The failure of backup generators used to pump cooling water helped cause explosions in at least three of the buildings surrounding Fukushima’s six reactors.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-19/japan-s-tepco-seeks-to-restore-power-to-damaged-nuclear-plant.html
***
My Note -
Gee, clean out my oven or national security? Hmmm………
Yes, electricity across the world.
Yes, electricity for the US and cheaper, more reliable, safer.
If I had a choice in it – what do I want the nuclear plants to do?
1. Run a schematic systems analysis on these plants. Then fix what is not set up well. (if that is the locations of the backup generators, then move them to higher ground. if there is a fault line under the plant, then consider the real possibility that there may an earthquake there which could put cracks in the building or affect its instruments, its electricity requirements, its integrity.)
2. I want the worst case scenarios on the list of everything that can go wrong – going wrong at the same time. I want that included on the list of possibilities – and for that to have plans to accommodate it.
3. No more cost to benefit type of planning – real plans instead. If there will need to be a fifty mile radius of evacuations in the event of many things going wrong at once and it to be done quickly – then how will that be accomplished? I don’t want to hear after the fact that my daughter and grandbaby were called “acceptable collateral losses” in their estimation of what was worth doing or not doing. That’s true for every living person, in fact – including right now the people of Japan who may be in harm’s way.
- cricketdiane
***
Here are some things I’ve noted about nuclear power generally –
- It is used to boil water.
- It serves the mining industries.
- It has industries that have built up around nuclear power, specific to it.
- It costs $10 billion dollars or more to build each plant? or per reactor?
- It serves the financial industry that helps set up the financing for it and sets up the sales and trades of bonds to finance it, etc.
- It makes $2 million dollars in profits per day (per nuclear facility or per reactor – according to a man on Charlie Rose yesterday that was pro-nuclear power) – and not one dime of those profits return to the taxpayers / states / government who funded its initial requirements for capital building / startup.
- It gets the lion’s share of grants to operate.
(my list)
***
Some of my questions -
How?
Why can’t we do something to fix these plants?
Because now they are a business not owned by us? Is that it? And the “owners” of the plants who are now corporations don’t consider it economically viable to do a better job with it? But they make $2 million in profits a day, and we paid for the plants to be built . . .
Why did officials speaking to an educated Japanese and International audience earlier today (Japan time – middle of early a.m. – our time) – say that to potentially drill into the outer containment vessel on a reactor (No. 3, I think it was) – say it would release “air” possibly – and used the term “air” several times? (carried in part on NHK World news english).
Why would they have built these nuclear plants in the US (any of them), on faults? Was it not known at the time?
How did the designers make these safe for earthquakes? Are they like the buildings’ codes in Japan or did they make the concrete thicker – or what?
Why don’t they have pictures / video from inside the reactors at Fukushima?
I found and posted just before this post about things that were not checked for many years at the Daiichi plant complex and its reactors. If there were over 300 “engineers” at the plant as the Japanese news media has quoted and TEPCO insists – then what kind of “engineers” are they, if the degree of damage from not checking things as required isn’t known by them?
How many times are the industry’s own attitudes about not wanting to be bothered by all this required “safety stuff” getting in the way of safety and safe operations?
I have heard and read all over the news around the world and throughout many news sources in small town papers – in large broadcast programs on cable and in op-ed pieces everywhere from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to the Scottish Herald and Hawaii News and Malaysian News - these same ideas promoting the safety and shining record of the nuclear power industry, the shaming of other industries competing with them (all of which is true by the way – the whole damn bunch of them have things that need fixing), and how if anyone says to fix some things in it – they are anti-nuclear tree hugger liberals, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum . . .
That is quite a sentence to say this -
1. It is not acceptable to consider human lives as potentially “acceptable collateral losses.”
2. It is not acceptable to look at the cost-to-benefit ratio as a way of making choices about what is “safe enough” or not.
3. It is not acceptable to send long-term damaging effects from any kind of plant into the environment surrounding it that will impact the health and well-being of the populations living today and those living tomorrow.
4. It is not acceptable to say we can’t do a better job of it nor to say that to demand some things be fixed is to say everything is wrong with it so therefore it is to say “scrap it all”. No, just fix it.
5. It is not acceptable for “safety” and “safe operations” to be a “bother” to the industries whose unsafe practices can impact large populations and at some point impact populations around the entire world.
6. It is not economically feasible to continue to get this wrong. The damages in Japan right now from the nuclear operator TEPCO getting it wrong are not only physical damages to the people of Japan and the rest of the world that can result – but financial damages to the entire world as well. The multitude of businesses that had to shut their plants during rolling blackouts, the tainted products of food for export that have been found, the tainted food supplies locally – the possibilities that the cloud of radioactive remnants will float over China and Russia – which will have some negative impacts whatever they are. It is an economic, financial, physical and long-term health nightmare, all at the same time – simply because of a lack of respect for the magnitude of danger inherent in this particular industry and its safe operations.
(and)
7. It will never be acceptable to downplay the risks involved by excusing those risks based on the drawbacks inherent in some other industry providing electricity or whatever competitive alternative. That all of them need cleaning up doesn’t excuse the magnitude of stupidity and foul choices made by any category or individual of the group.
- cricketdiane
***
Operator of Fukushima nuke plant admitted to faking repair records | Herald Sun
A power board distributing electricity to a reactor’s temperature control valves was not examined for 11 years, and inspectors faked records, pretending to make thorough inspections when in fact they were only cursory, TEPCO said.
It also said that inspections, which are voluntary, did not cover other devices related to cooling systems including water pump motors and diesel generators.
***
Okay – so the plant inspections are voluntary? In how many places around the world is that true? How about across the states in the US where nuclear plants are built or being built right now?
Is that voluntary too?
And, if they feel like doing it they can – and if not – well, too bad . . .
I don’t get to do that if I’m playing with nuclear materials at my house . . .
Or if I create any business that uses nuclear materials in some way . . .
Or studies them . . .
Or thinks about studying them . . .
Who are these people?
- cricketdiane
***
I do want to note right here – that all this is being done to heat water – to boil water and make steam.
Japan, for instance – sits on volcanoes in a very active area of the world. Why would $10 billion dollars per plant be needed to create steam on a volcanic island? They already have heat in excess of 10,000 degrees sitting in the ground below them – as we all do in many places. If the only point is to produce boiling water for driving the same old kind of turbines that have been in use for over a hundred years – then what is the point of using nuclear materials at all? Why not just run a pipe with water through the side of a volcanic cauldron – or near it – or above it – or around it – or below it - these materials are supposed to withstand earthquakes and extreme heat anyway – why not just do that and they can run the steam through the same turbine systems which are already sitting there around the country?
And, the Charlie Rose segment with the three guys discussing nuclear power on bloomberg this weekend was very informative, very interesting and very annoying all at the same time. I want to say here that the problems with the nuclear industry start with the same attitudes of the nuclear industry which the oil industry has, the natural gas hydrofracking industry has, the mining industry has and the pro-whatever supporters have. Those attitudes are doing almost as much damage as the industries’ shaky consistency about safety and safe operations. Otherwise intelligent and educated adults are so baffled by the bullshit of specialists talking over their heads about it that they never stop to ask the right questions or to use their own minds to analyze how the situation is set up or might be indicating needed changes.
And, to be honest – the old “all or nothing” thinking just doesn’t work for any of us anymore – whether it is “all-in pro whatever” or “all-in anti whatever.” They are both wrong for the same reasons. Neither one can see the answers to the simple questions like, “what have we learned from this industry that can be taken into a hybrid of the best parts for doing it in a better way,” and “what can we change to make it significantly safer, better and more dependable over the long-term and short-term?”
I’ve heard contempt for everyone that is trying to learn more about nuclear power under these circumstances and get up to speed about it. Well, contempt right back at them – because it is high time more people do understand how these things work. There is never another day that I want to turn to an adult near me where I live and say, “did you know there are nuclear plants in Georgia?” – and them not know that.
One other thing – there is a long list of accidents that have caused meltdowns and taken lives in the nuclear industry – the people who are pro-nuclear power want to say on tv, in news articles and even during the roundtable on Charlie Rose this weekend, that the nuclear power industry has had no deaths attributed to it. That is just not true.
There are pages and pages of incidents which have taken human lives, which have left families without their loved ones, which have yielded horrors in people’s lives and that have left suffering in their wake. There is no doubt in any way, shape or form – that nuclear power, nuclear radioactive components, nuclear systems, nuclear materials and nuclear power reactor processes deserve the respect and fear for their degree and magnitude of danger. The environmental consequences are extreme – the dangers to those nations nearby are extreme – the dangers to the long-term survival of our species are extreme – and the dangers and suffering to individual families, communities and lives are extreme – and long-term.
Nuclear power deserves its “bum rap” as a Georgia professor said it doesn’t deserve when he had his moment to say it on CNN last week. (and as many news articles and op-ed pieces are continuing to say it doesn’t deserve.) Yes, nuclear power deserves to be treated with consummate respect for the magnitude of danger it is and treated with an educated, healthy fear of what that can be at any moment if it isn’t done correctly, analyzed accurately, and its dangers accommodated properly.
I listed the Santa Susanna accident which happened in Los Angeles when I lived there and before – it was a sodium reactor complex. They went to burn off the radioactive dirt, leftover components, junk sitting around the old plant where the meltdown occurred – and did it in open pit burning – as in, to make a dip in the ground, stick everything in a pile and set it on fire with some accelerant. The people sent to do it, didn’t have a science background obviously nor did they understand the basics of meteorology – as in, which way the wind blows. carries the smoke and chemicals and radioactivity from whatever is being burned to those areas where that wind goes. But, this is only one of many stupid choices involving nuclear / radioactive materials and not the “only one singular event that ever cause damage or loss of life.”
There were the military fires set for open pit burning of materials left on bases or from equipment which contained just about anything and everything specific to sophisticated military equipment. None of which was ever intended to be rendered into something else nor become airborne or water borne by being burned in a large open area exposing those within the wind’s reach to those chemicals, radioactive substance, rare chemical compounds, extreme metallurgic alloys, etc.
And, then – there is a list or two or three, if people really believe the only nuclear accidents have been Chernobyl and Three Mile Island . . .
- cricketdiane
***
Here is one where an industry’s accident left a wasteland – (not nuclear)
http://www.yelp.com/biz/centralia-centralia-4
PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION
Familiar with the “Silent Hill” video game? Consider visiting Centralia. After all, it’s pure desolation, the remnants of infrastructure in coal country: house-less driveways complete with mailboxes, lonely fire hydrants, and smoke swirling about graveyards.
Beer bottles and discarded condoms are proof folks still stop by, but it’s dangerous. Feel that warmth? That’s the town’s famous mine fire, practically the fires of Hell, that has been burning for years. (It’s supposed to stop burning in about 250 years.)
Pondering how easy I could’ve died here – it’s an easy feat to fall through the unstable earth or inhale toxic fumes – I’m lucky I didn’t, and I have no plans to return anytime soon.
My Note -
And, a little off the subject but important to note here nonetheless – is that where Japan in Tokyo, I think it was – had reclaimed land from the sea – liquefaction occurred during and after the earthquake. That will potentially happen also where the nuclear plant, hydro-electric plants have been located on “reclaimed” or built up land naturally part of waterways or river basins or the sea – and in San Francisco where part of the land was at one time, part of the ocean rather than ocean-reclaimed property – and in New York, where part of the Rivers were made into reclaimed land instead.
There are airports around the world on “built islands” and now other properties including residential ones, offices, neighborhoods – which had once been part of the sea or part of a river. Hydro-electric plants down river from dams and nuclear plants near the rivers which are sitting in flood plains in order to be close to the water – all have significant drawbacks in their design for events of natural disasters – including flooding, earthquakes, forest and wildfires nearby, tornadoes, extreme weather events including blizzards, Nor’easters and hurricanes, excessive rain, excessive wind damage, and excessive flooding disasters.
So, there isn’t really just one problem which needs to be fixed. There are some choices which have been made that need remedies concerning potential loss of life and impacts to human life in scope and nature. That includes, these “reclaimed” lands, the handling of nuclear wastes in extreme diverse accidents and natural disasters, the potential for catastrophic failures in any and all of these at the same time, as we’ve seen happen in Japan recently.
As I said, there are lists of nuclear accidents over the course of many years – from those at experimental facilities leading up to the designs that are in use or prior to them, including radioactive releases of different kinds, including loss of life or permanent suffering caused to people either inside of outside the facilities, releases into groundwater and streams and soil – (and into the air occasionally) – of radioactive by-products and wastewater. One such list can be found here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
***
Another list -
***
Experimental breeder reactor EBR-1 experienced a core meltdown due to operator error.
26 July 1959
A clogged coolant channel resulted in a 30% reactor core meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (now known as the Boeing-Rocketdyne Nuclear Facility) in the Simi Hills area of Ventura County, California. Later discovery of the incident prompted a class-action suit by local residents, who successfully sued for $30 million over cancer and thyroid abnormalities contracted due to their proximity to the facility.
2 September 1944
Peter Bragg and Douglas Paul Meigs, two Manhattan Project chemists, were killed when their attempt to unclog a tube in a uranium enrichment device led to an explosion of radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas exploded at the Naval Research Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA. The explosion ruptured nearby steam pipes, leading to a gas and steam combination that bathed the men in a scalding, radioactive, acidic cloud of gas which killed them a short while later.
21 August 1945
(etc.)
2 July 1956
Nine persons were injured when two explosions destroyed a portion of Sylvania Electric Products’ Metallurgy Atomic Research Center in Bayside, Queens, New York.
1957
A radiation release at the the Keleket company resulted in a five-month decontamination at a cost of $250,000. A capsule of radium salt (used for calibrating the radiation-measuring devices produced there) burst, contaminating the building for a full five months.
30 December 1958
A chemical operator was exposed to a lethal dose of radiation following an incident involving the mixing of plutonium solutions, dying 35 hours later of severe radiation exposure.
(etc.)
1974
Whistleblowers at the Isomedix company in New Jersey reported that radioactive water was flushed down toilets and had contaminated pipes leading to sewers. The same year a worker received a dose of radiation considered lethal, but was saved by prompt hospital treatment.
1982
International Nutronics in Dover, New Jersey, which used radiation baths to purify gems, chemicals, food, and medical supplies, experienced an accident that completely contaminated the plant, forcing its closure. A pump malfunctioned, siphoning water from the baths onto the floor; the water eventually was drained into the sewer system of the heavily populated town of Dover. The NRC wasn’t informed of the accident until ten months later — and then by a whistleblower, not the company. In 1986, the company and one of its top executives were convicted by a federal jury of conspiracy and fraud. Radiation has been detected in the vicinity of the plant, but the NRC claims the levels “aren’t hazardous.”
1986
The NRC revoked the license of a Radiation Technology, Inc. (RTI) plant in New Jersey for repeated worker safety violations. RTI was cited 32 times for various violations, including throwing radioactive garbage out with the regular trash. The most serious violation was bypassing a safety device to prevent people from entering the irradiation chamber during operation, resulting in a worker receiving a near-lethal dose of radiation.
(etc.)
about Nuclear Power Plants’ accidents -
3 January 1961
The world’s first nuclear-related fatalities occurred following a reactor explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Three technicians, were killed, with radioactivity “largely confined” (words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission) to the reactor building. The men were killed as they moved fuel rods in a “routine” preparation for the reactor start-up. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins. Another incident three weeks later (on 25 January) resulted in a release of radiation into the atmosphere.
24 July 1964
Robert Peabody, 37, died at the United Nuclear Corp. fuel facility in Charlestown, Rhode Island, when liquid uranium he was pouring went critical, starting a reaction that exposed him to a lethal dose of radiation.
19 November 1971
The water storage space at the Northern States Power Company’s reactor in Monticello, Minnesota filled to capacity and spilled over, dumping about 50,000 gallons of radioactive waste water into the Mississippi River. Some was taken into the St. Paul water system.
March 1972
Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska submitted to the Congressional Record facts surrounding a routine check in a nuclear power plant which indicated abnormal radioactivity in the building’s water system. Radioactivity was confirmed in the plant drinking fountain. Apparently there was an inappropriate cross-connection between a 3,000 gallon radioactive tank and the water system.
27 July 1972
Two workers at the Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia were fatally scalded after a routine valve adjustment led to a steam release in a gap in a vent line. [See also 9 December 1986]
(etc.)
http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html
***
Another list -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fast_neutron_reactors
The Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBRP) Project was a joint effort of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (and its successor agencies, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and the U.S. Department of Energy) and the U.S. electric power industry to design and construct a sodium-cooled fast-neutron nuclear reactor. The project was intended as a prototype and demonstration for building a class of such reactors, called Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors (LMFBR), in the United States. The project was first authorized in 1970.[1] After initial appropriations were provided in 1972, work continued until the U.S. Congress terminated funding on October 26, 1983.
(etc.)
The site for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor was a 1,364-acre (6 km2) land parcel owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) adjacent to the Clinch River in Roane County, Tennessee, inside the city limits of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but remote from the city’s residential population. 
35°53′N 84°23′W / 35.89°N 84.38°W
One issue was continuing escalation in the cost of the project. In 1971 the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that the Clinch River project would cost about $400 million. Private industry promised to contribute the majority of the project cost ($257 million). By the following year, however, projected costs had jumped to nearly $700 million.[6]
By 1981 $1 billion of public money had been spent on the project, and the estimated cost to completion had grown to $3.0-$3.2 billion, with another billion dollars needed for an associated spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility.[5][7] A Congressional committee investigation released in 1981 found evidence of contracting abuse, including bribery and fraud, that added to project costs.[7] Before it was finally canceled in 1983, the General Accounting Office of the Congress estimated the total project cost at $8 billion.[4]
(etc.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinch_River_Breeder_Reactor_Project
**
There are other lists – I will go get them from my documents – however, I want to repeat here a response I sent to an article published in the international news – that was pro-nuclear without any questions to be asked, no changes made, no reviews done, no considerations for design flaws to be fixed – I sent the author of the article and email of this a couple days ago –
Are you saying it is unreasonable and unsustainable to require nuclear power plants to place the backup generators away from possible flooding from natural disasters (including in Europe and across the US)? Can’t they just do something beside placing those generators in the basement?
And, it seems that you took all of that space and opportunity to speak for something without speaking to the actual problems that have been made obvious. There is an international watchdog organization that takes money to do a job which has been nearly completely ineffective to protect the public welfare – IAEA – partly because they wait for the member states to ask for help when there is an incident and only come into a situation when the member state allows it. That is a problem.
And, it seems that it is not unreasonable that simple design flaws be fixed – such as putting backup generators in the basement at a plant where the complex itself sits at sea level. There are a number of older plants which sit in flood plains in order to be close to rivers and water sources. Well, maybe they need to have another backup system installed which is above that and protected from flooding.
Maybe there needs to be a better understanding of what can be done for cooling with an additional backup system to bring water in during an emergency event with the nuclear plants – both older ones and newer ones.
That is not unreasonable.
What you said is unreasonable. It can’t be left without a real look at fixing some of these simple things – all of which are reasonable, can save lives, are safer, and can be done for very reasonable costs.
And, all the money available doesn’t need to be tied up in nuclear power. There are other options. There always have been other options. While all the money it ties up provides for more nuclear power plants, they don’t want anything else to get any funding at all and lobby against it. That has got to stop. There is evidence that nuclear power can be made safer. That needs to be done, as I suggested above. Secondly, there needs to be the development of other options – whether the electricity that can be generated by ocean currents, geothermal sources or whatever else with a fair balance of funding provided to develop those sources.
I wish I had never seen your article. It is just wrong.
- cricketdiane
***
Why can’t we just for once – face the problems that exist in the nuclear industry – make them fix it and move forward together instead of pretending that somehow they’ve done everything right and anyone saying otherwise is just “anti-nuclear” or whatever. How hard was it for them to know that putting backup generators in the basement was plainly wrong?
Why didn’t any of a number of “experts” make them simply put those generators in the hill behind the Fukushima plant? Was that so unreasonable?
Damn.
(from my email to them – but maybe the author of the article received, maybe not – it still needs to be said to the nuclear power industry and regulators and IAEA and international parties concerned with this – and the pro-nuclear people and the anti-nuclear people and everybody else . . . )
That last part in parens written just now as I thought about it. The other list of nuclear accidents can be found here -
Bob’s list of nuclear radioactive / radioactivity accidents -
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/radaccidents.html
Database of radiological incidents and related events–Johnston’s Archive
Radiation accidents and other events causing radiation casualties–tabulated data
compiled by Wm. Robert Johnston
last updated 22 May 2010
This is a listing (incomplete) of radiation accidents and other events (e.g. intentional acts) that resulted in acute radiation exposures to humans sufficient to cause casualties. For sources and for details on specific events see individual pages at Database of Radiological Incidents and Related Events or follow links in table. (affectionately called, Bob’s List).
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/radaccidents.html
*
(etc.)
***
And that is an amazing set of lists of criticality accidents, radioactive releases, meltdowns and other radiologic releases and events – but not a complete list – some things are still not available to the public from governments, documents and files around the world about such things for one thing, and for another, there have been multiple times when one event spurred other events and only part of that is known . . .
It ends up with the documents and facts about it appearing somewhere else. And, then there is the shell game of secret documents as played by the Bush administration and other administrations around the world in which the same documents and files get renamed and shuffled into different or renamed programs to make them classified again at the point of or just before they would be required to become public . . .
Well, that and the fact that some of them can only be acquired by the public through Freedom of Information suit filings and not by automatic public dissemination of the information contained within them, even after the point of date in which it is supposed to become accessible to the public.
Hmm………
The IAEA also has a database of criticality incidents, deaths, harm done to individuals employed by nuclear facilities and to the public nearby, accidents, meltdowns of a critical or subcritical nature, disasters that are now buried literally under the ground somewhere as a last resort when it happened, and numerous other information that is valuable about accidents during transport of fission materials, mis-handling of nuclear fissionable materials, smuggling of nuclear materials, smuggling of equipment for rendering nuclear materials, creation of experimental reactors and labs which handle the materials along with some of the accidents which were finally reported surrounding the handling of those materials in those environments.
I could look it up – you could look it up – anybody could look it up, but it would have to be important to bring some of these lessons from the events mentioned above into the mix of discussions occurring now – or it would not make any difference at all.
So, some of the things to round this out – which I’ve thought about today are -
1. How did the nuclear operators do that to get the plant facilities built for them using our tax resources, the transmission lines fixed for them by our tax money, their equipment researched and manufactures and installed for them using our money and then get to make the thing into a profit-making enterprise for themselves without returning any of the grant money, facilities money, taxpayer money, state money, federal money, local money and other costs that we covered as taxpayers or are still covering – back to us when $2 million dollars a day in profits are being made now.
We all have higher electric bills we pay? We still cover their costs in our taxes that are paid out – to supposedly help them do this part or that part. We pay for them to be regulated, inspected, registered, compliant with safety regulations for the common good, re-equipped when needed, and covered the costs for facilities that had to be shut down after being built – along with the remediation of the environment that was required. So, I don’t get it – how is it that these operators and their “share-holders” got control of these plants and why do they get to leave out the public which supported it financially all along and still is financially supporting it to this day?
2. Why didn’t they build these reactors in the ground rather than above ground? Why are the boiling parts of them above ground? Why would the backup generators be below ground where flooding could affect them? Why would the nuclear regulators allow the plant designs to have been made that way? And, why do they not have software that can analyze various event horizons including the ones listed here which have happened, the flooding that might happen, and the tsunami/earthquake that did happen?
There is a nifty software that is being offered to analyze noise pollution which I’ll have to get from my email. I went to look at it and thought what a shame that it isn’t being used for this “nuclear stuff” to be analyzed. It could be – it is called, “Sound Plan” and is intended for use by city planners and local officials when determining where to put airports and other noisy industrial facilities. It could be used to analyze the lay of the land surrounding nuclear plants. It is dimensional – it can accommodate real time affects against a given scenario which can be input. I don’t own it – I just saw it a few weeks ago and it is brilliant. But, why doesn’t the nuclear industry and the nuclear analysts / plant designers and engineers have access to that or something very similar?
That is the part I just don’t understand. Why is it that I can go online and see photos and videos of nearly every plant design, every containment vessel, every core fuel rod assembly being loaded, refueled or repaired – but the nuclear plant operators in their control rooms can’t at Fukushima? Why is that – how is that even possible?
Which leads to my third question -
3. What does it take to convince the nuclear industry to put everything available in the twenty-first century right now to work for them even on plants built in the last century? That includes robotics, robotic fire extinguishing rigs like those used in other manufacturing and the oil industry, extreme conditions sensors and cameras, extreme conditions new materials science, extreme conditions backup systems for battery power and for secondary backup cooling systems to operate when the primary ones fail, etc. – and how is it that only sixteen hours worth of batteries were on site anyway. Sixteen hours or even twenty-four hours may commonly be less than what is needed for a criticality event, or a natural disaster. Why is that? How much could they possibly cost that there would not have been a better supply nearby or at the plant facility?
That definitely needs to be fixed.
- cricketdiane
***
And, since it is known that boron in various combinations and compounds is known to slow or even stop the neutron activity in the reactor – SCRAM notwithstanding – why aren’t there supplies of that in particular required to be kept near enough to a nuclear facility to be massively used in the event that it is required? Or whatever else will work without having to truck it in, fly it in or find it from somewhere during a time that everything is going wrong at once with possibly, as has been the case in Japan at Fukushima Daiichi, with the roads, railways and surrounding landscape devastated and impassable?
For a list of lists on wikipedia about nuclear accidents – check civilian nuclear accidents, civilian nuclear incidents – and this page – (also the discussions pages behind the entries found on the tab above, know that the nuclear industry and their lobbyists are trying to influence what can be found or not about these particular subjects that reflect negatively on them.) -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents
Note – that some lists are made of nuclear accidents which concern commercial applications of nuclear materials, some have military uses of nuclear materials or experimental research accidents – and some have the civilian nuclear accidents and incidents (such as the civilian nuclear power plants that make up the greatest number of nuclear power reactors now around the world for scope, scale, proximity to human life, and to amount and degree of nuclear materials on site – compared with research facilities which are more numerous but have lower supplies of actual materials kept on site or within the confines of their labs) -
However, some other massive errors are made at those numerous and scattered research and university facilities by the cavalier handling of the materials and waste products because the facility designers of the school around it can accommodate those materials without the added care of engineering specialists, such as putting a cask for radioactive materials on the floor of the lab above the school cafeteria that exists on the floor below it, etc.)
Somebody really needs to check on some of those kinds of things – both in the chemistry labs and the radioactive materials handling along with the waste products of both at universities, research facilities and medical facilities that use them.
- cricketdiane
***
At least they are doing something about the Fukushima Daiichi plant right now – what is it going to take to fix these other things at the nuclear power plants and facilities which use radioactive materials around the world and throughout populated areas of the United States? Surely we don’t have to wait for a disaster in order to do something now . . .
***
Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
These are lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents.
See also
(from)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents
***
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