Corium found in reactor 3!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

To repeat...

The report said there might have been pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes. “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,”

Meltdown: What Really Happened at Fukushima?

Anything wrong with the report mentioned?

The cooling system obviously started to malfunction before the tsunami had any chance to take down generators. That's what I'd call a serious flaw by design.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Except that the Japanese didn't build the reactors in accordance with GE's recommendations, IAEA's recommendations or even the Japanese government recommendations.

It didn't matter how they were built, once the primary cooling pumps, back up generators, and emergency batteries are removed form the equation, after a Scram.

....

That's the whole point. If the referenced recommendations would have been followed the primary pumps and backup generators wouldn't have shut down as quickly as they did. The issue was the switchgear for the generators getting flooded and rendering the generators useless.

Besides that the back up generators were placed closest to the beach and primary power for cooling pumps was entirely dependent on the grid or that the batteries were only good for a day...

But then nobody figured that a violent earthquake would knockout the electrical grid for more than a few days and that a Tsunami would follow, knocking out the back up generators.

It is possible to make a system so redundant that nothing compromises safety, but then its too expensive to operate.

Compromised, profit motive combined with force ma·jeure, producing an unforeseen catastrophe.

But thats how it always go

originally posted by: intrptr
But then nobody figured that a violent earthquake would knockout the electrical grid for more than a few days and that a Tsunami would follow, knocking out the back up generators.

The sad part is TEPCO's own employees did warn of this possibility in 2008, three years before the disaster happened, but the TEPCO management didn't act on the information. We will probably learn some more details about this in the trial of the three TEPCO executives who have finally been charged:

Former TEPCO bosses to face trial over deadly Fukushima nuclear disaster

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The sad part is TEPCO's own employees did warn of this possibility in 2008, three years before the disaster happened, but the TEPCO management didn't act on the information.

Probably because the owners were locked into investing in Nuclear power, so complex and expensive, so convinced by the US contractors and diplomats that it would be safe, once the ball was set rolling it was anti social to raise any alarm about the details. After all the plants worked for decades trouble free.

Sort of like the US space shuttle program. That cold morning they decided to launch anyway, despite the advance warnings. Be kind of stupid to go back to building more shuttles...

Edit: About scapegoating of three telco sacrificial lambs... the process will stretch for years, costing billions, until people finally get so tired of the whole thing and let them go with a fine and warning...

"don't ever undermine the corporatocracy, ever again" lulz

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: amazing

Not defending what happened in Fukishima (not at all), but to make a general statement as you have is incorrect. There were numerous primary and backup contingency plans at Fukishima. All of them failed. Most of them failed because Japan failed to implement many of these contingency plans fully or properly.

The 'dumping of dirt' on Chernobyl was not only heroic, but it also probably saved millions of lives. What would you have done given the circumstances? They didn't have many other options at that point. It was suicide, and many gave their lives as a result.

There are lots of far more advanced ways to quench nuclear reactions than water, and Fukishima even had some of these capabilities. The problem is, they take power to administer. Without power they were helpless to cool the reactors after they SCRAM'd them. Many of these methods involve injecting products into the reactor chamber to disrupt the nuclear reaction, but again, the injection process takes power.

If you want to get mad and 'go-off' on something related to nuclear power, then go after the people who cut corners, who don't follow engineering recommendations in the interests of cost and/or real estate or deviate from proper procedures. These are the reasons accidents happen, not because nuclear power generation itself cannot be made safe.

Nuclear power doesn't need to "die", the people who make it dangerous and harm others by not following the rules need to be treated like the criminals they are...and maybe that means their punishment should be death (and not just a slap on the wrist).

I see what you're saying, but it's not good enough to say that all of the contingencies where in place but they just failed or that cooling mechanisms failed for lack of power. With something as potentially dangerous as Nuclear, you should have contingencies built upon contingencies, including back up power from batteries or solar and powerlines coming into the plant not just going out.

With Chrnoble, I understand how heroic those actions where but that it had to come to that is idiotic.

When building something like a Nuclear power plant, we should hope for the best, of course, but always, always plan for the worst.

And again, we still don't know what to do with nuclear waste or how to clean it up, just look at the Hanford site and the Billions of dollars being spent there over decades.

We're obviously not smart enough to handle nuclear power or nuclear waste and have no business playing with something we can't handle.

The sentiment still stands, nuclear needs to die off until we evolve enough technologies to handle it safely. We're not there yet, not by a long shot.

originally posted by: PublicOpinion


What's wrong with fighting the good fight to live in a natural environment, while having serious debates about how to achieve this goal? Discourse is actually what democracy was all about as we still had it, now we'd have to speak with one homogenous voice in order to be heard by the oligarchs herd?
Neat trick from the ruling class, gotta give 'em some credit for that. But... still... it's just a neat trick to ridicule dissent. If environmentalists would speak with one voice you folks would say that it sounds like pure propaganda. And I'd have a hard time not to agree with that. You didn't really think this through, did you?

There is no fight so environmentalists can not win or lose. All they can do is things like charge us carbon credits for living and have events like Paris Accord with goals that will be met even if we do nothing. There is no good or bad in all this just current levels of technology. Only technology will replace technology and in the case of energy we will see different more environmentally friendly ways to get it as technology improves.

The horse was the environmental nightmare and the gas car came along, and we see today gas cars are the environmental problem and so the efficient electric car will replace it. We will most likely see reactors go the way of the horse and gas car too at some point, but you can't force it at your will. No one bought the volt car because it sucked and was hardly usable, now give me a 30k car that does 0- 60 in 3 seconds and gets 400 miles on 20 min recharge time and cars will become history...we are close and gas cars/trucks actually have one foot in the grave...we couldn't say this 20 years ago no matter how much environmentalists fought for it.

a reply to: Xtrozero

There is no fight so environmentalists can not win or lose

Go down into the cellar, close all windows and light a candle?