Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time • Hacker News Board

Re: Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time

#31

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #14

baseballmerpeak wrote: post #3

NOVA's documentary on Fukushima [1] is a very informative watch and shows the immense challenges faced by TEPCO. I don't think they will be convicted. [1] - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/nuclear-disaster.html

The blame should not be with the operators, but with decision makers who signed off on a fatally flawed plant design. Really, you'd think it was common sense: if you absolutely need these generators in case of a disaster, like a flood, don't put the generators and their gear/infrastructure at a lower flood level! Much the same mistake was repeated many times in Houston, and came to light after Hurricane Ike. Other th…

Common sense isn't common.

But the issues you mention (and others) have been solved by the aviation industry. Nuke plants and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig could have benefited immensely from consultation with airframe engineers. A lot of those faults that doomed them could have been inexpensively corrected.

I always remember the backup generators in New Orleans that were put in the basements. Precisely the time you'd need the backup generators was when the basements were flooding. Oops.

Re: Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time

#32

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #28

stcredzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame should not be with the operators, but with decision makers who signed off on a fatally flawed plant design. Really, you'd think it was common sense: if you absolutely need these generators in case of a disaster, like a flood, don't put the generators and their gear/infrastructure at a lower flood level! Much the same mistake was repeated many times in Houston, and came to light after Hurricane Ike. Other th…

In hindsight it is obvious, but at the time of construction, you would have to justify spending money to protect against both a 9.0 earthquake (pretty rare) and a tsunami larger than one ever recorded at the same time . Which can only happen if you have the 9.0 quake right off your coastline. At the time the plants were built, there was no geologist on the planet that believed Japan could even have a 9.0 quake, or a…

The faults could have been corrected at only minor cost.

Re: Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time

#33

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

marze wrote: post #17

The people who lived near the plants lost everything, perhaps 80000 of them. I'm not sure what became of them, but I'm pretty sure no one came up and said, here is a check for the fair market value of your property. It was more like, you can live in this cardboard cubical in this community center now. I'm sure they've moved on by now. I'm sort of surprised they weren't treated better. All of the nuclear reactors in J…

Global warming will cause far worse problems than Fukushima did.

Re: Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time

#34

Post by gizmo686 » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #28

stcredzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame should not be with the operators, but with decision makers who signed off on a fatally flawed plant design. Really, you'd think it was common sense: if you absolutely need these generators in case of a disaster, like a flood, don't put the generators and their gear/infrastructure at a lower flood level! Much the same mistake was repeated many times in Houston, and came to light after Hurricane Ike. Other th…

In hindsight it is obvious, but at the time of construction, you would have to justify spending money to protect against both a 9.0 earthquake (pretty rare) and a tsunami larger than one ever recorded at the same time . Which can only happen if you have the 9.0 quake right off your coastline. At the time the plants were built, there was no geologist on the planet that believed Japan could even have a 9.0 quake, or a…

This is why defense in depth is important. Even without anticipating a 9.0 earthquake, they could have anticipated that their floodwalls would fail for an unspecified reason, and desighned the plant to be resiliant to flooding in the event of flood wall failure.

Re: Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time

#35

Post by mrschwabe » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 10:33 PM UTC

gh02t wrote: post #26

mrschwabe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, thanks for clarifying. I guess that ups the challenge quite significantly. Your research sounds interesting and vitally important - the kind of work that could help save lives even; at least warn people of nearby dangers. Do you have anything public on it?

Nope, still in development. It'll be freely available once it is. My work wouldn't make a particularly good read anyway as it's intended for a specialist audience and the mathematics get pretty involved. For radiation detection in general though, probably the most approachable introduction is this book http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Nuclear-Particle-Physics-Ex... . You can find a free PDF copy if you google around…

Cool thanks and goodluck with your project.