All true enough but doesn't address the simple idea that if they'd sited the
generators and switchgear higher, the reactors would have survived and the
other concerns would have been averted entirely. It seems like a dumb error
from people who ARE supposed to be rocket scientists.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 16/03/2011, at 9:13 AM, Ken Norton wrote:
>> 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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