Japan's Annual Nuclear Drill Highlights Problems

AmiMoJo writes The Japanese government's disaster drill for nuclear power plants has highlighted some issues. The 2-day drill began on Sunday on the scenario that an earthquake had triggered an accident at the Shika plant in Ishikawa Prefecture. A group of residents gathered at a port to flee in boats on the assumption that the earthquake had made roads unusable. But the sea was too rough to sail, and officials had not considered an alternative in case of bad weather. Participating organizations were connected via a video link, but there were problems with the sound. Officials at the Toyama Prefectural government office could not hear part of the evacuation order.

Comments

Re:Good job.

[i kan reed]

Yeah, and it definitely means they need a follow-up drill to see if they fixed the problems in the near future. Recurring problems should be spotted and taken into overall understanding of nuclear risk.

Identified and fixable problems, on the other hand, are going to be misused by anti-nuclear advocates.

Re:Good job.

[SixFactor]

I second. Drills are the way to identify and correct flaws, as well as to identify areas for improvement. It is unfortunate that it took a one-two punch to turn around Japan's nuclear culture, but hopefully they come out stronger, as we had following the Three Mile Island Unit 2 event in 1979. Here in the U.S., even now, emergency drills at nuclear power plants continue to optimize emergency processes, and to test a plant's (including and especially its staff's) response to a significant adverse event. The typical drill postulates a series of malfunctions that inevitably lead to a radiation release, which then triggers an evacuation. This latter part is designed to exercise local and state resources as well.

After Fukushima, the paradigm got turned a bit on its head: instead of a nuclear plant event causing the emergency, it's a natural calamity that degrades and destroys infrastructure that could lead to a radiation release. As a result, the lessons learned prompted at least one order, which requires all U.S. plants to be ready for events that are beyond their current design bases. In other words, if your plant was designed for a Category 3 hurricane, be ready to handle one that's much more devastating. As you might expect, this is no small expense, but the U.S utilities have committed to making the preparations, and you can find descriptions of these on the NRC website.