Quake/Tsunami

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Which is it? How do you know that the top management wasn't simply waiting for more facts in a well-advised attempt to avoid complicating the problem exponentially?

In case A, informed top management knew time was not a factor. In case B, informed management (engineers or any layman) knows time is a critical factor. Only bean counters could not tell the difference. But I bet those bean counters knew what time to go home. After all, time cards are more important than the actual product.

When a nuclear power plant has no electricity and no cooling, then doing nothing exponentially complicates everything. Top management did the worst thing they could do. They waited for facts that they should have already known. AS top management also did at Three Mile Island. It was their job to already know this stuff. And would have if they came from where the work gets done.

Meanwhile, what happens to an anomaly in an unchanged computer? It does nothing harmful.

They could not even dispatch thousands of 12 volt battery - desperately needed, stored, readily available, and only 55 km away. Business school training makes it impossible to expedite solutions. Even a layman can appreciate doing nothing was only the worst possible solution. Patton (in WWII) well understood this concept. And created the Red Ball Express. His job - maximum support to the employees.

Engineers at the plant and even its top manager said action was necessary immediately. In communism and other corrupt institutions, the employee works for the boss. The antonym: when an employee says this must be done, a responsible boss then does everything possible to support that employee.

But the boss had no idea how things worked. Had no idea that time was an exponentially critical factor. The definition of corrupt management. It was top managements job to know how critical time was. They even spent two weeks to decide to run power lines to plants that had no electricity. How dumb is that?

[Cyber Wolf]

In case I missed it somewhere... how come there weren't 12 volt batteries kept at the location just in case something happened? Why would they need to get batteries flown in in the first place? Contingency plan and all that?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Cyber Wolf

In case I missed it somewhere... how come there weren't 12 volt batteries kept at the location just in case something happened? Why would they need to get batteries flown in in the first place? Contingency plan and all that?

They had multiple connections to the 500,000 volt grid and 275,000 volt grid for backup power. Something like 14 onsite generators. And about eight hours of battery power. That meant TEPCO management in Tokyo had almost eight hours to learn facts and made decisions. Even after being yelled at by the Plant Manager (something very unusual in Japanese culture), TEPCO refuse to permit venting. By the time TEPCO management made a decision, there were no batteries left charged.

Well operators worked frantically trying to save Reactor 2 for three days. That's how long TEPCO still did not provide those 12 volts batteries. No batteries. And no generators.

Is that hard to fathom? Not for me. I have seen business school trained managers do things that stupid routinely. Because they have no idea what the words really mean. Because they did not come from where the work get done.

The NHK report is scathing in that it exposes more facts all but withheld by TEPCO. NHK apparently had to limit so much information only to events in Reactors 3 and 4. NHK quotes on-site employees as citing 'no batteries' as a specific reason for the explosion in Reactor 3.