[Info-vax] The changing world

[Dave Froble]

On 7/6/2022 5:33 PM, John Wallace wrote:
> On 06/07/2022 21:19, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 7/6/2022 1:35 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2022-07-05, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)
>>> <helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Get your facts straight.  While the Green party has always been
>>>> anti-nuke, the decision to phase out nuclear power quickly was taken by
>>>> the Merkel government (of which the Greens were not a part), a reaction
>>>> to Fukushima.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, because Germany is so well-known for its volcanoes, earthquakes and
>>> tidal waves. :-)
>>>
>>> Fukushima didn't seem to bother your next-door neighbours, the French...
>>>
>>> Simon.
>>>
>>
>> Well, it really depends on circumstances ...
>>
>> Fukushima became a problem when there became a need for some generators.
>> Otherwise, the outcome would have been much less of a disaster.
>>
>> Now, is anyone going to try to tell me that in the whole country of Japan
>> there was not one generator that could have been provided?  Perhaps moved on a
>> military helicopter.  With a whole 24 hours to do so?
>>
>> Or, was it perhaps someone didn't want to "lose face" and would not ask for help?
>>
>> So, perhaps it depends on whether the Germans can be trusted to reliably run a
>> nuclear power station?
>>
>> Or perhaps another example was Three Mile Island, where the folks refused to
>> believe a valve was open, and refused to try to close it because anyone could
>> see it had to be already closed.  That worked well.  Poorly trained operators.
>>
>> Anything can be fucked up, unless the idiots are kept away from it.
>>
>
> I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't accept that (comment re generators).

Just saying what I've been told by someone who had to study the accident.

> In almost every major incident involving aircraft, spacecraft, safety critical
> process systems and related stuff, it takes *multiple* nominally-independent
> failures for serious trouble to occur.

Agree 100%

> Fukushima was preventable. Availability of standby power, and backup control and
> automation systems above probable flood levels, would have helped, as would
> various other design, management, and operational changes.
>
> There were even issues that were fairly basic and already known about e.g.
> ensuring that scheduled maintenance (e.g. of onsite standby generators and
> related equipment) was properly carried out; TEPCO had already had their wrists
> slapped for that on multiple occasions.
>
> Then there was the known vulnerability to overtopping in the event of a tsunami.
> The design assumptions at the time the station was built were already known to
> be inadequate. Real experience and world wide risk analysis of potentially
> vulnerable plant had shown that Fukushima was at significant risk from a "once
> in forty years" event. Folks seem to have assumed that "once in forty years"
> meant "won't happen for forty years", and then tuck their heads in the sand?
>
> It's reasonably well documented; one of the best analyses I've seen is freely
> available at:
> https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/06/why-fukushima-was-preventable-pub-47361
>
> It's relatively non technical: here's a sample:
>
> The Fukushima accident was, however, preventable. Had the plant’s owner, Tokyo
> Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and Japan’s regulator, the Nuclear and
> Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), followed international best practices and
> standards, it is conceivable that they would have predicted the possibility of
> the plant being struck by a massive tsunami. The plant would have withstood the
> tsunami had its design previously been upgraded in accordance with
> state-of-the-art safety approaches.
>
> The methods used by TEPCO and NISA to assess the risk from tsunamis lagged
> behind international standards in at least three important respects:
>
>  1) Insufficient attention was paid to evidence of large tsunamis inundating the
> region surrounding the plant about once every thousand years.
>
>  2) Computer modeling of the tsunami threat was inadequate. Most importantly,
> preliminary simulations conducted in 2008 that suggested the tsunami risk to the
> plant had been seriously underestimated were not followed up and were only
> reported to NISA on March 7, 2011.
>
> 3) NISA failed to review simulations conducted by TEPCO and to foster the
> development of appropriate computer modeling tools.
>
>
> At the time of the accident, critical safety systems in nuclear power plants in
> some countries, especially in European states, were—as a matter of course—much
> better protected than in Japan. Following a flooding incident at Blayais Nuclear
> Power Plant in France in 1999, European countries significantly enhanced their
> plants’ defenses against extreme external events. Japanese operators were aware
> of this experience, and TEPCO could and should have upgraded Fukushima Daiichi.
>
> Steps that could have prevented a major accident in the event that the plant was
> inundated by a massive tsunami, such as the one that struck the plant in March
> 2011, include:
>
> 1) Protecting emergency power supplies, including diesel generators and
> batteries, by moving them to higher ground or by placing them in watertight
> bunkers;
>
> 2) Establishing watertight connections between emergency power supplies and key
> safety systems; and
>
> 3) Enhancing the protection of seawater pumps (which were used to transfer heat
> from the plant to the ocean and to cool diesel generators) and/or constructing a
> backup means to dissipate heat.
>
> Though there is no single reason for TEPCO and NISA’s failure to follow
> international best practices and standards, a number of potential underlying
> causes can be identified. NISA lacked independence from both the government
> agencies responsible for promoting nuclear power and also from industry. In the
> Japanese nuclear industry, there has been a focus on seismic safety to the
> exclusion of other possible risks. Bureaucratic and professional stovepiping
> made nuclear officials unwilling to take advice from experts outside of the
> field. Those nuclear professionals also may have failed to effectively utilize
> local knowledge. And, perhaps most importantly, many believed that a severe
> accident was simply impossible.
>
> In the final analysis, the Fukushima accident does not reveal a previously
> unknown fatal flaw associated with nuclear power. Rather, it underscores the
> importance of periodically reevaluating plant safety in light of dynamic
> external threats and of evolving best practices, as well as the need for an
> effective regulator to oversee this process.
>
> (continues)
>
> Plenty similar elsewhere.

John, doesn't all of that sort of agree with keeping the idiots out of nuclear 
power?

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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