The Japanese nuke plant performed to design specs flawlessly.

[Ishmael]

Although the plant was only designed to 7.5 Richter scale, it was hit with a 9.0 and performed just as designed. The electrical output tripped offline, and then the plant began an orderly shut down. With the electrical off line the motor/generator units kicked in to keep the coolant circulating pumps operating while the reactor was cooled down. And then the wave hit.

The tsunami swamped the aux. power units, the pumps quit working and the rest is history still unfolding. This was the fatal flaw in the design of the plant.

I pulled up the plant on google earth and looked around. It is painfully obvious that the breakwaters were never designed to deal with such a wave and that the aux. power units were located in a vulnerable location on the property. Given that the Japanese are the people that brought the word 'tsunami' into common parlance this design oversight is mind boggling.

The flaw was one that the Japanese created all on their own, the plant and reactor actually performed well beyond design specifications.

And the fact that it was the tsunami that initiated the problems I'm triply irritated by these know nothing, tree hugging, talking heads that the networks are parading on the news programs that are yapping about 'earth quake' design specs. If any of our plants are vulnerable it is the coastal units near subduction fault zones and there are ways of protecting the plants without having to even shut them down.

Ishmael

 

[phrodeau]

Tell it to the Germans.

 

[Ishmael]

Tell it to the Germans.

The thread is not about German politics.

Ishmael

 

[Saint Peter]

I agree.

The positioning of the back up generators could have been better designed. Same goes for storing the spent rods in pools located about the reactors.

Building on a fault line is never a smart thing unless you happen to live there.

Sometimes the Safety Factor can never be enough.

 

[koalabear]

It is amazing that it withstood such a quake. But almost every nuke "accident" is caused by lack of water. You would think they would have so many redundant systems in place for the pumps that they couldn't fail.

 

[thør]

There is an orange glow in the West by SW

 

[koalabear]

There is an orange glow in the SW

That's my first campfire of the year.

 

[thør]

Building on a fault line is never a smart thing unless you happen to live there.

The Japanese have no options.

 

[thør]

That's my first campfire of the year.

About the right color.

 

[Ishmael]

I agree.

The positioning of the back up generators could have been better designed. Same goes for storing the spent rods in pools located about the reactors.

Building on a fault line is never a smart thing unless you happen to live there.

Sometimes the Safety Factor can never be enough.

Exactly, if La Palma slides into the ocean the loss of all the coastal and near coastal reactors in the US will be the least of our problems. (Or the Cascadia fault?)

The positioning sucked. If you look at the site you can see the relative height of the breakwaters as compared to the reactor and generator sheds by the shadows cast when the pic was taken.

And that site wasn't on a fault line, far from it actually. It was the type of fault and the coastal location that set this up.

Ishmael

 

[Ishmael]

It is amazing that it withstood such a quake. But almost every nuke "accident" is caused by lack of water. You would think they would have so many redundant systems in place for the pumps that they couldn't fail.

In this case it's like real estate. Location, location, location.

Ishmael

 

[shoulderblade]

Same goes for storing the spent rods in pools located about the reactors.

This is a very widespread procedure,I believe. Finding, or building, safe storage for spent nuclear waste is an industry problem in conjunction with safe transport of the same

 

[Ishmael]

This is a very widespread procedure,I believe. Finding, or building, safe storage for spent nuclear waste is an industry problem in conjunction with safe transport of the same

It shouldn't be. That was a government promise that has been unfulfilled for decades.

Ishmael

 

[koalabear]

1977. In an April 7 press statement, President Carter announced, “We will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium produced in the U.S. nuclear power programs.”9 He went on to say, “The plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, will receive neither federal encouragement nor funding for its completion as a reprocessing facility.” (It was actually Carter’s veto of S. 1811, the ERDA Authorization Act of 1978, that prevented the legislative authorization necessary for constructing a breeder reactor and a reprocessing facility.)

 

[Ishmael]

1977. In an April 7 press statement, President Carter announced, “We will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium produced in the U.S. nuclear power programs.”9 He went on to say, “The plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, will receive neither federal encouragement nor funding for its completion as a reprocessing facility.” (It was actually Carter’s veto of S. 1811, the ERDA Authorization Act of 1978, that prevented the legislative authorization necessary for constructing a breeder reactor and a reprocessing facility.)

It was not that decision on Carters part that I have issue with, it is that no alternative was put forward as far as the spent fuel building up at the nations commercial reactors. What most people don't quite grasp is that the fuel itself is actually government property. The energy producers don't own that fuel, never did. And that too is proper, we do need to keep track of the stuff. But the government (taxpayer) is paying for the storage of the spent rods. And that storage is not cheap, nor is it entirely secure when all of the sites are taken into consideration. It has been a mandate for decade for the government to consolidate that storage in a secure area. They have failed to do so and have failed for political reasons, not engineering problems or the lack of suitable areas.

Ishmael

 

[Loring2]

Although the plant was only designed to 7.5 Richter scale, it was hit with a 9.0 and performed just as designed. The electrical output tripped offline, and then the plant began an orderly shut down. With the electrical off line the motor/generator units kicked in to keep the coolant circulating pumps operating while the reactor was cooled down. And then the wave hit.

The tsunami swamped the aux. power units, the pumps quit working and the rest is history still unfolding. This was the fatal flaw in the design of the plant.

I pulled up the plant on google earth and looked around. It is painfully obvious that the breakwaters were never designed to deal with such a wave and that the aux. power units were located in a vulnerable location on the property. Given that the Japanese are the people that brought the word 'tsunami' into common parlance this design oversight is mind boggling.

The flaw was one that the Japanese created all on their own, the plant and reactor actually performed well beyond design specifications.

And the fact that it was the tsunami that initiated the problems I'm triply irritated by these know nothing, tree hugging, talking heads that the networks are parading on the news programs that are yapping about 'earth quake' design specs. If any of our plants are vulnerable it is the coastal units near subduction fault zones and there are ways of protecting the plants without having to even shut them down.

Ishmael

That is an almost scholarly treatise on what happened with the Japanese Atomic Electrical enegy plant and also correct.

The question now is how do we get the American public as well as the governnment to buy into the truth, instead of the stories intended to stop nuclear power plant construction ?

 

[Ishmael]

That is an almost scholarly treatise on what happened with the Japanese Atomic Electrical enegy plant and also correct.

The question now is how do we get the American public as well as the governnment to buy into the truth, instead of the stories intended to stop nuclear power plant construction ?

I'm learning to write to the 8th grade mean.

Ishmael

 

[eyer]

The question now is how do we get the American public as well as the governnment to buy into the truth, instead of the stories intended to stop nuclear power plant construction ?

America is in the midst of political meltdown...

...I doubt your "question" is truly feesible at this time.

 

[stephen55]

Dealing with spent fuel has been the Achilles' Heel of the nuclear industry from day one. While reactor design has been good, human error has played the biggest part in most nuclear accidents, including Three Mile island, Chernobyl and now Japan.

Yes, the reactors did well, shut down as supposed to, then lack of backup power due to poor planning for this contingency (the wave) left them up the creek.

The amount of radioactive material in the spent fuel ponds vastly outweighs the amount in the reactors. Fukushima I-1 started up forty years ago (March 1971). A lot of spent fuel has accumulated.

No one wants it in their back yard. No one wants it transported through or around their communities on the way to a storage site. So it usually stays right where it was used in the first place and usually in a water filled pond.

Once this cluster fuck is over (and who knows when that will be) Japan will go on using nuclear as they have no real choice. They import 80% of their total energy requirements and their reactors produce 30% of their electricity. That was likely to go to 40% by 2017, but we'll see...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf79.html

(This article was updated Feb. 24th, 2011...just in time for the quake and tsunami...)

 

[stephen55]

One more comment...

It is amazing that it withstood such a quake. But almost every nuke "accident" is caused by lack of water. You would think they would have so many redundant systems in place for the pumps that they couldn't fail.

Remember Murphy's law..."Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong".

I still have a tee-shirt from my university days that reads..."Murphy was an optimist".

 

[amicus]

Thank you Ishmael, for an excellent opening Post and Thread...thank you also for answering a question I had, about the placement of the diesel generators, I could not find a source that provided that information. I knew they had to be close to the facility, because of the line-loss over distance from usuable electric energy without transformer reductiions.

I also wish to express my appreciation for the GB in general, from what I have read in a few short weeks; an excellent forum for ideas and rational thought. Thank you all...


Amicus Veritas

 

[shoulderblade]

No one wants it in their back yard. No one wants it transported through or around their communities on the way to a storage site. So it usually stays right where it was used in the first place and usually in a water filled pond.

That's about it. NIMB

From the 'big secret' file The Atomic Energy Commision of Canada has a plan for disposal involving sinking a 1 k. shaft into Basalt granite and storing the waste in Titanium cannisters in side shafts. Last I heard they were actually collecting money from the provinces involved to fund the project. Possibly this crisis will bring out some recent information on the situation.

 

[amicus]

Hydro power requires dams and fish ladders and huge reservoirs to generate head velocity for turbines. Coal fired plants have not only burned residue, bush fly ash to contend with, Natural Gas is perhaps the cleanest and Nuclear Plants do have a disposal problem, see the Yucca Flats fiasco as an example.

TANSTAFLE; there ain't so such thing as a free lunch. If you ever gathered around a campfire in the woods, you quickly learn to place yourself away from the smoke.

For man to move out of the caves, something better than burning mammoth turds for heat and cooking was necessary, and every advancement since that has carried its' own baggage.

We need John Galt's Static Electricity Power Station, but it will not happen until men are free to innovate and create without first asking permission of the POB, (Anne McCaffrey) the Powers That Be...we will find a solution if the fucking bureaucrats will get the hell out of the way!


Amicus Veritas

 

[Songcatcher]

This is Richard Koshimizu from Tokyo.

The series of heavy earthquakes are not NATURAL. These are all ARTIFICIAL EARTHQUAKES. By now many of Japanese have realized the whole story. This is the real war!

When the nuclear war head bunker buster missile is shot against the sea bottom, it can trigger the heavy earthquakes. U.S. Forces have such technology and experiences.

The mastermind is David Rockefeller of CFR who intends to initiate FAR EAST WAR between U.S.+ JAPAN and China+NK. They plan to hit Japan with artificial earthquakes, then, NK shall invade SK and conquer the Peninsula while U.S. Force are absent for rescuing Japan. And China will be involved in this war.

David Rockefeller's eternal goal is to bring the world into FINAL WAR. Please spread this info. as much as possible. Otherwise the whole world would be manipulated and destryed by this mad old man.

Please watch my video that will tell you what he plans.

911 Inside Job and Hereafter (Modified) by Richard Koshimizu・
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akrne8XYwRY

Richard Koshimizu

http://richardkoshimizu.at.webry.info/201103/article_40.html

 

[Lancecastor]

Any old-style tea-kettle will melt through at the bottom if you let it run dry.

the pumps that they couldn't fail.

Unsinkable.

Unthinkable.

Not thinking.

Sinking.

http://www.fun-greetings-jokes.com/images/titanic.jpg