if there was a fire to first order a pizza, then tell the firemen to follow the delivery to the fire. A lumber yard caught on fire one night, and we watched as the sirens and flashing lights on the fire trucks zig zagged around the neighborhood - 45 minutes later, the fire was out and they still hadn't found it.
An outside multi-national agency must be brought in or these types of calamities will only continue with TEPCO.
Every time TEPCO appears in the news I swear I hear yet another "Doh" soundbyte.
I think tepco has now become the new 2013 slang word for cluster fuck or a dumbshit move.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Is that somehow someway, the only collection of people on earth who have actually seen an atomic detonation and fallout event in their front yards were convinced to allow a six unit fission plant anywhere on the island. On their volcanicly active, earthquake prone...ISLAND.
Apparently nopes have a shorter half-life than stupidity.
Queue the malcontents to stir up the idiots with OMG TEPCO IS KILLING TEH EARTH!!!1
Stop it. They're handling vast quantities of water in thousands pipes, tanks, tunnels and pumps. Some of it is going to leak. Some of it will spill. Sometimes it will get on someones rad suit. This isn't incompetence or the end of the world. It is the natural and expected consequence of dealing with fucking plumbing.
Whatever. This hysteria has an expiration date; after the 50th OMG THEY SPILT SOMETHING story people will get tired of it and the media will seek out some new source of hysteria.
That is, at least, as it should be. It would be nice if we could just not indulge this stupid shit to begin with.
Its almost like the are in a culture where you can't call out people's mistakes and follow orders blindly.
... this is what happens when all the smart people stay well away.
And that, boys and girls, is where tentacle monsters come from.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
In Other News... three giant flying TEPCO workers have been spotted flying around town.
How do you accidentally remove the wrong pipe when you're working with nuclear stuff?
I've worked in the software and IT industry for quite a few years, and in that time I've learned that there are things you do that need to be precise, because you can make a hell of a mess if you don't. To do this, you measure twice, measure a few more times, and have your second who has been watching what you're doing confirm you're doing what you expect to be.
I learned this from maintaining production systems for business critical stuff, and a few things for which lives could literally be on the line. But at the end of the day, it's still less dangerous and critical than working on a nuclear plant.
This just sounds to me like either they're fumbling around in the dark, working from incomplete plans and don't actually know what the parts are, or are just simply not taking time to do the diligence on what they're doing.
Especially when it's your ass that's going to get splashed with highly radioactive water.
For a nation which has a reputation for fastidious attention to detail, obsessive safety drills, and engineering excellence ... how the hell are they ending up with a company which has made so many 'mistakes' in this?
Once again, I have to wonder if these guys are actually qualified to be running nuclear reactors. Because this is two accidents in a few days, and I get the impression that a lot of this was also caused by human error.
The mind boggles.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
More than likely the workers are all getting fatigued and small mistakes are starting.
It's well beyond time for the Japanese government to bring the Japanese military in to bring this under control. After that an international effort to assist Japan in any way required. Even considering the pride of the nation as a factor it's now becoming an international problem for any country that shares the pacific ocean.
This is well beyond TEPCO's ability and expertise, they are a utilities company. Furthermore it was their negligence through nonfeasance that got us into this mess in the first place. A criminal investigation should be conducted and the future of the company considered.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
More than likely the workers are all getting fatigued and small mistakes are starting.
It's well beyond time for the Japanese government to bring the Japanese military in to bring this under control. After that an international effort to assist Japan in any way required. Even considering the pride of the nation as a factor it's now becoming an international problem for any country that shares the pacific ocean.
This is well beyond TEPCO's ability and expertise, they are a utilities company. Furthermore it was their negligence through nonfeasance that got us into this mess in the first place. A criminal investigation should be conducted and the future of the company considered.
Replying to you because I accidentally moderated "Offtopic" instead of "Insightful", oops. Apropos of your comment, I'm really tired today and it's been a long day at work.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
News from Fukushima? Excellent! Let me update my Tohoku Earthquake Casualty Report. Here it was yesterday:
Deaths..Injuries/Illness..Location/Cause
.....0.................2..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Radiation exposure)
.....2................37..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Earthquake / tsunami)
.15000..............6000..Rest of Japan
Here it is today:
Deaths..Injuries/Illness..Location/Cause
.....0.................2..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Radiation exposure)
.....2................37..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Earthquake / tsunami)
.15000..............6000..Rest of Japan
TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe
Get Splashed With Radioactive Water
Three Eyed Fish Swims Out
It is difficult to understand why TEPCO is still in charge. Their record for managing this mess is not appealing.
I grow tired to reading with radiative elements and contaminated materials being labeled merely "toxic."
Sitting in a room for few hours with a closed bottle of bleach won't terminally wound you, not like the water leaking from the Fukishima plant.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It seems a lot like SNPP
the plant where Homer Simpson is working?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Radioactive Clown Music.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
My last post on this topic a couple days ago was "I'm starting to get the impression that Tepco only hired idiots." This has now been 100% confirmed.
I was going to make the same comment. It is getting ridiculous every time something happens at the facility slashdot reports it as if no other nuclear disaster had it mistakes.
Having said that I would expect TEPCO to learn lessons from others mistakes. However this is only really the second such MAJOR failure/meltdown of a nuclear plant.
So .... why not have colour coded pipes? It's not like the pipes are multiuse. Unless they don't want to freak the workers out.
The reactors were too old. They should have been mothballed 15 years ago. The failsafe system was redundant, but not inherent. This is a mistake. If the workers need a complex set of maps and drawings and with all their skill and caution, they still make a mistake, then clearly the design of the plant is overly complex. I know there are people who cry out "destroy them all", but really, there is no good replacement for nuclear power. Wind, water and solar are no replacement. They just aren't. Where I live, its 8 watts per square metre. 8 watts during the daytime, at its peak. 8 watts if the panels were 100% efficient. That's what the sun puts out. My house uses a lot more power than that. Cutting back is not an option when its in the middle of winter. I already use LED lighting. I already use efficient equipment. We need nuclear power. We need clean, safe, nuclear power. We need modern designs. 99.9% of all nuclear plants use a 50 year old design. Modern designs don't have the problems of older systems. Why do we still use them?
It is getting ridiculous every time something happens at the facility slashdot reports it as if no other nuclear disaster had it mistakes.
It's salamitaktik from Tepco and the nuclear power industry's reputation managers. .
They're releasing a steady stream of "meh" stories to desensitize the public in the leadup to a genuinely damaging story. Something has gone badly wrong, and they'll tell us about it when we're all thoroughly jaded with these puff-pieces.
Slashdot reports it as news, because that's what it's being paid to do.
Yes, it would be detectable. But that doesn't mean it would be at levels that pose a significant incremental risk to the wider ocean environment or human health.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Should we militarize the entire American workforce given that 13 Americans die every day in workplace accidents?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I was going to make the same comment. It is getting ridiculous every time something happens at the facility slashdot reports it as if no other nuclear disaster had it mistakes.
Having said that I would expect TEPCO to learn lessons from others mistakes. However this is only really the second such MAJOR failure/meltdown of a nuclear plant.
Well, it might be they keep making mistakes, it might be they're just paying for past mistakes. Kind of like whatever ass goblin did the wiring in our datacenter originally; the wire which is normally color coded to mean 'ground' in fact carries live current. (that was a fun outage) So maybe they removed the wrong pipe, and maybe they removed the one the design said they should, only it wasn't what it said it should be. The story doesn't really give any details.
Great link, thank you.
In all likelihood, it was a second or third tier subcontractor's contract/temp employee who did this. Which means that was probably a somewhat recently unemployed and possibly homeless person from Osaka trucked up by mafia-shady subcontractors on 6 month or less contracts. No TEPCO boys dirtying their dainty hands.
The real kicker is the 2 year contract worker limits on employment means there will be precious few contractor employees on site with more than 2 years experience (hell, most probably got bounced at 6 months). The contract employee hiring merry-go-round is so fast that proper documentation of rad exposure to the workers is hopelessly failing, which is particularly bad as this would normally be considered a particularly socially vulnerable class of worker.
TEPCO has for a long time before the accident been using homeless subcontractor workers for high rad maintenance work (turbine and steam pipe inspection/cleaning) who are dismissed after exceeding estimated lifetime dosages (you think they actually clocked the individual workers with dosage film badges?), so this is standard operating policy for them. Why are we still leaving them in charge?
They got people in Japan who can read Japanese signs. Chinese vistors!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I didn't realize made-up numbers were so insightful. If you added up everyone who ever lived, you'd still be several orders of magnitude too large.
Besides, you're not very informed. It's the short-lived contamination you have to worry about. I'm much more worried about highly radioactive waste that might contaminate an area for ~30-50 years, than some lousy, low-grade radiation that might raise the natural background radiation level by some pitiful percentage of the radiation dose you get from eating a banana for a thousand years.
Finally, if you're you want extinction-level events to worry about, watch out for large comets and asteroids, or nuclear war. It's simply not realistic to expect a power plant to destroy everything. Not even Chernobyl managed that, and it was as bad as we've ever seen.
A silly old bastard was milking a cow
The silly old bastard he didn't know how
He pulled on the tail instead of the tit
The silly old bastard got covered in shit
Would it be detectable? The background radiation would be many times higher than anything Fukushima caused, unless the type of radiation is different enough to pick out of the background.
Learn to love Alaska
Again more proof that TEPCO should receive an award for providing equal opportunity employment to the mentally handicapped!
The people working there are probably not very qualified or intelligent, I mean anyone who was would not be there. These people probably can't find work elsewhere. I imagine the danger pay of being around that much radiation is very attractive to certain people, who are willing to take the risk of cancer in later life for money now.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Known unstable and dangerously radioactive environment. Workers fully aware of dangers and thus, arguably, more than a little careful about their every move. And still, dangerous mistakes were made. Given the profound consequences of human mistakes in the operation of nuclear reactors, tell me why, again, that it's a good idea to build them?
Yes, occasionally incidents like this happen. There are 100 reactors at 60 sites in the US, and at each of those reactors, 6-12 pieces of equipment get tagged out, dissambled and worked on each day. Offhand, I'd say incidents 'like' this (That is to say, embarassing screw-ups with managable consequences but no catastrophic outcome) happen perhaps 5 times a year. (100 reactors*250 working days*6 work items = >150,000 oppurtunities for errors.)
It wouldn't be accurate to say that it's not closely scrutinized- the resident NRC inspector at each site is aware of everything that happens at each site. As long as the incidents are managed properly and happen rarely, these incidents won't even be a footnote in the NRC public reports.
From what I understand, the NRC is much more strigent than the japanese equivalent, and US Nuclear Emergency Preparedness has always been way ahead of the Japanese. After 9/11, for example, the NRC ordered a whole new level disaster response capability for every US nuclear site. I would say that if the japanese had done the same, the Fukushima Diachii Reactor cores would still be intact. The NRC has ordered new post-Fukushima contigency plans, but these additional measures are rather simple given that they build on post-9/11 contigencies finished years ago.
I read somewhere that they're soon going to begin trying to pull the 1331 rods out of spent fuel pool #4 (the full one on the first floor), one by one, without dropping any to the bottom of the pool. That sounded like a very risky but necessary operation. I sincerely hope that there won't be *any* news about it except for before and after the successful operation.
GO TEPCO! The world doesn't hate you, it cheers you on, guys and gals!
PS. Triskaidekaphobia is lame.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
The only protection worthwhile is protecting the respiratory and digestive system, because anything going in that way will stay long. These people got the same dosage as if they had been doing this naked, but with filter-masks. Might not be a good idea for any of them to reproduce now and they have won a significantly increased risk of cancer as reward for their incompetence.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
is "don't hire dumbasses" a lesson or a rule?
surgeons spend 10's of thousands in x marks the spot training. Nature compensates by giving u two of most things.
>second such MAJOR failure/meltdown
Wrong.
Just for starters:
SL-1 prototype at the National Reactor Testing Station (three killed)
WindScale (Sellafield)
Fermi Fast Breeder (we just got lucky or Detroit would have been trashed)
Lucens reactor, Vaud, Switzerland
The list is LONG.
en. wikipedia.org/wiki /Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents