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However, it took less than 60 years of commercial nuclear power generation for that black swan event to occur. (Compare hydro-engineering, where it's common to

However, it took less than 60 years of commercial nuclear power generation for that black swan event to occur. (Compare hydro-engineering, where it's common to design for 100-year events and even 500-year events. Also, compare tsunami stones marking flood levels from the 1930s.)

troupo 3y ago
> However, it took less than 60 years of commercial nuclear power generation for that black swan event to occur. Hmm... We've been building cities for millenia, but look, in this event "45,700 buildings were destroyed and 144,300 were damaged by the quake and tsunami". > Compare hydro-engineering, where it's common to design for 100-year events and even 500-year events The 1975 Banqiao Dam failure was the collapse of the Banqiao Dam and 61 other dams in Henan, China, under the influence of Typhoon Nina in August 1975. The dam collapse created the third-deadliest flood in history which affected a total population of 10.15 million and inundated around 30 cities and counties of 12,000 square kilometers (or 3 million acres), with an estimated death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000. The flood also caused the collapse of 5 million to 6.8 million houses.
- masswerk 3y ago
  You may note the tsunami stones, marking flood levels from the 1930s with inscriptions like, "Do not build any homes below this point (…) Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis." Also, earthquakes, even sever ones (there had been 9 with magnitudes > 8 in the 100 years before), are expected and reoccurring events in Japan. They had been explicit design criteria for the power plant. This was quite literally a 100-year event with similar past events happening in the last 100 years before this. So this is hardly a black swan.
  - troupo 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560103 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559760

troupo 3y ago

> However, it took less than 60 years of commercial nuclear power generation for that black swan event to occur. Hmm... We've been building cities for millenia, but look, in this event "45,700 buildings were destroyed and 144,300 were damaged by the quake and tsunami". > Compare hydro-engineering, where it's common to design for 100-year events and even 500-year events The 1975 Banqiao Dam failure was the collapse of the Banqiao Dam and 61 other dams in Henan, China, under the influence of Typhoon Nina in August 1975. The dam collapse created the third-deadliest flood in history which affected a total population of 10.15 million and inundated around 30 cities and counties of 12,000 square kilometers (or 3 million acres), with an estimated death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000. The flood also caused the collapse of 5 million to 6.8 million houses.

masswerk 3y ago
You may note the tsunami stones, marking flood levels from the 1930s with inscriptions like, "Do not build any homes below this point (…) Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis." Also, earthquakes, even sever ones (there had been 9 with magnitudes > 8 in the 100 years before), are expected and reoccurring events in Japan. They had been explicit design criteria for the power plant. This was quite literally a 100-year event with similar past events happening in the last 100 years before this. So this is hardly a black swan.
- troupo 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560103 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559760