Nuclear Disaster In Japan Could Have Been Mitigated, Say Industry Insiders 204
Hugh Pickens writes "Some insiders from Japan's tightly knit nuclear industry have stepped forward to say that Tepco and regulators had for years ignored warnings of the possibility of a larger-than-expected tsunami in northeastern Japan, and thus failed to take adequate countermeasures, such as raising wave walls or placing backup generators on higher ground. 'March 11 exposed the true nature of Japan's postwar system, that it is led by bureaucrats who stand on the side of industry, not the people,' says Shigeaki Koga, a former director of industrial policy at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Eight years ago, as a member of an influential cabinet office committee on offshore earthquakes in northeastern Japan, Kunihiko Shimazaki, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo, warned that Fukushima's coast was vulnerable to tsunamis more than twice as tall as the forecasts of up to 17 feet put forth by regulators and Tepco, but government bureaucrats running the committee moved quickly to exclude his views from debate as too speculative and 'pending further research.' Then in 2008, Tepco's own engineers made three separate sets of calculations that showed Fukushima Daiichi could be hit by tsunamis as high as 50 feet. 'They completely ignored me in order to save Tepco money,' says Shimazaki."
Balancing risk vs. reward indeed (Score:2, Informative)
Stop being afraid of nuclear.
Deaths per terawatt-hour for all energy sources [nextbigfuture.com]
Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed (Score:4, Informative)
Stupid to say this as Japan is the first country to get nuked. Twice.
History repeats itself. (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget this kind of thinking and denial was present at the Chisso Corporation, with the mercury poisoning scandal during the 70s in Minamata, Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease [wikipedia.org]
Re:Balancing risk vs. reward indeed (Score:5, Informative)
All I see in your post is a bunch of "ifs", "mights" and "maybes".
Your brain seems to be operating on nothing but ignorant fear. Proof of this is when you said: "There is no other energy source that can create problems on such scale in such a short time."
Hydroelectric dam failure has already created worse disasters in a smaller amount of time. Coal slurry pond failure has also already created larger disasters in shorter periods of time. Normally operating coal plants are creating a larger disaster over a larger area over a longer period of time as we speak. Even if you count the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear energy has killed fewer people per TW/h than any other source of energy.
You seem to show ignorance of both nuclear and conventional energy sources. Your lack of insight and understanding have created a preference for larger assured disasters that you can understand easily over smaller possible disasters that are difficult for you to understand.
I would recommend you inform yourself and reexamine your opinions.
Re:Crank or coverup (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Universal flaw in The System (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the nuclear industry was in the fortunate position of being needed by politicians to keep the lights on. Take the UK for example, once world leaders in nuclear technology. Our government paid to develop it all because it was promised to be too cheap to meter if only the initial risky and expensive investments could be made, and plus it was a good way to get weapons grade material and show we had advanced nuclear tech. So during the 50s and 60s we paid for it all and ran the plants, but it turned out they were actually very expensive and not at all easy to build and run.
In the early 80s all our energy generation was sold off to private companies and turned into a cash-cow for them. All of it except for nuclear, no-one want that because the costs were too high and the risks to big if anything went wrong (and things had gone wrong in the past). The government was offering them fully functional nuclear plants for free and a guaranteed income, but still no-one was interested. In the end we had to subsidise running the plans, insuring them and all the clean-up work when they were decommissioned*.
So private companies had the government over a barrel. The country needed nuclear and government policy was not to run it ourselves. Now things have changed though and there is little appetite from the voters for nuclear, but lots of demand for green technology. The nuclear lobby is out in force and desperately trying to spin the situation, but people realised that if we just switch the subsidy from nuclear to green then we don't need nuclear any more.
Dungeness versus Aldermaston (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, the UK (in a fit of what I can only describe as mindblowing insanity) has its nuclear weapons plant in the middle of one of the most densely populated areas in the country, and indeed of the planet. A really good disaster at Burgefield would lay waste to some of the most expensive housing in the UK and cause the evacuation of millions of people. Compared to living in the relevant part of the Home Counties, I would far rather live next to the perimeter fence at Dungeness.
People are simply piss-poor at assessing risk, or the entire population for ten kilometres around Burgefield would be marching on Parliament, demanding the cancellation of Trident, and engaging in massive civil disobedience.
Re:But so could anything (Score:5, Informative)
Afaik Chinese are mostly copying Russian tech in this regard, just like they do with weapons.
Going by Wiki, this is incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#China [wikipedia.org]
They've got a bunch under construction that use French tech from the 90s (CPR-1000), and then they have the AP1000 and EPR which are American and European, respectively. Finally a trio of CNP-600 which I'm not sure what they are... So definitely not Russian tech.
Thanks for piquing my curiosity, though :)
Re:Dungeness versus Aldermaston (Score:4, Informative)
By that kind of argument there is no "good" place to stick a reactor.
I think the real question is whether these plants use safe designs, like passive cooling at the very least. Plants with fundamentally unsafe designs should be phased out everywhere, and plants with more modern and safe designs shouldn't be an issue as long as all the usual precautions are followed.
I think a big regulatory problem is that we keep extending the life of rather ancient designs, but we don't allow newer plants to be built. This sort of thing makes no sense from a risk-management perspective...