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The Fukushima accident was preventable

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Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#91

Post by nitrogen »

monochromatic wrote: post #25
bsder wrote: post #22

Of course it was, as were things like the explosions afterward. However, management always gets in the way--either up front, because there is profit pressure, or on the backend, because there is profit and/or political pressure. This paper covers the up front failures. However, backend failures, like spraying water on the core ( NOT one of the established procedures because calm engineers knew that the reactor could…

> Reactors should not be for-profit. Maybe. The motivations are different for a government project, but I'm not convinced that they're better.

There are other organizational types beside government and for-profit, and even those two aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#92

Post by nickff »

alricb wrote: post #86
nickff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read that many times, and it makes some sense. The issue with this line of reasoning is that the move would be a design change which is not required by the specification (as I have read and understood it), which would have been seen as unnecessary waste at the time. A study which I would find more important and useful than the one here would be a cost/benefit analysis of increasing all specifications relating…

It's very hard to estimate the probability of very rare events like tsunamis and earthquakes, so you kind of have to use heuristics to get a reasonable "design basis" event. Then you design your system to survive said event. The argument the authors make is that the event was improperly chosen (too low). A proper choice of event would have led TEPCo to conclude that they had to mitigate the danger posed by a higher f…

This thinking is using hindsight bias.

If you had been more cautious with respect to this one type of event at this one plant, you would have prevented this problem at a low cost. The problem is that only really tells you that 'if you know what's going to happen, you can do a really good job planning for it', which is rather obvious and completely useless.

My point is that if you were to have been more cautious in the overall specification for the plant (because, again, the plant was never designed to survive the type of event it was subjected to,) it is not clear whether the generators would have been moved (as that may not have been a high priority compared to other improvements), or even if they had, what the cost/benefit ratio would be. You have to remember that there may be many other events which may have appeared more likely than large earthquakes and tsunamis, and those would probably have been seen as more cost-effective safety enhancements, and would have been waste. In addition, this heightened standard would be applied to all the power plants subject to similar regulation, which would have been further waste.

The important question is not what the cost/benefit ratio for moving generators at Fukuhima before the tsunami would have been, but what the cost/benefit ratio for taking precautions against all events of similar likelihood and impact in would be for all power plants (or even all infrastructure) would be.

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#93

Post by scriptman »

bsder wrote: post #22

Of course it was, as were things like the explosions afterward. However, management always gets in the way--either up front, because there is profit pressure, or on the backend, because there is profit and/or political pressure. This paper covers the up front failures. However, backend failures, like spraying water on the core ( NOT one of the established procedures because calm engineers knew that the reactor could…

Wasn't the organisation that built Chernobyl a state owned company and in many ways equivalent to a not for profit?

Government owned or not for profit doesn't necessarily mean better. In many cases it's worse.

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#94

Post by zurn »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #40
maxerickson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This report directly disagrees with Further, at the time of its commissioning, the tsunami it experienced was accepted by the best engineering data at the time to be impossible. Directly. This part uses scare quotes to describe the 'quality' of the work: Its initial application was based on the 3.122 m measurement local tsunami height (above Onahama Peil (O.P.) reference sea level), observed during the 1960 Great Chi…

I believe I misquoted the IAEA, but I did find the actual report [1] which talked about the Tsunami hazard. As reported it was "Fukishima's tsnumani vulnerability has been regularly updated with the latest accepted methodology." (and I relayed that as meeting the standards of the time) but the actual report also concludes that the methodology was insufficient because it did not consider beyond the most recent few hun…

The article talks about the Soloviev & Go catalogue how it wasn't taken into account: "Presumably on the basis of these studies, [Soloviev & Go] assigned it a tsunami intensity I=4, which is one of their highest values for Japan tsunamis. Yet, in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident, it has been argued repeatedly that the Jōgan tsunami had not been documented until 2001 [17], well after the design of the NPP"

Also, the 2007 journal paper that found insufficient protections at Fukushima: "The senior author of [46] was then a TEPCO scientist, while another two co-authors are two of the most senior tsunami engineers in Japan. We wonder how disappointed they must have been on 26 November 2010, when, in the symposium organized by JNES, they found out that TEPCO did not appear to have heeded their recommendations [46] in its re-assessment of Fukushima Dai-ichi"

I haven't read the whole report, these are just 2 that I picked up.

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#97

Post by DonHopkins »

jakeogh wrote: post #46
bsder wrote: post #22

Of course it was, as were things like the explosions afterward. However, management always gets in the way--either up front, because there is profit pressure, or on the backend, because there is profit and/or political pressure. This paper covers the up front failures. However, backend failures, like spraying water on the core ( NOT one of the established procedures because calm engineers knew that the reactor could…

"sat on their hands, done nothing" That's how it should be, but in this case not doing anything was not an option. The passive (gravity fed) cooling system on the first reactor to melt had it's valve's almost closed when they lost power. Seems like a bad design to even have valves on it but I'm not a Nuclear Engineer. And people at Daini were able to prevent meltdowns by hand-laying miles of high current cable. Reaso…

>"sat on their hands, done nothing"

Sounds like Bush's response to Katrina.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Was Cheney the big dog they hired to bark at Bush in case he attempted to touch any of the buttons?

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#98

Post by pbhjpbhj »

scriptman wrote: post #93
bsder wrote: post #22

Of course it was, as were things like the explosions afterward. However, management always gets in the way--either up front, because there is profit pressure, or on the backend, because there is profit and/or political pressure. This paper covers the up front failures. However, backend failures, like spraying water on the core ( NOT one of the established procedures because calm engineers knew that the reactor could…

Wasn't the organisation that built Chernobyl a state owned company and in many ways equivalent to a not for profit? Government owned or not for profit doesn't necessarily mean better. In many cases it's worse.

If we flip the question around - what is it about the profit motive that makes it better? If workers can design and construct a better nuclear power plant why couldn't they do that - within the same budget constraints, etc. - unless there's some third party getting paid just for being rich.

Is greed really the most important thing to add to a human endeavour to make it successful?

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#99

Post by spronkey »

msandford wrote: post #88
ChuckMcM wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you agree that the findings are unsustainable or not. Two things that the IAEA had established were that 1) Fukishima survived the earthquake as designed, and was in the process of shutting down when the tsunami hit. 2) The tsunami disabled primary and backup power to the cooling systems which was the proximate cause of the failure. Further, at the time of its commissioning, the tsunami it experienced…

> 2) The tsunami disabled primary and backup power to the cooling systems which was the proximate cause of the failure. What I find really disgusting is that they had backup BACKUP generators trucked in and they couldn't use them because the plugs didn't match up. IT'S A FREAKING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT! DO YOUR JOB, CUT THE CONNECTORS OFF AND MAKE A CONNECTION! Literally EVERY ONE of the people who worked there are dire…

I'd go one step back and say what on earth were backup generators doing in a basement in the first place.

This just completely blows my mind. It is literally the worst vertical level they could have put them!

I guess they took defence in depth a bit too literally...

Re: The Fukushima accident was preventable

#100

Post by spronkey »

ori_b wrote: post #67
jakeogh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sat on their hands, done nothing" That's how it should be, but in this case not doing anything was not an option. The passive (gravity fed) cooling system on the first reactor to melt had it's valve's almost closed when they lost power. Seems like a bad design to even have valves on it but I'm not a Nuclear Engineer. And people at Daini were able to prevent meltdowns by hand-laying miles of high current cable. Reaso…

> The passive (gravity fed) cooling system on the first reactor to melt had it's valve's almost closed when they lost power. Seems like a bad design to even have valves on it but I'm not a Nuclear Engineer. It wasn't a great design. But that's what happens when you take reactors that were built before Chernobyl, were optimized for producing material suitable for nuclear bombs instead of safety, and then run them long…

But they weren't because money. So people die.
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