5 ms·

Fukushima was safe, by all standards. This was not related to corruption. It was simply not designed for the rarity of a magnitude 9 earthquake and the scale of

by nnfy 9y ago

Fukushima was safe, by all standards. This was not related to corruption. It was simply not designed for the rarity of a magnitude 9 earthquake and the scale of the tsunami that followed. Your house in a five hundred year floodplain is not unsafe for lacking stilts. Safety costs money, this wasn't corruption.

adamsea 9y ago
Your standard of safety does not sound appropriate for nuclear reactors. And, the decision not to spend the money to make Fukushima safer may well have been a craven, if not corrupt, one. TEPCO has been pretty sleazy ever since the accident.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  > sleazy ever since the accident. Do you mean "even"?
lispm 9y ago
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-... > In the last century there have been eight tsunamis in the region with maximum amplitudes at origin above 10 metres (some much more), these having arisen from earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 to 8.4, on average one every 12 years. Those in 1983 and in 1993 were the most recent affecting Japan, with maximum heights at origin of 14.5 metres and 31 metres respectively, both induced by magnitude 7.7 earthquakes. The June 1896 earthquake of estimated magnitude 8.3 produced a tsunami with run-up height of 38 metres in Tohoku region, killing more than 27,000 people. This risk needs to be addressed. That many people were killed by a tsunami is a catastrophe. But one would also like to have a stable energy system that does not go down like that and creates a huge problem (financial, technological, human, ...) for several decades. The japanese nuclear industry is famous for their corruption. Reactors were claimed save, which in a single event were totally wrecked. We are not talking about a single problem, but multiple problems (failing electricity backups, failing outside electricity, exploding buildings, ...), design mistakes (fuel is difficult to reach) and problems generated by running these reactors (like the amount of spent fuel on-site which needs lots of electricity for cooling).
- freeflight 9y ago
  > The japanese nuclear industry is famous for their corruption. Not just the Japanese nuclear industry, Tihange 2/Doel 3 Nuclear Power Stations are sitting right in the middle of Western Europe and they are another catastrophe waiting to happen. These reactors pressure vessels have serious issues with micro-cracks in their steel and at this point, it's not certain their structural integrity can actually be guaranteed [0]. The solution? Just "regulate" that in the case of emergency cooling the cooling water needs to be pre-heated, so the temperature shock doesn't break the pressure vessel. Whatever could go wrong with that approach? I guess nobody can imagine a scenario in which the reactor would need massive cooling but the surrounding infrastructure is destroyed and the water can't be pre-heated, what happens then? Nobody knows and I'd be really surprised if anybody, in a position of responsibility, has even thought that far about this whole mess. It rather feels like they are operating on the principle of "Let's just hope this never happens instead of planning for what we gonna do when it happens and set resources aside". [0] http://www.fanc.fgov.be/nl/page/doel-3-tihange-2-flaw-indications-in-the-reactor-pressure-vessel-steel/1989.aspx http://www.fanc.fgov.be/nl/page/doel-3-tihange-2-flaw-indica...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ogoffart 9y ago
    New inspection tools showed micro fissures. The power plant was stopped as a precaution. Then further investigations showed that these have always been there and are not evolving. It was safe all along, that was a false alarm. The power plant is then restarted. Still extra security measures are set, just in case. To me this just shows that the security is taken seriously. Why is the public opinion so scared about such an exemplary event?
    - freeflight 9y ago
      > Then further investigations showed that these have always been there and are not evolving. It was safe all along, that was a false alarm. The power plant is then restarted. Sorry but that's plain and simply wrong, you are vastly misrepresenting the situation and chain of events. These micro-fractures are not part of the design and they are evolving [0], documentation of the manufacturing can't be found and it's assumed the manufacturer made them vanish on purpose to hide the fact that cheaper materials had been used to build, leading to the fractures. These reactors have been controversial for years, they've been taken offline and online many times to look for new fractures and they keep finding new ones, fractures which shouldn't even be there in the first place. It's amazing how you try to turn this into an "everything is safe, there's no reason to be worried, it was always broken!" even tho everything about this screams "you better be worried" and the neighboring German states (and the Dutch) are already hoarding Iodine tablets [1]. Even the Belgians themselves handed them out to their population, tho they used ISIS as a scapegoat at that time [2] We are talking about the pressure vessel here, not some unimportant plumping part on some auxiliary system, and they just keep on watching as more fractures build up in there. Where do you think this is gonna lead? The warning signs can't get any worse than this considering these reactors are also running past their original life time. [0] http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/06/new-cracks-discovered-at-belgian-nuclear-plant.html http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/06/new-crac... [1] http://www.dw.com/en/north-rhine-westphalia-prepares-for-belgium-nuclear-accident-with-iodine-tablets/a-19279950 http://www.dw.com/en/north-rhine-westphalia-prepares-for-bel... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/28/all-belgian-residents-issued-with-iodine-tablets-to-protect-agai/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/28/all-belgian-resid...
CydeWeys 9y ago
How can you say it was safe with a straight face when it clearly wasn't? That's like saying your car is fine when it's smashed upside-down in a ditch on the side of the highway. If some standards claimed it was safe, then those standards were simply wrong. By other standards (including, most importantly, reality), it definitely wasn't safe.
- gambiting 9y ago
  Well, I guess it's because I would consider my car extremely safe, with something stupid like 12 airbags, active brake assist, active collision prevention, it will even call for help automatically after an accident, without any input from me. Yet obviously it's not safe if it gets hit by a truck going 80mph, and it's not an impossible scenario. If they made fukishima stronger to withstand larger tsunamis, it could still be destroyed by an even larger one. It was "safe" within certain parameters. We can argue that those parameters were wrong, but that's a different discussion.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Lets take your car that is smashed, upside-down in a ditch. When you bought the car, did you think it was safe? Did it pass the government tests, even ones you think might be a bit ridiculous? Were you under the impression it was designed to withstand being upside-down in a ditch? In all reality, the car was safe when it was new. It simply wasn't designed to withstand such an accident because such a thing is pretty rare in everyday vehicles, although it happens. Some vehicles have such safety precautions, but only when the situation seems to warrant it (a Jeep, for example). The nuclear plant was the same. It was safe when it was built, only it wasn't designed to handle that magnitude of earthquake because that strength is rare, especially for that area. This is despite designing it to withstand stronger than ever recorded earthquakes. Sure, afterwards the plant was unsafe, but so are many cars after accidents.
  - hrktb 9y ago
    What this car comparison is missing is that people accept cars getting crushed into flat metal sheets. Agree or not, as a society we have accepted that traffic accident is a problem we don't want to pay the price to solve. A "safe" car is just a mildly safer death trap. In comparison, people haven't accepted that reactors would go shit and somewhat kill hundreds of people and trash whole regions for hundreds of years. That's a risk that developpers have included in their plans to some point, but that the general public has not fundamentaly accepted.
galacticpony 9y ago
Major tsunamis in Japan aren't rare at all, they've occured multiple times in the past century. They also don't happen to follow a fixed time schedule. If a built you a house, following all the protocols for safety, right next to an active volcano, would you consider it safe?
outworlder 9y ago
Well, would be sufficiently safe. Just not in Fukushima. It was hit by an earthquake. Reactor performed SCRAM correctly. Plant was ok. Tsunami hit. Fuel tanks were washed away. This should never have been an issue. If you are in a zone that's prone to tsunamis, you don't locate essential infrastructure where it can be hit by tsunamis. Everything went downhill from there. Including their inability to hook up generators brought by trucks due to some electrical incompatibility. Now, if only this nuclear scaremongers would go away, then we would be able to upgrade those shambling power plants with modern technology.
- rurban 9y ago
  And how do you argue about the Diablo "safety" then? It's 6m above sea level, near a major fault line, in fact the only fault in the ring of fire which didn't go off yet in the last decade, and it's critical near to a major technical hub which will be destroyed for hundreds of years if the fault goes off, on land or at sea. There's no safety, only luck and irrationality.
- freeflight 9y ago
  > Now, if only this nuclear scaremongers would go away, then we would be able to upgrade those shambling power plants with modern technology. That's really where you want to put the blame? Don't you think that's a bit dishonest? Nobody is stopping the operators of plants from modernizing plants, nobody except the realities of economics. Don't kid yourself: If they can keep on running reactors with the least possible effort they will do so because everything related to nuclear involves massive investment costs. If you had the choice between spending several billion of dollars on modernizing a plant, which you've already amortized, or NOT spending several billion dollars while still making massive profits from the plant, which of these two is the more likely thing to happen? Greed always wins out. It's not like plant operators want to modernize their plants and are being stopped by protests, nobody is stopping them from modernizing except for their own economic bottom line.
  - _Tev 9y ago
    Billions of dollars to modernize plants? Where are you pulling that number from? This is what parent meant - scaremongering (and resulting ridiculous hyperbole) destroys progress.
padseeker 9y ago
this comment is completely on point, and also downvoted. :(
ece 9y ago
So is it really economically at that point? Is developing, prototyping and building a next gen reactor worth the money? Do we even know how much it would take to account for other 1-in-100 year risks? Is it worth it over better solar/wind? Even this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/alphabet-wants-to-fix-renewable-energy-s-storage-problem-with-salt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/alphabet-... I think the answers are clearly, no, no, no, and fuck no. We should be spending money on better solar, wind, having a distributed energy grid, and fusion. Not on a technology that is equivalent to diesel at this point, and something that will kill us.

by nnfy 9y ago

adamsea 9y ago

Your standard of safety does not sound appropriate for nuclear reactors. And, the decision not to spend the money to make Fukushima safer may well have been a craven, if not corrupt, one. TEPCO has been pretty sleazy ever since the accident.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
> sleazy ever since the accident. Do you mean "even"?

lispm 9y ago

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-... > In the last century there have been eight tsunamis in the region with maximum amplitudes at origin above 10 metres (some much more), these having arisen from earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 to 8.4, on average one every 12 years. Those in 1983 and in 1993 were the most recent affecting Japan, with maximum heights at origin of 14.5 metres and 31 metres respectively, both induced by magnitude 7.7 earthquakes. The June 1896 earthquake of estimated magnitude 8.3 produced a tsunami with run-up height of 38 metres in Tohoku region, killing more than 27,000 people. This risk needs to be addressed. That many people were killed by a tsunami is a catastrophe. But one would also like to have a stable energy system that does not go down like that and creates a huge problem (financial, technological, human, ...) for several decades. The japanese nuclear industry is famous for their corruption. Reactors were claimed save, which in a single event were totally wrecked. We are not talking about a single problem, but multiple problems (failing electricity backups, failing outside electricity, exploding buildings, ...), design mistakes (fuel is difficult to reach) and problems generated by running these reactors (like the amount of spent fuel on-site which needs lots of electricity for cooling).

freeflight 9y ago
> The japanese nuclear industry is famous for their corruption. Not just the Japanese nuclear industry, Tihange 2/Doel 3 Nuclear Power Stations are sitting right in the middle of Western Europe and they are another catastrophe waiting to happen. These reactors pressure vessels have serious issues with micro-cracks in their steel and at this point, it's not certain their structural integrity can actually be guaranteed [0]. The solution? Just "regulate" that in the case of emergency cooling the cooling water needs to be pre-heated, so the temperature shock doesn't break the pressure vessel. Whatever could go wrong with that approach? I guess nobody can imagine a scenario in which the reactor would need massive cooling but the surrounding infrastructure is destroyed and the water can't be pre-heated, what happens then? Nobody knows and I'd be really surprised if anybody, in a position of responsibility, has even thought that far about this whole mess. It rather feels like they are operating on the principle of "Let's just hope this never happens instead of planning for what we gonna do when it happens and set resources aside". [0] http://www.fanc.fgov.be/nl/page/doel-3-tihange-2-flaw-indications-in-the-reactor-pressure-vessel-steel/1989.aspx http://www.fanc.fgov.be/nl/page/doel-3-tihange-2-flaw-indica...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ogoffart 9y ago
  New inspection tools showed micro fissures. The power plant was stopped as a precaution. Then further investigations showed that these have always been there and are not evolving. It was safe all along, that was a false alarm. The power plant is then restarted. Still extra security measures are set, just in case. To me this just shows that the security is taken seriously. Why is the public opinion so scared about such an exemplary event?
  - freeflight 9y ago
    > Then further investigations showed that these have always been there and are not evolving. It was safe all along, that was a false alarm. The power plant is then restarted. Sorry but that's plain and simply wrong, you are vastly misrepresenting the situation and chain of events. These micro-fractures are not part of the design and they are evolving [0], documentation of the manufacturing can't be found and it's assumed the manufacturer made them vanish on purpose to hide the fact that cheaper materials had been used to build, leading to the fractures. These reactors have been controversial for years, they've been taken offline and online many times to look for new fractures and they keep finding new ones, fractures which shouldn't even be there in the first place. It's amazing how you try to turn this into an "everything is safe, there's no reason to be worried, it was always broken!" even tho everything about this screams "you better be worried" and the neighboring German states (and the Dutch) are already hoarding Iodine tablets [1]. Even the Belgians themselves handed them out to their population, tho they used ISIS as a scapegoat at that time [2] We are talking about the pressure vessel here, not some unimportant plumping part on some auxiliary system, and they just keep on watching as more fractures build up in there. Where do you think this is gonna lead? The warning signs can't get any worse than this considering these reactors are also running past their original life time. [0] http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/06/new-cracks-discovered-at-belgian-nuclear-plant.html http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/06/new-crac... [1] http://www.dw.com/en/north-rhine-westphalia-prepares-for-belgium-nuclear-accident-with-iodine-tablets/a-19279950 http://www.dw.com/en/north-rhine-westphalia-prepares-for-bel... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/28/all-belgian-residents-issued-with-iodine-tablets-to-protect-agai/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/28/all-belgian-resid...

CydeWeys 9y ago

How can you say it was safe with a straight face when it clearly wasn't? That's like saying your car is fine when it's smashed upside-down in a ditch on the side of the highway. If some standards claimed it was safe, then those standards were simply wrong. By other standards (including, most importantly, reality), it definitely wasn't safe.

gambiting 9y ago
Well, I guess it's because I would consider my car extremely safe, with something stupid like 12 airbags, active brake assist, active collision prevention, it will even call for help automatically after an accident, without any input from me. Yet obviously it's not safe if it gets hit by a truck going 80mph, and it's not an impossible scenario. If they made fukishima stronger to withstand larger tsunamis, it could still be destroyed by an even larger one. It was "safe" within certain parameters. We can argue that those parameters were wrong, but that's a different discussion.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
Lets take your car that is smashed, upside-down in a ditch. When you bought the car, did you think it was safe? Did it pass the government tests, even ones you think might be a bit ridiculous? Were you under the impression it was designed to withstand being upside-down in a ditch? In all reality, the car was safe when it was new. It simply wasn't designed to withstand such an accident because such a thing is pretty rare in everyday vehicles, although it happens. Some vehicles have such safety precautions, but only when the situation seems to warrant it (a Jeep, for example). The nuclear plant was the same. It was safe when it was built, only it wasn't designed to handle that magnitude of earthquake because that strength is rare, especially for that area. This is despite designing it to withstand stronger than ever recorded earthquakes. Sure, afterwards the plant was unsafe, but so are many cars after accidents.
- hrktb 9y ago
  What this car comparison is missing is that people accept cars getting crushed into flat metal sheets. Agree or not, as a society we have accepted that traffic accident is a problem we don't want to pay the price to solve. A "safe" car is just a mildly safer death trap. In comparison, people haven't accepted that reactors would go shit and somewhat kill hundreds of people and trash whole regions for hundreds of years. That's a risk that developpers have included in their plans to some point, but that the general public has not fundamentaly accepted.

galacticpony 9y ago

Major tsunamis in Japan aren't rare at all, they've occured multiple times in the past century. They also don't happen to follow a fixed time schedule. If a built you a house, following all the protocols for safety, right next to an active volcano, would you consider it safe?

outworlder 9y ago

Well, would be sufficiently safe. Just not in Fukushima. It was hit by an earthquake. Reactor performed SCRAM correctly. Plant was ok. Tsunami hit. Fuel tanks were washed away. This should never have been an issue. If you are in a zone that's prone to tsunamis, you don't locate essential infrastructure where it can be hit by tsunamis. Everything went downhill from there. Including their inability to hook up generators brought by trucks due to some electrical incompatibility. Now, if only this nuclear scaremongers would go away, then we would be able to upgrade those shambling power plants with modern technology.

rurban 9y ago
And how do you argue about the Diablo "safety" then? It's 6m above sea level, near a major fault line, in fact the only fault in the ring of fire which didn't go off yet in the last decade, and it's critical near to a major technical hub which will be destroyed for hundreds of years if the fault goes off, on land or at sea. There's no safety, only luck and irrationality.
freeflight 9y ago
> Now, if only this nuclear scaremongers would go away, then we would be able to upgrade those shambling power plants with modern technology. That's really where you want to put the blame? Don't you think that's a bit dishonest? Nobody is stopping the operators of plants from modernizing plants, nobody except the realities of economics. Don't kid yourself: If they can keep on running reactors with the least possible effort they will do so because everything related to nuclear involves massive investment costs. If you had the choice between spending several billion of dollars on modernizing a plant, which you've already amortized, or NOT spending several billion dollars while still making massive profits from the plant, which of these two is the more likely thing to happen? Greed always wins out. It's not like plant operators want to modernize their plants and are being stopped by protests, nobody is stopping them from modernizing except for their own economic bottom line.
- _Tev 9y ago
  Billions of dollars to modernize plants? Where are you pulling that number from? This is what parent meant - scaremongering (and resulting ridiculous hyperbole) destroys progress.

padseeker 9y ago

this comment is completely on point, and also downvoted. :(

ece 9y ago

So is it really economically at that point? Is developing, prototyping and building a next gen reactor worth the money? Do we even know how much it would take to account for other 1-in-100 year risks? Is it worth it over better solar/wind? Even this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/alphabet-wants-to-fix-renewable-energy-s-storage-problem-with-salt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/alphabet-... I think the answers are clearly, no, no, no, and fuck no. We should be spending money on better solar, wind, having a distributed energy grid, and fusion. Not on a technology that is equivalent to diesel at this point, and something that will kill us.