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One of the interesting things about disaster recovery planning for nuclear power plants is that you count on (X) number of things to go wrong and figure out how
by nathanhammond 16y ago
One of the interesting things about disaster recovery planning for nuclear power plants is that you count on (X) number of things to go wrong and figure out how the plant recovers gracefully. In Japan they've effectively had three things go wrong: earthquake, tsunami, and general infrastructure damage. Most disaster scenarios only cover a single event and TEPCO has a lot to deal with.
In a disaster scenario the first reactions are generally passive (dropping of control rods, changing where water flows) and then "all" that remains is to cool the decay heat. Aye, here's the rub: the cooling system is not a passive system. It requires power to drive the water pumps for the cooling system that siphons the heat away from the reactor vessel. After initiating reactor shutdown the most critical time period is the first little while as that is when there is the most heat. Too much heat and it'll damage the fuel, vessel, and/or the cooling system and can effectively damage the reactor enough so to prevent it from ever recovering (thus, meltdown).
The questions left to ask are to what degree the cooling systems (primary and backup) are working, and whether they've been powered consistently. With that bit of information alone we'd be able to make a pretty accurate estimate as to the state of the reactors in question. What is scary is that it would be really simple to say that all of those systems are working as expected and that there is nothing to worry about. Since that hasn't been said I'm of the opinion that there is definitely something to worry about.
- gmac 16y agoThese "three things" boil down to one thing (the earthquake) and its foreseeable impacts. I certainly hope the disaster planners wouldn't see these things as independent failures (and assess probabilities accordingly), but that kind of hubristic "we can calculate the probabilities of all failure modes" thinking is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of nuclear.
- abeld 16y agobut that kind of hubristic "we can calculate the probabilities of all failure modes" thinking is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of nuclear. Would you be more comfortable with "we can't estimate the probabilities of all failure modes"? I am sure that all engineers involved in planning the failure-handling systems know that those "calculations of probabilities" are only estimates based on some assumptions. I think nuclear often gets bad press because you can measure and calculate a lot of risks to a much higher precision than in other industries. Like "x amount of radiation released" where x is actually a very small number but the fact that you can measure it and make an estimate as to how many cancer cases will be caused by it makes it scary, while people don't care much about the risks of, say, coal-mining because thats harder to measure/estimate.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoDoesn't seem to extend beyond energy production. For instance, tell people all about the dangers in chicken mcnuggets, or smoking, or a sedentery lifestyle, and they don't get very excited at all. Even if you quote statistics. Certainly they never go as far as voting against chicken farms. Its got to be the theoretical nature of nuclear power generation that has something to do with it. Its invisible, unfathomable and secretive, so folks distrust it?
- blahblahblah 16y agoChicken mcnuggets, tobacco smoke, and sedentery lifestyles are not members of the set of "things that can cause arable land to become permanently uninhabitable". Nuclear accidents are in that set and that is why the public is (rightly) concerned about them.
- pjscott 16y agoNuclear accidents are not members of the set of "things that are at all likely to actually hurt you or anybody you know". Sedentary lifestyles and tobacco smoke are in that set, but they lack the novelty and sensationalism that gives nuclear accidents their cachet.
- Ratfish 16y agoI think that people (self included) are generally more accepting of risk if it's control is within their own hands. Dying of tobacco related illnesses or obesity is mostly within my own control. Dying because a a nuclear reactor leak is pretty much 100% out of my control.
- pjscott 16y agoEven then, people's estimates of danger are crazy. A nuclear accident is far less likely to kill you than any number of other things that are outside your control. A drunk driver running into you, for example, or a natural gas explosion.