11–20 of 28 posts
Long article, but the best one I've run across explaining the inputs used to choose design tolerances, the advances in those methods over the years, and where the Fukushima design and later maintenance was and wasn't in accordance with best practices. The overall conclusion is that it was known by the early 2000s that the plant's worst-case tsunami estimate, used as its design basis, was no longer sufficient, given i…
Long article, but the best one I've run across explaining the inputs used to choose design tolerances, the advances in those methods over the years, and where the Fukushima design and later maintenance was and wasn't in accordance with best practices. The overall conclusion is that it was known by the early 2000s that the plant's worst-case tsunami estimate, used as its design basis, was no longer sufficient, given i…
Isn't everything preventable with the benefit of hindsight?
I don't think it's really relevant. The point is not that there is a way to have safe nuclear energy, the point is that the worst case scenario is catastrophic, and that I don't trust any company or government to do what's necessary, especially if they're strapped for cash.
The worst case scenario of a natural disaster is also catastrophic, and they don't even have significant benefits. Nuclear power does, as it doesn't produce greenhouse gasses, and reduces dependence on fossil fuels. And like the other comment said, new types of reactors are completely different and we shouldn't have an irrational fear of nuclear power in general because of accidents like this.
I, too, am opposed to natural disasters. (?)
Long article, but the best one I've run across explaining the inputs used to choose design tolerances, the advances in those methods over the years, and where the Fukushima design and later maintenance was and wasn't in accordance with best practices. The overall conclusion is that it was known by the early 2000s that the plant's worst-case tsunami estimate, used as its design basis, was no longer sufficient, given i…
I don't know Japan's geography, so, maybe it is possible for it to have tsunamis everywere. However, if there is some part of Japan's territory that is safe from tsunamis, wouldn't it be easier to just build those reactors there, and not in a place that is known to have tsunamis since, at least, the year 684 AD?
This is from memory; feel free to correct me if and as I'm wrong.
Such approaches can also be spun positively as "economic development packages/projects". Whenever such is said, the observer should look critically at who is really benefiting -- as often as not, I think, the project owners' interests come ahead of, and sometimes at the cost of, those of local residents.
Ideally, all parties gain. But to do so, amongst other things someone has to keep those in power from cutting too many corners.
Long article, but the best one I've run across explaining the inputs used to choose design tolerances, the advances in those methods over the years, and where the Fukushima design and later maintenance was and wasn't in accordance with best practices. The overall conclusion is that it was known by the early 2000s that the plant's worst-case tsunami estimate, used as its design basis, was no longer sufficient, given i…
I don't know Japan's geography, so, maybe it is possible for it to have tsunamis everywere. However, if there is some part of Japan's territory that is safe from tsunamis, wouldn't it be easier to just build those reactors there, and not in a place that is known to have tsunamis since, at least, the year 684 AD?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know Japan's geography, so, maybe it is possible for it to have tsunamis everywere. However, if there is some part of Japan's territory that is safe from tsunamis, wouldn't it be easier to just build those reactors there, and not in a place that is known to have tsunamis since, at least, the year 684 AD?
I haven't read the OP article, yet, but as I vaguely recall from past media reporting on the topic, I believe one of the reasons such sites were chosen is that the were economically fairly poor. The jobs were welcome and outweighed residents' safety concerns. (Perhaps safety concerns were also somewhat diminished by said residents having on average a lower degree of independent information and/or education.) This is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can dramatically slow reactors down, but you can't actually 'shut down' because simply decay produces significant amounts of heat. So the real problem at Fukushima was the need to be able to passively cool a reactor indefinitely in that 'slow' state without human interaction and that's where they failed. Sure, if they had power and none of the connectors had failed it would have also been ok, but without long ter…
Yes, I understand that you can't just turn them "off." It's easiest just to say that it's shut off if it's unable to do anything really. I think you missed everything in my previous post. All new designs passively cool. You can have safe (comparative to coal and gas) nuclear power.
Our "coaches," all senior nuke officers, had us work through the details of some what-if scenarios. Funny thing, we didn't seem to have covered those particular scenarios in our initial training.
It was pretty scary; to this day I'm not convinced that conventional-design civilian nuclear reactors belong anywhere near population centers.
What worried me wasn't the technology itself, but the human fallibility. In the Navy nuclear program, we had the occasional [foul]-up even though we were ferocious about doing things right. We used checklists for everything, even though we were required to have memorized practically every procedure, especially emergency procedures. (In an emergency, the first thing you did was to take the "immediate actions" to put the plant in a safe condition. The second thing you did was to get out the appropriate checklist and start working through it with your watch team.) We second-checked each other's work, and both the worker and the second-checker had to sign off on the work. Noncompliance with the prescribed safety procedures (and with the prescribed serious attitude) was guaranteed to get you in big trouble. The Navy systematically collected and disseminated lessons learned from throughout the nuclear fleet, and every nuclear ship's nuke operators routinely trained on those lessons. All this derived from the tone at the top, set early on by Admiral Rickover.
Both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were caused (so far as is publicly known) by cascading human errors; apparently the same was true at Fukushima. I have no experience whatsoever in the civilian nuclear industry, but these accidents have reinforced my doubts about whether a civilian work force, even one heavily populated by ex-Navy types, can achieve the kind of zero-defect culture we strove for in the Navy.