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Japanese Court Rules Against Restarting Ohi Reactors
AmiMoJo writes: "A Japanese court has ordered the operator of the Ohi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, not to restart two of its reactors, citing inadequate safety measures. The plant's No. 3 and 4 reactors were halted for regular inspections last September. Local residents filed a lawsuit asking that the reactors be kept offline. They said an estimate of possible tremors is too small, and that the reactors lack backup cooling systems. The operator, Kansai Electric Power Company, has insisted that no safety problems exist."
In this corner, we have the experts who have stake to lie to you.
In this corner, we have a bunch of local idiots being baited by some agenda-driven journalist who is likely to twist facts and probably doesn't understand nuclear safety anyway, so probably thinks non-issues are terrifying while making serious issues out of other things he knows are non-issues.
Who will prevail?!
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That failure took the combined effort of one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded AND a massive tsunami. Even if the safety measures in place were deemed 'adequate' they would never be able to stop that. The safety measures in place have worked fine in that country for the better part of a century, this is overreacting on the grandest scale.
Japan has started to exploit the many Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas trapped in methane hydrates. Clearly that's a better alternative than restarting a power plant that's been operating safely for decades.
How many people has the nuclear power industry killed exactly? For extra credit, compare against coal which has had to pick up the missing supply in Japan.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Once-a-century disasters are something to plan for. There was a host of badly designed pump systems - and business processes. It's not unreasonable to fix them given the cost of their expected failure.
The major thing leading up to the meltdowns was human error, both in the emergency generator rooms / power conduits not being waterproofed, and the decisions regarding what to do with the reactors during an emergency situation. There were other plants that had gotten swamped, but did not suffer meltdowns, all due to waterproofing the emergency generator rooms; If I remember correctly one plant that was swamped and survived had quite literally finished the waterproofing only a few weeks prior.
Not only that, but the reactors most likely could have been saved even after the tsunami hit. The problem was the operators ( rightly, or wrongly ) were too afraid to depressurize the reactor vessels so passive low pressure emergency cooling measures could operate, these would have lasted long enough to get pumps and / or generators on site. This decision not to depressurize was due to public fear of "wah, small amounts of short lived Iodine and and noble radio gasses would escape with the steam" mentality and lead directly ( unknown at the time. the operator actions were quite reasonable and understandable - it is only hindsight that tells us what the best action should have been ) to the larger scale and broader spectrum radio-isotope release.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I'd prefer not to include Chernobyl since it was literally a catastrophe waiting to happen. A reactor with no containment building, really? Nothing like that ever got built outside the Soviet bloc. Even if included, deaths per gigawatt hour from nuclear barely amount to a rounding error when compared to fossil fuel.
I'd say as things are, coal is just as long term a solution in Japan as the nuclear plants. There just aren't that many workable alternatives. Natgas plants perhaps, but recent investigation suggests that methane leaks in production and distribution are probably enough to render greenhouse gas emissions similar in magnitude to coal. Nuclear power has risks of course. Unfortunately the world has magnified those risks a great deal by collective failure to deploy newer and safer reactor technologies. Case in point: Fukushima Daiichi. Generation I plants with known serious failure modes. There's no earthly reason Gen I plants should still be in operation. For comparison, how many businesses are depending on 1960 era computer systems, and how many people drive 1960 cars as primary transportation?
Apportioning the blame for this, in my opinion divides roughly in thirds between corporate sloth/greed, government fecklessness and societal ignorance/paranoia.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
What the operators were forced to deal with after the Tsunami is not nearly as relevent and the fact that the Tsunami left the plant with no emergency power and water intrusion quickly disabled and remaining systems that were battery backed. This was the case because the plant, nor its safety systems, were designed to withstand the Tsunami.
Actually it is quite relevant. The plant could have been saved, and large scale radio-isotope release could have been avoided in the condition the plant was in after the tsunami. The low pressure emergency cooling was not affected by the tsunami, it was not used due to public fear of radiation, and the requirement that some radio-gasses would needs be released when the vessels are depressurized.
Does that mean the operators made the "wrong" choices? We can't know with 100% certainty, but all indications are ( and scientifically backed up in several published papers ) that it would have been the better idea to depressurize the vessels and use the several days worth of passive decay heat capacity of the spent fuel pools and suppression rings that is the backup built in for just this type of emergency. Gravity fed coolant was on hand, the LOC accident then would not have occurred and the fuel would not have melted. The net result would have been significantly reduced amounts of radio-isotopes released ( and all of them gone within ~1 week at most ) and no need for long term evacuation and cleanup.
If my tires are rated for maximum 50 mph, and I'm going 90 mph and lose control, and I tried to swerve and wind up hitting a tree, the problem was not that I swerved the wrong way, the problem was that I put the vehicle in situation it was not designed to safety handle.
It's actually more like you blew your tire while going 55 because your speedometer was slightly off, and saw two fields: one empty but appears to be behind a steep ditch and the other with a few trees in it but has a very shallow ditch. You steered towards the field with the shallower ditch due to fearing rolling the vehicle when encountering the steep ditch.
You ended up hitting one of the trees in the field, but later found out that the ditch in the empty field was just as shallow as the one bordering the field with the trees.
At the time you made the "right" decision. Looking back at it with better data, you made the wrong decision; the empty field would have been much better.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Shi. Which is why yon is used as a replacement in many cases.