Quake/Tsunami

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by tw

Some plants are less forgiving. Other plants let humans make more mistakes. The Venus Fly Trap is a classic example. Had human not intervened multiple times, then The Venus Fly Trap would not have happened. Multiple human mistakes (refusing to fix defective valves to cut costs; repeatedly turning off or disabling safety functions, etc) created that meltdown.

FTFY

[infinite monkey]

*snortle*

[ZenGum]

Dear Tepco,

Please get your shit together.

Love,

Earth

[tw]

When working in high radiation environments, a dosimeter for every human is essential. TEPCO said the earthquake destroyed many dosimeters. Left were maybe only 380 dosimeters. Another 200 workers were without any such safety devices. Two weeks later, and TEPCO still could not find dosimeters anywhere in the world? Nonsense. TEPCO management has been that dumb. Classic of what one should expect from people trained in business schools. Not trained in how the work gets done.

How long does it take to make a phone call, order some dosimeters, and fly them in via Fed Ex? Weeks if a decision is made by incompetent management. Hours when the Japanese press finally exposed another example of why these nuclear plants exploded.

Everyone knows those plants must be disassembled to get access to fuel rods. Everyone knows work will require use of land (kilometers) around those plants. Competent management was preparing land around those plants over a week ago when radiation was safe. Same work should be ongoing every hour now. Because anyone with minimal knowledge knows radiation levels around each plant will only increase. Do it now while it is easy. Pave access roads. Fields for depositing destroyed building materials. Trenches and protection buildings for thousands of workers. Water collection facilities for rain water washing those radiative materials. Do it now while radiation levels are lower. While it is easy. So that space and access during the hard part is available and ready.

But that means TEPCO management is planning. Doing what is necessary to stay ahead of the problem. They are not. TEPCO management is doing what any business school trained manager would do to even murder seven Challenger astronauts. For miles around those plants should be facilities necessary to disassemble or even bury those reactors inside a sarcophagus. And facilities even for thousands of workers to shower off radioactive materials. More important, large pipes to provide a most important material - water without salt.

View what is happening. Nothing. It took two weeks to decide to route electric wires to the plants - a half day job if radiation did not complicate construction. Will it take months to decide to disassemble debris to get to and remove fuel rods? Obviously. TEPCO management could not even order a few hundred dosimeters. TEPCO is probably worried about the costs - as any good buiness school graduate is taught to always solve. Costs are always more important than how the work gets done. So four nuclear reactors exploded.

[casimendocina]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Not another one.

[tw]

Kids who learn by fixing things would have known this in junior high school. To fix something, one must first define the problem. Four weeks after the problem existed, Japanese are finally admitting hard facts of their nuclear power plant problems. Days ago, the Japanese government said their nuclear plant meltdowns and explosions were a category seven event. Highest on the scale. Chernobyl also was a category seven event.

Japanese government only raised their rating from four to seven after having been provided accurate data. Fukushima may have only been 10% of the radiation emitted by Chernobyl. But Chernobyl was a complete plant meltdown and fire.

What is not reported is why the Japanese government only recently obtained these numbers. Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) was doing what any business school graduate would do. Lie. Pretend everything is under control.

GPU (Metropolitan Edison) did the exact same lying during Three Mile Island. Like Fukushima, a 3 Mile Island event was created first by a cost control mentality followed by denials at the highest levels of management. Three Mile Island was only a category 5 event because Jimmy Carter and the NRC commissioner immediately took 3 Mile Island away from the only reason for that failure - GPU management. Carter, et al did what any manager with basic intelligence and technical experience would do because GPU management also were business school graduates. With virtually no idea how electricity or nuclear power works.

It took the Japanese government four weeks to acknowledge what was even posted here weeks ago. TEPCO management must be lying even to itself. Or are doing exactly what is taught in business schools. Either way, one (of three) Japanese disaster that was completely created by humans is directly traceable to top management. And to a lesser extent, to a Japanese government who did not recognize how incompetent and dishonest TEPCO management has been.

No solution was possible because TEPCO management not only denied the problems. But apparently subverted facts to do what any business school graduate would do to even lie about Mission Accomplished. First step to any solution means a problem must first be defined.

[plthijinx]

Originally Posted by tw

Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) was doing what any business school graduate would do. Lie. Pretend everything is under control.

BP just did the same thing in the gulf.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Tw's vicious prejudices: check; noted. It is not merely that he is plagued with economic illiteracy even unto voting Democratic habitually, nor that he is incapable of politics: this man does not play well with humans. The prisons are full of men of that description.

Now to something a tad more constructive: that event scale goes to 7 and stops. Nuclear activists of some kind interviewed on NPR recently said that while Fukushima is rated a 7, Chernobyl's release of radionuclides would rate about a 10 or 11 -- not exactly parity.

A poster on another board I frequent put it this way:

I was listening to NPR last night driving home and someone from some nuclear group was speaking about the Japanese reactor. When asked about it being the same level of disaster as Chernobyl he stated what we need to know is that the scale only has 7 levels and once you meet the top level there is nothing beyond that but if you compare the two's leak levels Japan is still only 1/10th the amount of contamination that Chernobyl produced mainly because when Chernobyl blew up it scattered more radiation than a leak like Japan is producing. He said if Japan is a 7 Chernobyl would be a 10 or 11 if the scale was adjusted.

Sourcing on this is not yet very tight -- what knoweth the 'Net? Is this spokesman wrong or right?

[Aliantha]

No matter who's right or wrong, it's a disaster.

[tw]

From the Washington Post of 13 May 2011 is confirmation of what was obvious only one week after the Japanese Earthquake:

Nuclear watchdog points to gaps in U.S. safety regulations
On Thursday, Fukushima's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., announced that the Unit 1 reactor suffered worse damage than the company had previously acknowledged. New data show that the reactor's uranium fuel melted, slumped to the bottom of the primary containment vessel and burned a hole that released radioactive water, a spokesperson said at a news conference in Tokyo.

Once uranium burns through a zirconium lining, then hydrogen is released and massive radiation is released.

TEPCO, et al knew far more radiation was leaking than they would report. So much that only a reactor vessel breach could explain it. An example of a business school graduate more worried about being politically correct rather than honest.

What happened in Fukishima is also what would have happened in Three Mile Island had Carter and NRC director Harold Denton not taken that plant away from GPU Nuclear (Met Ed). GPU was doing the same denials and business school spin that TEPCO would do 32 years later. As usual, management was the only reason why both nuclear plants suffered vastly different consequences.

[tw]

From the NY Times on 17 May 2011 is what happens when executives do not make decisions:

In Japan Reactor Failings, Danger Signs for the U.S.
Government officials have also suggested that one of the primary causes of the explosions was a several-hour delay in a decision to use the vents, as Tokyo Electric managers agonized over whether to resort to emergency measures that would allow a substantial amount of radioactive materials to escape into the air. ...

The seriousness of the crisis at the Fukushima plant became evident within hours of the quake and the tsunami that rushed over the plant's sea wall.

Just 12 hours after the quake, the pressure inside Reactor No. 1 had reached roughly twice the maximum pressure the unit had been designed to withstand, raising fears that the vessels that house fuel rods would rupture, setting a possible meltdown in motion. With the pressure high, pumping in additional cooling water also was not possible

The government became rattled enough that it ordered Tokyo Electric to begin venting. But even then, Tokyo Electric's executives continued to deliberate, according to a person close to government efforts to bring the reactors under control. The exchanges became so heated, the person said, that the company's nuclear chief, Vice President Sakae Muto, and the stricken plant's director, Masao Yoshida, engaged in a "shouting match" - a rarity in reserved Japan.

Mr. Yoshida wanted to vent as soon as possible, but Mr. Muto was skeptical whether venting would work, ... The executives did not give the order to begin venting until Saturday - more than 17 hours after the tsunami struck and 6 hours after the government order to vent. ...

Had they vented then, batteries still would have provided electricity. By stalling, the vents no longer had electric power to operate.

The valves are designed so they can also be opened manually, but by that time, workers found radiation levels near the venting system at Reactor No. 1 were already too high to approach, according to Tokyo Electric's records. ...

The results of the failed venting were disastrous.

Reactor No. 1 exploded first, on Saturday, the day after the earthquake. Reactor No. 3 came next, on Monday. And No. 2 exploded early Tuesday morning. ...

Tokyo Electric in recent days has acknowledged that damage at the plant was worse than previously thought, with fuel rods most likely melting completely at Reactors 1, 2 and 3 in the early hours of the crisis, ...

Well duhhhh. Obvious by the end of the first week. Pressure was twice what the reactor vessel was supposed to withstand. And still top management could not permit what plant managers knew had to be done ASAP. How many employees did the Vice President plan on killing? Or could he not even make that decision?

[Undertoad]

No TEPCO employees have died from radiation. Two have had coronary events whilst working at the damaged plant.

[lookout123]

Yeah, but they will eventually. Mark my words, it may be 15 or 30 years down the road but sooner or later they will die. TEPCO management planned it that way.

It's like the Dim Mak.

[classicman]

The government became rattled enough that it ordered Tokyo Electric to begin venting. But even then, Tokyo Electric's executives continued to deliberate, according to a person close to government efforts snip. The exchanges became so heated, the person said,

one unnamed person's account...

At Reactor No. 2, workers tried to manually open the safety valves, but pressure did not fall inside the reactor, making it unclear whether venting was successful, the records show.

But the emergency vents were fitted with numerous safeguards, some of which require electricity to work, rendering them useless when all power is lost at a nuclear plant, experts say.

The design is the result of conflicting schools of thought among United States nuclear officials, said Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at several American nuclear power plants.

Mr. Friedlander said, referring to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: “You have the N.R.C. containment isolation guys who want containment closed, always, under every conceivable accident scenario, and then you’ve got the reactor safety guys who need containment to be vented under severe accident scenarios. It is a very controversial system.”

85% of all problems directly traceable to ENGINEERS!

Also from that link:

American officials had said early on that reactors in the United States would be safe from such disasters because they were equipped with new, stronger venting systems. But Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, now says that Fukushima Daiichi had installed the same vents years ago.

interesting read.

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by classicman

85% of all problems directly traceable to ENGINEERS!

They were probably traitors to the cause and also had MBA's.