heywood on 23/3/2011 at 21:53
Quote Posted by Martin Karne
Even if I don't get in my mind how in the herpes someone would build nuclear plants galore in a seismic country like Japan.
Or building a subway in Los Angeles, California (someone has to explain this particular one to me mmk?).
As long as the subway tunnels don't cross fault lines, it's probably OK. Tunnels are usually made through solid rock, not soft ground, so they probably just shake along with the rest of the Earth and suffer little or no damage. I haven't heard of any major subway damage in Japan due to this quake. The 1995 Kobe earthquake collapsed the roof of a subway station but didn't do too much damage to the tunnels. And the 1989 quake that struck the San Francisco bay area damaged a lot of buildings and bridges, but the BART (subway) was unscathed, including the trans-bay tunnel.
Quote Posted by Koki
The reactors were perfectly fine after the earthquake. They all shut down automatically and though the power plant lost power(derp) the emergency diesel generators kicked in to take care of the cooling. Everything was textbook untill the tsunami shitwave hit the fan.
So I guess the question that comes to mind is, does no one in Japan realize that any earthquake that doesn't hit the mainland directly will cause a tsunami? Why did they build a nuclear power plant on the shoreline and not take precautions against a tsunami? How the hell there can be a death toll of twenty thousand if it took the wave twenty minutes to reach the coastline? What were they doing in these twenty minutes? It's not like high ground in Japan is particularly hard to find.
From what I read, the plant was designed to withstand a 6m wave. Reports have differed about how big this tsunami was at the Fukushima location, but the latest estimate I saw was 15m.
Apparently, TEPCO did a safety analysis 4 years ago after another smaller quake & tsunami hit a different nuclear plant. They determined there was a risk if they needed to use the backup generators when a tsunami hit, because the generators and their fuel tanks were at ground level. The diesel fuel tanks were apparently the first things to go when the tsunami hit because they were out in front near the shore. I also read that TEPCO had been somewhat unresponsive various safety studies and concerns raised over the last 10 years or so. Japan has gotten much more serious about earthquake preparation since the Kobe quake in 1995, but these plants were designed long before then and they were never upgraded to deal with a major threat.
Nicker on 23/3/2011 at 22:00
Quote Posted by heywood
Are you saying they should be designed for zero risk under every conceivable natural disaster regardless of how unlikely? That's pathological. It's also not a standard that's applied to other energy sources which have proven far more destructive than nuclear.
And you are missing the point. Any energy investment strategy has to be based on rational cost/risk/benefit tradeoffs including consideration of the impacts to human health and the environment.
The other sources you list do have risks associated with them but they are all short-term effects compared to the danger of residual nuclear contamination, which is measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Exactly how are you quantifying that risk? How much is the dollar cost of rendering hundreds of square kilometers uninhabitable for 5,000 generations? What's the price-tag for a contaminated watershed or fishery?
Kolya on 23/3/2011 at 23:29
Quote Posted by Koki
does no one in Japan realize that any earthquake that doesn't hit the mainland directly will cause a tsunami? Why did they build a nuclear power plant on the shoreline and not take precautions against a tsunami? How the hell there can be a death toll of twenty thousand if it took the wave twenty minutes to reach the coastline?
By one theory all the smart people were hanging in internet forums at the time.
heywood on 23/3/2011 at 23:55
Quote Posted by Nicker
The other sources you list do have risks associated with them but they are all short-term effects compared to the danger of residual nuclear contamination, which is measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Exactly how are you quantifying that risk? How much is the dollar cost of rendering hundreds of square kilometers uninhabitable for 5,000 generations? What's the price-tag for a contaminated watershed or fishery?
A short term effect shouldn't be discounted if it kills people.
Second, there are many long term effects from other energy sources. Accumulating greenhouse gasses, poisoning forests & lakes with acid rain, huge open mining scars, slurry ponds, changing whole landscapes with dams, contaminating oceans and long stretches of coastline with oil - these are not short term effects. And don't forget that burning coal releases huge amounts of radioactive uranium and thorium.
Also, the 5000 generations is a bit of an exaggeration. The main radioisotopes which pose a health risk from nuclear accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are Iodine 131, Cesium 137, and Strontium 90. Iodine 131 has a half life of just 8 days, which is why the pills are effective. Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 have half lives of something like 30 years. That's still a long time but it's on roughly the same time scale as the long term effects of fossil fuel use.
EDIT: As you can probably tell, I have a bit of bug up my ass about energy policy. I just get frustrated because there is always widespread support for the IDEA of reducing CO2 and moving away from fossil fuels, but the support always falls apart when you get real about doing it. The only sources of energy that don't draw opposition are the hypothetical ones that people haven't really thought through yet.
SubJeff on 24/3/2011 at 00:03
Where did 20 minutes come from? I thought it was 7 minutes from warning to the wave hitting land. And if you've seen the videos it was pretty ferocious.
I did initially wonder the same thing, until I heard the 7 minute figure.
heywood on 24/3/2011 at 00:25
Not only that, how far can you realistically run in 20 minutes if you're out of shape, elderly, or taking children with you?
catbarf on 24/3/2011 at 00:38
And that's assuming the powers-that-be get the warning that the wave is incoming, react immediately, and broadcast the warning to everyone in the coastal cities in a negligible time. And it's assuming people don't panic, or try to meet up with family members at work, or get caught in the inevitable clusterfuck of a traffic jam that would result.
But fuck, it's their fault if they can't sense an incoming tsunami and sprint up a mountain in twenty minutes.
Yakoob on 24/3/2011 at 02:20
dude. the whole fucking ground is shaking and buildings collapsing. This isn't your pissy little Cali earthquake, this is the biggest earthquake Japan has seen in DECADES. In twenty minutes, you wont even get from underneath the table/doorway/whatever you hurriedly jumped under when this shit cause you'll be too confused or expecting aftershocks. Not to mention even thinking about evacuating.
Koki is as koki does.
Martin Karne on 24/3/2011 at 05:58
Weird thing is Japanese people are the most prepared people on the planet when it comes to earthquakes, yet a few could run away or get a hint about a tsunami coming next (since they always have them in big quakes).
