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TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe Get Splashed With Radioactive Water

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-bad-is-it? dept.

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."

5 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oblig by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would be willing to bet that things like this happen frequently at nuclear power plants in the U.S. but they aren't being closely scrutinized so you don't hear about it.

  2. Plumbing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Plumbing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Queue the malcontents to stir up the idiots with OMG TEPCO IS KILLING TEH EARTH!!!1

      Woah, woah, woah. Now hold it right there. We malcontents were saying TEPCO are a bunch of hopeless dipshits somehow trusted to manage nuclear safety coupled with an ingrained cultural stigma towards requesting outside assistance.

      We never said anything about them killing the earth.

  3. How does this happen? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:How does this happen? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      please tell me which pipe is the correct on in this tiny fraction of a plumbing schematic for a power plant

      See, if I was actually qualified for, and responsible to do that, I might try.

      That I don't know how to do it is irrelevant. That they don't know is appalling.

      Because every place I've worked in that had extensive piping that carried dangerous stuff ... the piped were clearly labelled, and people had good schematics of them.

      My dad makes hockey ice, and you can bet your ass that the pipes that carry ammonia for the cooling are all brightly labelled as such. And if the sensors detect anything, he and several other people are all getting paged to look at it right away, because an ammonia leak could wipe out a few city blocks.

      Are you telling me the Japanese nuclear industry can't label pipes and keep good schematics, but people who make hockey ice are onto something new?

      Sorry, not buying it.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.