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As if better diesel generator placement alone would have substantially prevented the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster...

• dekhn 4y ago
  Actually, that's exactly what would have happened. The plant would have shutdown without any major incident/release of radiation/contamination.
  • pengaru 4y ago
    > Actually, that's exactly what would have happened. The plant would have shutdown without any major incident/release of radiation/contamination. Weren't the pumps and cooling/control systems damaged as well?
    • dekhn 4y ago
      Not so far as I can tell from the various reports I've read.
      • pengaru 4y ago
        "Unit 5 was undergoing pressure testing on the day the earthquake occurred. The unit lost all AC power due to flooding of seawater pumps and power panels. As a consequence, lighting and AC-powered instrumentation on the Unit 5 side of the common control room were inoperable; the Unit 5 side of the control room went dark after the batteries for emergency lighting were depleted" (emphasis mine) From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253938/ Which is quite a read in general, and clearly the diesel generators flooding was a major component of the disaster. But there was a lot that went wrong in addition to that, it's a real mess.
        • dekhn 4y ago
          That's the control room, though. Reactor 5 was offline, but fueled and never exploded. Unit 4 was the big problem.