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Fukushima reactor explosion
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
2 explosions have occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power complex since the earthquake and tsunami that occurred on March 11. As a result of the destruction from the 8.9 magnitude quake, 3 of the 6 reactors at the Fukushima building were damaged, and two have experienced small explosions. Analysts fear that the incident signals a possible conclusion of the nuclear energy industry. What do you guys think? I hope everything will get better soon enough for our Japanese fellows.
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I don't know about anyone else, but I'm actually quite impressed that some of Japan's oldest nuclear power plants have stood up to the biggest earthquake in the countries history, followed by a tsunami, and not gone into meltdown (which btw, wouldn't be a Chernobyl situation). The real debating point about nuclear fuel is how to deal with the waste, not the possibility of disaster, imo.
I would hardly call a tsunami negligence.
It's worth noting that there are plenty of other installations in that area, operating just fine, or only shut down safely because of superficial damage, to reduce risk of incident or because they are manned down as a result of being in the exclusion zone.
The earthquake may have triggered the incident, but the cause is likely to be negligent management and inadequate design. (As is so often the case)
Yes, to a certain extent it's a heritage facility, but that doesn't mean you can't make modifications during it's operating life to improve the safety of the design. And if you operate in an earth quake zone, then you sure as hell shouldn't be storing waste ponds on top of your reactor buildings. Actually, you shouldn't be doing that wherever you operate. Even an old facility can keep up with technology and have reasonable back up systems for emergency equipment. And have enough fuel for the back up pumps to run.
Yes, it's not just bad design, it's poor maintenance over the years, and poor operational discipline and practises as well.
I think people are still forgetting the fact that the reactor/plant could have stayed in the exact same state, but none of this would have happened if it hadnt been for that pesky tsunami.
Or an oversight by an operator.
If you put something in a tsunami region, you need to account for that. It's not like they come without warning.
How feasable was it to foresee that this was ever going to happen? It is always great commenting on things with the benefit of hindsight.
This isn't the only nuclear reactor on that stretch and the others aren't having the same problems.
That earthquakes cause tsunamis? Very.
As slarti points out, there's only one nuclear power plant having a problem. It's not hindsight, it's decent design and management. Yes, there are plenty of cases where it doesn't happen but that doesn't mean it should.
Shit happens and sometimes it isn't foreseeable. In this case the implications are potentially high, although the media are hyping things as usual. I get the feeling that several editors will orgasm if the plant goes up.
The real issue in Japan at the moment is the lack of food, accommodation and water for the survivors but that isn't getting half the coverage. Not to mention the murderous regimes in Bahrain and Libya using this as cover to kill as many political opponents as possible.
There's a big LNG plant down the road, with huge liquified gas tanks. Much more vulnerable to seismic activity than nuclear power plants, but absolutely fine because it was designed and managed right.
There are lots of other problems currently in Japan, but blaming nature for nuclear meltdown makes much sexier headlines.
Well I would say that nature was a pretty big factor.
In the wastelands that have appeared there are solitary houses that have been left untouched in the middle of the devestation. I'd argue it's less to do with design and far more to do with luck, or lack of.
As can be seen from the identical reaction further down the coast, these stations were built to withstand earthquakes like the one they had. As can be seen from the other reactor they were also built to withstand tsunamis. Sometimes, shit happens. In this case the backup generators got knocked off line long enough to cause an explosion. If it were an inherent design flaw the other reactor would have suffered the same fate but it didn't, and why is that?
The Japanese know how to build stuff to withstand earthquakes, look at Tokyo. A few buildings swayed and that was it. New Zealand's earthquake was orders of magnitude weaker and destroyed most of a city.
If it's a one in one thousand year event then the lifespan of a nuclear power facility makes the chance of it happening very high.
Though one would assumne they would decommission them....
Shit happens is a very poor excuse. If you want the world to be a safe place, we need to not accept 'shit happens' as the explanation behind major industrial incidents. The inadequacies may only have been a problem because shit happened, but that doesn't mean that they weren't already there. It also doesn't mean that they aren't currently there in other nuclear plants in Japan or other parts of the world that need to learn from this experience.
If you don't take a critical view of the causes of incidents, how can you try and prevent their recurrence?
(I should probably mention, inherently safe design is somewhat linked to my day job so probably have more specific perspective than most)
5% chance of causing nuclear catasrophe aren't odds many people would think are reasonable.
As this has never happened before, there has never been a similar critical review.
Just because 50 goes into 1000 twenty times, doesnt mean there is a 1 in 20 chance of it happening in the lifetime of a reactor.
There's a lot that can be learnt from hindsight.
And as 50 goes into 1000 20 times, that does in fact mean that there's a 1 in 20 chance of it happening in the lifetime of a reactor. That's exactly how probability works. I'nit.
Year 0 to year 50
Year 1 to year 51
Year 2 to year 52
Year 3 to year 53
Year 4 to year 54
Year 5 to year 55
As opposed to
Year 0 to year 50
Year 51 to year 100
Year 101 to Year 150
See where I am going here, yes you can only fit 50 in 1,000 twenty times if you do it back to back, but there are a lot more variations that a 50 year period can fit in than just doing it back to back.
Look at in another way. This might be easier to make sense of. Each year, there's a 1 in 1000 chance of event happening, if you're running a plant for 50 years, then you've got 50 years worth of that 1 in 1000 years. Which is 50 in 1000, which is 1 in 20.