> Personally, I am inclined to congratulate those who forty years ago
> designed and built the pressure vessels which have stood up to so much
> in the last few days. A very expensive accident in financial terms
> but not, so far, in human terms.
We must also remember that the successful design has served its
purpose in containing everything long enough to be able to prevent a
complete catastrophic and instantaneous failure. Look at it this way:
1. Massive earthquake beyond anybody's wildest guesses. At what point
do you say that facility survival is no longer the biggest
concern--just mitigating the scope of the failure.
2. More people have died from the earthquake and tsunami itself than
will from the power plant. Which is the bigger disaster? A power plant
being destroyed or tens of thousands of deaths? Entire cities are
wiped out. This is the stuff that legends are based on. Atlantis,
anyone?
3. Even though the earthquake and tsunami far exceeded the design
specification of the facility, procedures and backup systems worked
well enough to prevent loss of life and wide-spread contamination (so
far). The facility is forever shutdown at the cost of billions of
dollars, but at least we haven't gotten the mushroom cloud which
everybody fears from nuclear power plants.
4. If we get a meltdown which causes a significant regional
contamination, there has been many days to prepare for it and
evacuate. Again, all these procedures and protection systems are to
prevent loss of life. In that, they are nearly 100% successful.
5. The geological record shows us that earthquakes of incredible
strengths have happened in the past--and not even that distant of a
past. The mountains didn't take millions of years to rise. Those
things popped up very quickly. In fact, in Montana there is a row of
mountain-sized slabs which slid, causing a serrated terrain. The
underground didn't just give way causing the serrated terrain, the
earth literally rose up into a slope so steep that the terrain gave
way and the slabs slid down the slope and rested on top of each other
in reverse order. Don't tell me that it took millions of years for
that to occur with little tiny tremors. For mountains to move miles,
it takes quite the event. There's no way to prepare for that kind of
event! But history tells us that if it happened in the past, it can
and probably will happen again in the future.
No matter how you slice it, the devastation is unbelievable.
AG
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