Japanese N-Plant Explosion

[chimpkin]

today's nuclear engineers are a generation separated and aren't going to learn any new less from this that haven't been accounted for in 3rd generation reactors.

Um, actually-it IS making people rethink current ops practice.

One of the UCS teleconference calls was saying we're running on less of a safety margin than Japan does with over 30 plants, insomuch as we have spent fuel rods onsite to capacity at most plants...with the 30-some odd plants only having a capacity to cool them for four hours, given a blackout.
Japan's blackout cooling window's eight hours.

And if you ask me...since I've been through several hurricanes...neither is enough of a safety margin as far as I'm concerned...It should be at least a frigging week!!!

Because natural disasters kinda mess shit up in very unexpected ways. It's always a surprise, what makes it, what gets torn all to hell.

Ike (Class 3) took our power offline...I'm wanting to say five weeks of bathing and flushing with poolwater, and running a generator?
I think they said some of those low-safety-margin sites are in hurricane country...

So, there's going to be Changes, such that there's going to be more safety put in place here, because of what did happen and could have happened in Japan.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Sorry, I underestimated the level of radioactive iodine. I said it was 15x legal limits, when it is reported to be 27x legal limits.

Spinach with radioactive iodine 27 times more than the government-regulated limit was found in the city of Hitachi in Ibaraki Prefecture, more than 100 kilometers south of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, but the radiation levels do not affect human health, local authorities said Sunday.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/79856.html

Thanks. Good link. Bad news. Heavy material is being distributed.
This has not reached the western news yet, I think.

The amount of radiation is very low, and the foods would still be quite safe to eat and drink.
Even at a 1,000 times the very conservative levels they have set.
(Though I wouldn't like a glass of the milk myself, you understand)

Still, it is worrying.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Um, actually-it IS making people rethink current ops practice.

One of the UCS teleconference calls was saying we're running on less of a safety margin than Japan does with over 30 plants, insomuch as we have spent fuel rods onsite to capacity at most plants...with the 30-some odd plants only having a capacity to cool them for four hours, given a blackout.
Japan's blackout cooling window's eight hours.

Yeah, that not really engineers now is it?

And if you ask me...since I've been through several hurricanes...neither is enough of a safety margin as far as I'm concerned...It should be at least a frigging week!!!

Yes assuming all the backup generators were to go out yes we would have only 4 hours on batteries, but we could only get that to happen again if say a tsunami were to wipe them out.

Because natural disasters kinda mess shit up in very unexpected ways. It's always a surprise, what makes it, what gets torn all to hell.

I disagree, the reactors themselves were rated for quakes up to a certain strength, there was no surprise in what they could handle to that point, certainly there is a science to hardening things against events like quakes, deading any "surprise".

So, there's going to be Changes, such that there's going to be more safety put in place here, because of what did happen and could have happened in Japan.

Oh probably, but those changes will be most likely be procedural, certainly not reactor redesigns. The 3rd generations have it handle, heck even the 2+ Gens in japan like the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant which was even closer to the epicenter survived the quake and tsunami without harm to the reactor. Now I would love if we could get 4th Gens now but the only way that would happen is if there was significant investment in it. A small array of cassette fueled molten lead cooled reactor would be immune to all problems that could cause radioactivity to leak out aside for being bomb from the air, let alone meltdown proof by passive inherent mechanisms.

 

[iceaura]

You reject that based on the evidence available, science could not have predicted that this fault was capable of producing an earthquake of that magnitude correct?

Incorrect. Wrong.

Notice the language - the double negatives. They go with the passive voice constructions elsewhere, to point to the area of difficulty you guys are having.

My contention was (is) that no one paying attention to the obvious, including the obvious evaluation of the present state of scientific knowledge or by any other criterion, could have ruled out the possibility of a 9+ earthquake at that location - or anywhere else along the plate convergence involved - with sufficient confidence to take the risk of building a nuke unable to withstand the event.

Not even now, let alone in 1970.

And that this more or less plain, ordinary observation has been made many times, by many people both well informed and not, with official status and without, for fifty years or more. It's not hindsight. It's long standard, conventional wisdom among a large group of well informed people.

That's a judgment involving the risk of such a construction, as well as the likelihoods and uncertainties of the present state of knowledge.

I'll try again:

In this instance the Japanese were unluck, it's not a case of challenger logic - nor is it a case of them having been lucky up until now.

The arguments being set up here for nuclear power are straight Challenger Logic (buttressed with a surprising frequency and level of straight denial), and the Japanese have indeed been lucky so far in getting control of the reactors (as well as a couple of the reactors being shut down for maintenance, going so long without getting hit like this, the comparatively remote location, etc etc etc). You posted the good news yourself, in the post I directly responded to with a direct quote. It was news - that is, it reported something that was not inevitable, that was welcome relief of actual uncertainty.

Why is this so hard to follow?

And why do we see this kind of odd, inexplicable mistaking? I'll quote the whole thing so the context is there:

note on the media stuff: The harping on "panic"

(a common effect of unreliable reassurance - see the 2004 essay I linked, that used TMI media as a classic example)

started while we were still looking down the barrel of potential meltdown and containment breach at Fukushima. Now there's a general principle in dealing with rightwing corporate and authoritarian types ( the primary supporters of nuclear power in the US) (no, Trippy, not you) that says one of the best ways of telling what they are up to is noticing what they are accusing other people of doing. In this case, panicking.

The threat of the loss of the bright, shiny, nuclear dream is serious. There is a lot invested in it - in surprisingly personal and deeply emotional forms, often. If we follow the discussion from its early days, when a world of nuclear powered flying cars and power too cheap to be worth metering was right at their fingertips, to the modern era of well, but it's the best bridge to the distant future of renewables and lots of people die in coal mines, we see a kind of desperation in the clinging.
”
Political vitriol.

Or do you expect me to believe that the CE of a company that is 76% owned by the New Zealand Government, who has a well publiscized anti-nuclear stance - to the point of the US canceling it's ANZUS treaty with us, is some how caught up in some right wing neo-con pro nuclear conspiracy?



That may be the most patently absurd thing I have seen you suggest.

Ever.

I suppose you also think that the EPA is deliberately taking RADNET stations offline when radiation readings get too high, to protect the nuclear industry from fallout from the situation in Japan (pun intended).

!!? What "vitriol"? What "conspiracy" What "deliberate faking"? Where does this Rorschach blot symptomatic stuff root?

I post something that explicitly refuses conspiracy and fakery as explanations of a media pattern, offers a contrasting, lightweight but apparently plausible, explanation for the dominant feature of this thread as well as much outside media, and this bizarre garbage gets tossed up in reaction.

Always, of course, including a personal attack. But that's of course the accepted form, normality itself - political discussion is now standardized like pro basketball: certain sides of issues are allowed certain moves, regardless, because that's their move, see?

 

[ULTRA]

A worrying development occurred overnight with reactor 3 developing a pall of dark grey smoke. This came from the S.E. corner of the building where spent fuel rods are stored according to the IAEA, http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

washingtonpost #Fukushima workers lost precious hours today after gray smoke prompted mass evacuation http://wapo.st/haHLoY

The smoke subsided some time later, and does not appear to to have been a very serious event.
Electricity is now available to all the reactors, though getting specific equipment "energised" is an ongoing project.

Contamination of food and water is "More Serious" than previously thought according to the W.H.O. http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/news/englishnews/news.htm?main&20110322&56&742790

World Nuclear news report that rain is causing a spike in monitoring of radiation, as dust is washed out of the air. This will help in the longer term as radiation is washed into rivers and drains and then into the sea. http://3k930.tk/

 

[Trippy]

Incorrect. Wrong.

Notice the language - the double negatives. They go with the passive voice constructions elsewhere, to point to the area of difficulty you guys are having.

My contention was (is) that no one paying attention to the obvious, including the obvious evaluation of the present state of scientific knowledge or by any other criterion, could have ruled out the possibility of a 9+ earthquake at that location - or anywhere else along the plate convergence involved - with sufficient confidence to take the risk of building a nuke unable to withstand the event.

That's a judgment involving the risk of such a construction, as well as the likelihoods and uncertainties of the present state of knowledge.

It's a bullshit judgement, founded in ignorance. You have stated (or implied), in this thread that you think that the science that lead to the conclusion that this fault could not have produced a M9+ earthquake should have been discarded right from the get-go, and that the designers should have designed around an M9+ earthquake, because as far as you're concerned, it was an eventuality.

That's not science, that's bullshit speculation mixed in with Chicken Little's paranoia.

I'll try again:
The arguments being set up here for nuclear power are straight Challenger Logic (buttressed with a surprising frequency and level of straight denial), and the Japanese have indeed been lucky so far in getting control of the reactors (as well as a couple of the reactors being shut down for maintenance, going so long without getting hit like this, the comparatively remote location, etc etc etc). You posted the good news yourself, in the post I directly responded to with a direct quote. It was news - that is, it reported something that was not inevitable, that was welcome relief of actual uncertainty.

I'm going to repeat myself here.

This is not challenger logic.

This is not an instance of "Well it hasn't happened so far, so it's not going to happen". One of the key points you seem to be ignorant of is that in this case there was no evidence this could happen, as opposed to the challenger instance where there was. The problem i'm having is that your statements are so blatantly ignorant of the science of the matter that I don't even know how to start trying to explain it to you. And I'm not even sure I should bother, because so far, in all of the discussions I've had with you, you've shown utter inflexability in your point of view.

Up until the 2004 Haiti earthquake, every M9 earthquake that has happened has occured on a faultline that has the same morphology. They're long, and they're straight, which makes sense, because first you need to be able to store the energy (it's more or less elastic strain energy), and there's a lot of it to store, and then you need to be able to release all of it, at once. Up until 2004, all of the evidence, and all of the science pointed to long straight faults, adjacent to long straight subduction zones being an absolute requirement for M9 earthquakes to occur.

In 2004, we had the M9 earthquake on the Andaman fault. The Andaman fault had been, before that, predicted to be too short to give a M9+ earthquake. In 2008, the first papers began to be published about the boxing day earthquake (and Tsunami), one of which (published by a New Zealander) suggested that we might need to re-consider our understanding of M9+ earthquakes, but also made the point that although it didn't have the fault morphology normally associated with faults generating M9+ earthquakes, it did have some other characteristics which, up until that point had been unknown, that were virtualy identical to the Chile trench. Our understandig evolved, but this section of the Japan trench was still not believed to qualify.

Now it has qualified, and in the next 2-4 years we will see papers released that will examine why, some will be data mining papers, trying to see if there were any clues in the evidence collected to date, because finding such evidence would be invaluable, and might enable us to pinpoint faults that are currently regarded as being unable to produce an M9 earthquake, that actually might. Other will be based on field data, there will be boats, with side scan sonar, and boats collecting seismic reflection profiles, and there might even be some deep sea bores drilled, and seismic risks will be re-evaluated, everywhere (again).

I'm going to wait for scienctists to do science.

Your attempts at blaming geologists and geotechs for this are assinine, insulting and moronic.

Why is this so hard to follow?

It's not. It's quite clearly, and quite obviously, Bullshit.

!!? What "vitriol"?

All of it.

What "conspiracy" What "deliberate faking"? Where does this Rorschach blot symptomatic stuff root?

I post something that explicitly refuses conspiracy and fakery as explanations of a media pattern, offers a contrasting, lightweight but apparently plausible, explanation for the dominant feature of this thread as well as much outside media, and this bizarre garbage gets tossed up in reaction.[/quote]

Now there's a general principle in dealing with rightwing corporate and authoritarian types ( the primary supporters of nuclear power in the US) (no, Trippy, not you) that says one of the best ways of telling what they are up to is noticing what they are accusing other people of doing. In this case, panicking.

The threat of the loss of the bright, shiny, nuclear dream is serious. There is a lot invested in it - in surprisingly personal and deeply emotional forms, often. If we follow the discussion from its early days, when a world of nuclear powered flying cars and power too cheap to be worth metering was right at their fingertips, to the modern era of well, but it's the best bridge to the distant future of renewables and lots of people die in coal mines, we see a kind of desperation in the clinging.

RADNET Conspiracy
Panic mongering
Panic Mongering
Panic Mongering
Panic Mongering

And I have already told you, several times now, that one of the things that lead me to make the original comment was some things that I saw on the Canadian TV website, but that I had been unable to track down the original interviews - but had endeavoured to explain to you what they consisted of, the mainstream media interviewing representatives from anti nuclear groups who were making comparisons to Chernobyl, saying that it was as bad as, or worse than, inspite of the fundamental differences of reactor design, including one who directly and explicitly accused the IAEA of trying to cover up the true extent of this incident. Which brings us back to your dodging of direct questions, something you're very quick to point out when you think others have done.

Always, of course, including a personal attack. But that's of course the accepted form, normality itself - political discussion is now standardized like pro basketball: certain sides of issues are allowed certain moves, regardless, because that's their move, see?

So what you're saying then is that you can't stand the smell of your own shit, and object to being boxed with the fruitloop greeny left conspiracists?

 

[ULTRA]

I've been cross-refrencing data and analysis from NISA, the IAEA and reports from the office of the prefeceture since the start, and have seen no evidence of any cover-up. That NISA were not always able to provide the IAEA with the data it requested is mainly due to a lack of power in the control-rooms, where monitoring instrumentation is located. They can't very well guess what's happening, as guessing is not a recognised scientifically sound practise. Better to say "We don't know". The data I've seen from the IAEA has steadily improved in both quality and quantity, and is referenced by the World Health Organisation. The logistics of creating a cover-up in this climate of inter-organisational co-operation would be immense, and a drain on the data gathering system that would be evident by now. In short, there is no conspiracy.

 

[Trippy]

In hindsight, I'm going to take a moment to re-adress this:

Has it occurred to you that insisting on telling the local residents who speak the local language what their name really is for the local river, is kind of - how does one put it without getting banned - damaging to your overall credibility?

Has it occured to you that insisting on telling the local residents in an area who get the local media coverage what there current events are might be damaging to your overall credibility?

Moving on, in retrospect you seem to be under the delusion that I think that all media is panic mongering. This is demonstrably wrong.

Here's my original comment.

Ugh.
I'm marginally anti nuclear (I see it as a temporary neccessary evil), and live in a country known globally for its anti nuclear stance.

And even I'm sick of the panic mongering.
Here's some real info:
Information on the Japanese Earthquake and Reactors in That Region

I'm simply stating that I am sick of the panic mongering that is occuring. Any inference into the amount of panic mongering remains exclusively yours.

A claim which I have since qualified, and still stand by. There IS a lot of panic mongering that seems to be going on in relation to this issue - here's a clue for you though. My statement that there is panic mongering going on does not imply that I don't think it's bad. That's your inference purely and simply, and we all know how you came to that conclusion, don't we.

Here I suggest that 'a lot of panic mongering is going on - a relative term that gives no indication as to what proportion of the media is engaging in panic mongering, the only reasonable inference from this is that I consider that of the media that I am seeing, a disproportinately large amount of it seems to be, in my opinion, panic mongering - for all you know, I could consider 5% of the media coverage to be disproportionately large. Something that's further backed by this statement:

As I have stated, repeatedly now, it's not what I see on the media that I catch.

Has it occured to you that you may simply not be looking at the same media that I am?

A statement that I have subsequently reiterated.

At no time have I suggested that what I consider panic mongering is representative of the bulk of the media coverage - the closest that I've come in regards to that is suggesting that the IAEA article "Might have been true 40 years ago" vaguely implying that things might have changed since then, but still not implying that anything I've said is representative of the maority of the media. So far, the only "odd, inexplicable mistaking" has been on your part, and it all boils down to your initial assumptions about my comments on the events to date (at least at that time), and your lumping me in with the pro-nuclear apologists, and (seeming) knee-jerk dismissal and opposition to anything I say.

The way you come across to me at this point is that if I said "The sky is blue" you'd immediately start arguing that it was yellow.

And this is the third time this has happened.

 

[iceaura]

You have stated (or implied), in this thread

Try dealing with the statements, and leave your supposed "implications" out of it.

This is not an instance of "Well it hasn't happened so far, so it's not going to happen".

Yes, it is. Explicitly. That's what the word "unprecedented" means, when used as a justification or explanation of erroneous assessment.

And that's just the specific incident - one recent event in my larger argument about the series of such events we've seen. My actual assertion of Challenger Logic applied to the argument being set up on this thread and elsewhere for building more nukes: the success at preventing worse disaster here - even the likelihood of such prevention, mid event - is quite explicitly being evoked as another piece of evidence of the safety of nuke building in general. They've had another near miss from a blindsider, and they are inferring safety from it.

One of the key points you seem to be ignorant of is that in this case there was no evidence this could happen, as opposed to the challenger instance where there was.

There was no evidence that a 9+ earthquake was possible along a convergent plate boundary, specifically along the Japanese coast? Baloney. A ten year old with a map and some pins would tell you different.

Whoever is restricting their notion of "evidence" to whatever it would take to justify that assertion is blundering if they are using that assessment to site a nuke. They are using an untested, unsure theory to screen the evidence they are willing to consider without reference to the probabilities relevant in the decision. When siting nuclear power plants, the extremely unlikely is relevant - because the error penalty is huge. You have to be very secure in your theory, if you are going to use it to dismiss evidence from consideration altogether when siting a nuke.

And you've got the direction of implication backwards, anyway: we are talking about the evidence of reliability in scientific assessments of earthquake risk. As it is a new science, and 9+ earthquakes are rare events, we expect of course a responsible humility in the use of its assessments of 9+ earthquake risk. Their theories are untested, their data base thin. They certainly can't be used to overrule ordinary common sense in the siting of nuclear power plants.

Possibly there was evidence of high risk at Fukushima, simply not recognized as such; possibly the body of knowledge relevant and comprehensiveness of theory employed was not complete enough to allow confidence in the risk assessments (my guess); possibly there was some error of reasoning that will become clear; the point is that the possibility of an event of this kind has long been warned about: and those people were right. And they are going to be right next year, too, when they point to the earthquake risk along the Mississippi River, and several other places.

No evidence of risk, even within some delimited corner of technical evaluation, is not evidence of a very high (nuclear disaster high) level of safety unless the science involved is very solid, mature, and comprehensively evaluated - all the data, all the theory, has stood the test of time and hard experience. That is not the case with earthquake predictions.

Your attempts at blaming geologists and geotechs for this are assinine, insulting and moronic.

And fictional. You invented them.

Always, of course, including a personal attack. But that's of course the accepted form, normality itself - political discussion is now standardized like pro basketball: certain sides of issues are allowed certain moves, regardless, because that's their move, see?
”
So what you're saying then is that you can't stand the smell of your own shit, and object to being boxed with the fruitloop greeny left conspiracists?

Always, of course, including a personal attack. But that's of course the accepted form, normality itself - political discussion is now standardized like pro basketball: certain sides of issues are allowed certain moves, regardless, because that's their move, see?

(Saves a bit of typing)

 

[Trippy]

I've been cross-refrencing data and analysis from NISA, the IAEA and reports from the office of the prefeceture since the start, and have seen no evidence of any cover-up. That NISA were not always able to provide the IAEA with the data it requested is mainly due to a lack of power in the control-rooms, where monitoring instrumentation is located. They can't very well guess what's happening, as guessing is not a recognised scientifically sound practise. Better to say "We don't know". The data I've seen from the IAEA has steadily improved in both quality and quantity, and is referenced by the World Health Organisation. The logistics of creating a cover-up in this climate of inter-organisational co-operation would be immense, and a drain on the data gathering system that would be evident by now. In short, there is no conspiracy.

I absolutely agree - I just wish I could find my way around the Canada TV website enough to find the interview(s) that I was talking about.

 

[Trippy]

Try dealing with the statements, and leave your supposed "implications" out of it.

Practice what you preach.

Yes, it is. Explicitly. That's what the word "unprecedented" means, when used as a justification or explanation of erroneous assessment.

Bullshit.

And that's just the specific incident - one recent event in my larger argument about the series of such events we've seen. My actual assertion of Challenger Logic applied to the argument being set up on this thread and elsewhere for building more nukes: the success at preventing worse disaster here - even the likelihood of such prevention, mid event - is quite explicitly being evoked as another piece of evidence of the safety of nuke building in general.

Show me again where I've advocated building new Nukes?

Oh wait. I haven't - in other words, you haven't been addressing the arguments I've been making, but the arguments you think that I've been making.

They've had another near miss from a blindsider, and they are inferring safety from it. There was no evidence that a 9+ earthquake was possible along a convergent plate boundary, specifically along the Japanese coast? Baloney. A ten year old with a map and some pins would tell you different.

Strawman hypothesis.
This isn't what I said - in fact I've explicitly aknowledged that M9+ earthquakes have occured elsewhere on the Japanese coast - in the areas where we would have expected them to occur.

Whoever is restricting their notion of "evidence" to whatever it would take to justify that assertion is blundering if they are using that assessment to site a nuke. They are using an untested, unsure theory to screen the evidence they are willing to consider without reference to the probabilities relevant in the decision.

Bullshit. It's been tested, 6 times now, before this specific incident, it had been tested 4 times, and passed those tests, and had one test where the results were somewhat ambiguous, that resulted in a reassessment of that theory.

When siting nuclear power plants, the extremely unlikely is relevant - because the error penalty is huge. You have to be very secure in your theory, if you are going to use it to dismiss evidence from consideration altogether when siting a nuke.

Nobody dismissed evidence.
That would require there being some to dismiss in the first place.

And you've got the direction of implication backwards, anyway: we are talking about the evidence of reliability in scientific assessments of earthquake risk. As it is a new science, and 9+ earthquakes are rare events, we expect of course a responsible humility in the use of its assessments of 9+ earthquake risk. Their theories are untested, their data base thin. They certainly can't be used to overrule ordinary common sense in the siting of nuclear power plants.

Every test it had been subjected to, it passed. Nobody was seeking to overrule common sense, because common sense said that that the maximum earthquake likely to be experienced in this area was in the 8.1-8.3 range.

Possibly there was evidence of high risk at Fukushima, simply not recognized as such; possibly the body of knowledge relevant and comprehensiveness of theory employed was not complete enough to allow confidence in the risk assessments (my guess); possibly there was some error of reasoning that will become clear; the point is that the possibility of an event of this kind has long been warned about: and those people were right. And they are going to be right next year, too, when they point to the earthquake risk along the Mississippi River, and several other places.

So then you're agreeing with this at least:
"Now it has qualified, and in the next 2-4 years we will see papers released that will examine why, some will be data mining papers, trying to see if there were any clues in the evidence collected to date, because finding such evidence would be invaluable, and might enable us to pinpoint faults that are currently regarded as being unable to produce an M9 earthquake, that actually might. Other will be based on field data, there will be boats, with side scan sonar, and boats collecting seismic reflection profiles, and there might even be some deep sea bores drilled, and seismic risks will be re-evaluated, everywhere (again)."

Good. Progress.

No evidence of risk, even within some delimited corner of technical evaluation, is not evidence of a very high (nuclear disaster high) level of safety unless the science involved is very solid, mature, and comprehensively evaluated - all the data, all the theory, has stood the test of time and hard experience. That is not the case with earthquake predictions.

Then because the science is not solid, not mature, and not comprehensivly evaluated (according to you) we can summarialy dismiss all claims of seismic risk, and start building nuke reactors out of wood. After all, the risk posed by nuke reactors is also based on science that is younger than Geology.

And fictional. You invented them.

Bullshit.

Every time you make these sorts of statements:

Suppose you provide evidence of panic and speculation, to compare with the great piles of evidence of false confidence and illegitimate, speculation-based reassurance.

What you trying to argue against is a realistic, sober, fact based assessment of the current state of geological expertise, as it applies to risk assessments when designing and siting nuclear power plants.

And irrelevant. Great hazard, great risk, was completely evident when the plant was built. It was evident in the lack of relevant knowledge and comprehensive theory, and the location of the plant.

The risk was and is completely obvious, flagrant, right in your face, grade school blatant. The initial reaction to the news was "so it did happen" and "here we go again". The problem is not that this quake was unprecedented. The problem is not that the risk was invisible. The problem is the odd hypnotic effect produced by some of the current official methods of risk assessment in these situations. They keep treating lack of knowledge as evidence of safety, serial good luck as evidence of safety, long odds as safety margins regardless of risk size, and so forth.

Huge risk exists right now, in the upper Mississippi drainage. It's blatant, it's obvious. And if it hits, if the odds break badly again, can we agree that the only appearance of the corporate shills and narrow-focused "experts" who run around saying that their ignorance is evidence of our safety.

The recent history of big quakes in Japan has included, universally and throughout, very destructive tsunamis. The recent history of the big quakes around the rim of that plate has included, almost universally, destructive tsunamis. If their earthquake modeling left out the part about the risk of really big tsunamis, a risk visible in the past few dozen years let alone the one in millions that meltdown safety requires and brags about, that is not a reassurance about the building of nuclear power plants in Japan or anywhere else.

The problem is not a logical fallacy, but uncertainties surrounding somebody's physical assessment of the risks of a specific site along that boundary.

The difficulty is in getting people who think they have a better handle on a situation than they do, to recognize the nature of "evidence" in this kind of situation. Part of the evidence is their thoroughly demonstrated ignorance and logical errors, and the consequent uncertainty considerations necessary; that seems to be very difficult for them to handle.

We are instead treated to a kind of reasoning more suitable to analyzing elevator failure or airplane accidents.

We are also being treated to a reprise of the secrecy, communication "problems", suddenly realized vulnerability to the whims of corporate scofflaws, and demonstration of the serial falsity of the serial reassurances in their interests from the compromised and corrupt, that we have experienced in all of these major disasters.

So? When somebody has figured out how to tell for sure that some place right next to a recent 8.6, on top of a convergent plate boundary, on a boundary that has elsewhere delivered 9+, is not going to hit hard itself, that truism will become relevant.

Nope. Absolutely and quite obviously right. Not even a judgment call now - the thing already hit.

Which is malpractice. The assessment needs to include the physcial ignorance available at the time, and the physical uncertainty available at the time, and some humble common sense available at all times - which would include a careful and sober consideration of a wide range of related situations, in time and in location.

How do we convince technocrats that the statement, there, is not only true, but blindingly obvious? That their level of knowledge and expertise in these matters is not good enough to rely on in place of such simple and obvious judgments?

If being surprised, once again, by an unpredicted and unconsidered and unprepared for mishap (or near miss) is not enough to make them reconsider their approach, what is?

And if we can't persuade them to be reasonable, how do we prevent them from creating these ridiculous scenes of disaster? Do we have to forbid them from building nuclear reactors altogether, because they can't get their collective heads out of their asses and look around?

To expand on the simple observation made: We - the naive and inexpert - did in fact notice and complain about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to earthquakes (including specifically the Japanese ones built in major quake zones), and did in fact over many decades now quite forcefully complain about the misleading and mistaken and far too optimistic "expert" estimations of their safety and likelihood of destruction by earthquake as well as a variety of other causes. This event in general, at some plant or another in one of these fault zones, has been anticipated for many years now.

There's no hindsight here, for anyone but the industry and the technocrats - the rest of us have been living with this situation our whole lives. This mess you're looking at? That's the nuclear power industry, all the time.

And that's the problem. A bunch of techies thought they knew something that anyone could (and many, in fact, did) easily see they didn't know with enough confidence to take the kind of risk they took.

You should. Your confidence in your grasp of the facts is badly mistaken. You would make fewer gross errors, and risk killing fewer people, and risk creating fewer gigantic messes and thousand year disaster zones, if you quit dismissing perfectly sound reasoning and many times borne out warnings from people who have a proven better understanding of the nature of your expertise than you have.

The question is how to plant greater wisdom in that bunch of narrowminded, presumptuous experts. Failing that, how to keep them from involving us all in these horrible disasters.

This alleged "science" already got it wrong, again. It's been getting it wrong for several decades now.

The bitch is that people design and site nuclear power plants with those fucking models, as if the only thing at risk were the accuracy of their assessments.

You want to do science, refine models, investigate these fascinating topics? Fine - go for it. You want to build nuclear power plants? You need better judgment, and more reasonable approaches.

That's good science. We approve. But then, will they once again ignore prudence and obvious caveats, once again put their stamp of approval on this kind of utterly irresponsible, goofball risk taking at other people's expense? Because that's not science. That is politics. That is money talking, and experts bullshitting, one more time around the tilt a whirl.

Making decisions about the prudent level of safety necessary in designing and siting nukes? Sure. For starters, include the historically obvious and the "human factor" in your "expected" risk, and then make your safety margins much larger than that "expected" risk. Shut down even "safely operating" plants that don't meet that obvious requirement, rather than rely on good luck. If it turns out you can't build to that standard economically, don't build.

This isn't rocket science - and it's very important that the rocket scientists involved realize that it isn't. This is political evaluation of the role of rocket science in projects that impose these kinds of risks. Part of the judgment is how and to what degree scientifically assessed risk is to be included.

According to the Japanese standards you posted, for example, reactors were to be assessed as "safe" if they could withstand a 126,000 year event. The first problem there is that the assessed risk is uncertain - there's a chance it's wrong, and that chance is not known scientifically. The second problem is that that's far too much risk for a setup of six reactors in a major earthquake zone. That decision, to run that risk, was political, not scientific.

You're blaiming a Geotech or a Geologist who wrote a report that said "The maximum magnitude of earthquake we can reasonably expect from that faultline lies in this range, and has some probability of occuring during the lifetime of this facility, and during the lifetime of this facility we can expect to see this amount of groundshaking exceeded with this probability."

 

[iceaura]

Has it occured to you that insisting on telling the local residents in an area who get the local media coverage what there current events are might be damaging to your overall credibility?

Well, that's a new low for you - deliberate dishonesty.

I'm simply stating that I am sick of the panic mongering that is occuring

Way back then? OK, we'll overlook the subsequent stuff: You were posting in collegial agreement with one of our local teabaggers, who was using the panic accusation to dismiss objections to nuclear power in general and any criticism of the media handling of this event from an anti-nuke perspective in particular. The discussion was here, on this thread. That was the context - you designated the post you were responding to yourself.

I responded to that issue - the use of accusations of panic mongering (and conspiracy mongering, paranoia in general) to deflect discussion, on this thread and elsewhere. I did not mention the issue of actual panic mongering, except to note that actual panic is more often a consequence of unreliable reassurance. I posted a well-informed 2004 article on that, and you dismissed it because its analyzed example was an event thirty years in the past.

Here I suggest that 'a lot of panic mongering is going on - a relative term that gives no indication as to what proportion of the media is engaging in panic mongering, the only reasonable inference from this is that I consider that of the media that I am seeing, a disproportinately large amount of it seems to be, in my opinion, panic mongering - for all you know, I could consider 5% of the media coverage to be disproportionately large.

Which makes it a bit difficult to figure out what your objection to my posts is, in this issue - all I have been saying is that unreliable reassurance is a much greater share of the media coverage than panic mongering. It wasn't the panic mongerers who overlooked, or whatever the explanation is, the threat from the waste fuel pools, for more than three days after the quake. That's the kind of stuff that creates panic, btw.

Meanwhile, you have since explicitly and pungently included my posts in with the paranoid, conspiracy mongering, vitriolic, and so forth. And I can reread my own posts for myself, if I've forgotten them, right here - nothing of the kind visible in them. Presumably, your take on other media is similar garbage? So this:

The way you come across to me at this point is that if I said "The sky is blue" you'd immediately start arguing that it was yellow.

is kind of empty. In fact all of your personal stuff has deteriorated to noise - there's too much of it, and it's too routine in your responses, and it's too far off the mark and bizarrely uncomprehending, to have any effect any more.

So you could quit spewing it, or ban yourself in the interest of intellectual integrity and self-respect, or something. Do you good, I believe.

I've been cross-refrencing data and analysis from NISA, the IAEA and reports from the office of the prefeceture since the start, and have seen no evidence of any cover-up

I'm not sure why this coverup business is using up any bandwidth. Nobody I know of is asserting that no nutters have appeared on TV anywhere talking about conspiracy to cover up stuff, and nobody here has even hinted at deliberate, massive, conpsiratorial coverup of this incident by the IAEA, so there's little traction in the matter either way.

Unreliability of the authorities, that common contributor to panic, does not need conspiracy. It comes naturally to governmental officials, and even more naturally if the framework of decision "avoid panic mongering at all costs" has been established somehow.

Every test it had been subjected to, it passed.

All what - 6 of them? I can see where that would inspire great confidence in the intellectually vulnerable, and bankrupt anyone taking that confidence to a casino.

Nobody was seeking to overrule common sense, because common sense said that that the maximum earthquake likely to be experienced in this area was in the 8.1-8.3 range.

Six whole tests passed. Let's go right out and build some nukes in a tsunami zone over a convergent plate boundary, just north of a bunch of recent 8.5s. - because that's the new common sense, now.

Wait a minute - they're already there? No tests passed? Cool - they're safe. Because that word "likely"? We didn't mean anything much by that. Ignore the word "likely" behind the curtain, everybody.

Then because the science is not solid, not mature, and not comprehensivly evaluated (according to you) we can summarialy dismiss all claims of seismic risk,

Uh, I'm making the opposite claim. I'm arguing against the summary dismissal of risk on the basis of immature science.

Every time you make these sorts of statements:
- - -
You're blaiming a Geotech or a Geologist who wrote a report that said "The maximum magnitude of earthquake we can reasonably expect from that faultline lies in this range, and has some probability of occuring during the lifetime of this facility, and during the lifetime of this facility we can expect to see this amount of groundshaking exceeded with this probability."

? Now what?

OK, I'll bite: what am I "blaming" them for, unbeknownst to me?

 

[Trippy]

Well, that's a new low for you - deliberate dishonesty.

LOL. Proof of intellectual dishonesty please?

Do you even remember the conversation i'm referring to?

Way back then? OK, we'll overlook the subsequent stuff: You were posting in collegial agreement with one of our local teabaggers, who was using the panic accusation to dismiss objections to nuclear power in general and any criticism of the media handling of this event from an anti-nuke perspective in particular. The discussion was here, on this thread. That was the context - you designated the post you were responding to yourself.

Bullshit.
I agreed with his assessment of the likelyhood of an explosion being caused by a meltdown, and then suggested he MIGHT be right regarding his assessment of the likelyhood of a full meltdown subsequent to the injection of Boron into the reactors.

I responded to that issue - the use of accusations of panic mongering (and conspiracy mongering, paranoia in general) to deflect discussion, on this thread and elsewhere. I did not mention the issue of actual panic mongering, except to note that actual panic is more often a consequence of unreliable reassurance. I posted a well-informed 2004 article on that, and you dismissed it because its analyzed example was an event thirty years in the past.

Which makes it a bit difficult to figure out what your objection to my posts is, in this issue - all I have been saying is that unreliable reassurance is a much greater share of the media coverage than panic mongering. It wasn't the panic mongerers who overlooked, or whatever the explanation is, the threat from the waste fuel pools, for more than three days after the quake. That's the kind of stuff that creates panic, btw.

And you wrongly attributed me of those actions, and lumped me in with them. I've quoted you explicitly stating that you were lumping me in with them, several times now.

Meanwhile, you have since explicitly and pungently included my posts in with the paranoid, conspiracy mongering, vitriolic, and so forth. And I can reread my own posts for myself, if I've forgotten them, right here - nothing of the kind visible in them.

You mean aside from your chicken little 'Then they should have treated every fault on every plate margin as being capable of generating an M9+ earthquake', or your assertions regarding Montecillo and Prairie Island and the faults, and how because they might be linked to the New Madrid rift zone, then they should automatically be treated as if they're capable of generating an M8+ quake? Or your boxing of my posts, or dismissal of peer reviewed science and so on and so forth.

Presumably, your take on other media is similar garbage?

You're going to have to be more precise with comments like this, seeing as how you get your knickers in a tizzy if I try and infer meaning from these sorts of comments.

So you could quit spewing it, or ban yourself in the interest of intellectual integrity and self-respect, or something. Do you good, I believe.

Here's an idea - logout, click the 'forgot password' link, then delete the email.

I'm not sure why this coverup business is using up any bandwidth. Nobody I know of is asserting that no nutters have appeared on TV anywhere talking about conspiracy to cover up stuff, and nobody here has even hinted at deliberate, massive, conpsiratorial coverup of this incident by the IAEA, so there's little traction in the matter either way.

So now I'm lying? Because I can't find my way around a website to find an interview?

I agree with you on one thing though, the assertions do carry little traction.

All what - 6 of them? I can see where that would inspire great confidence in the intellectually vulnerable, and bankrupt anyone taking that confidence to a casino. Six whole tests passed. Let's go right out and build some nukes in a tsunami zone over a convergent plate boundary, just north of a bunch of recent 8.5s. - because that's the new common sense, now.

Bullshit.
That's not what happened.
The assessed the risks, using the facts and information available to them at the time, and designed the plant accordingly.

Wait a minute - they're already there? No tests passed? Cool - they're safe. Because that word "likely"? We didn't mean anything much by that. Ignore the word "likely" behind the curtain, everybody.

here you go with the intellectual dishonesty again.
Likely is a contextual phrase that means different things in different places. In the US, as near as I can tell, an earthquake might be considered 'likely' if if has a chance of more than 1 in 100,000 of occuring, however in some cases (most I believe - including, IIRC Prairie Island) this is more like 1 in 1,000,000 to 1 in 10,000,000 - IIRC after the 2008 review Prairie Island ranked 92nd highest in terms of seismic risk, and Montecillo rated in the low 40's.

Uh, I'm making the opposite claim. I'm arguing against the summary dismissal of risk on the basis of immature science.

You've got the wrong end of the stick here.
What I'm suggesting is that you're arguing that if a Geologist claims that a fault is unlikely to produce an M9 earthquake, or that the maximum shake we can expect from a fault is 8.1-8.3, or that a fault is dead, and not going to move agains, or that the probability of a level of ground shaking being exceeded is 1 in 10,000,000 then we should summarialy dismiss those statements and instead use what amount to weak analogies and bad logic.

? Now what?

OK, I'll bite: what am I "blaming" them for, unbeknownst to me?

It's all right there, in the context of the discussion.

 

[iceaura]

What I'm suggesting is that you're arguing that if a Geologist claims that a fault is unlikely to produce an M9 earthquake, or that the maximum shake we can expect from a fault is 8.1-8.3, or that a fault is dead, and not going to move agains, or that the probability of a level of ground shaking being exceeded is 1 in 10,000,000 then we should summarialy dismiss those statements and instead use what amount to weak analogies and bad logic.

You are wrong in your "suggestion". Summary dismissal of what science we have, however uncertain and immature, is nowhere to be found in any recommendation or argument of mine.

I agreed with his assessment of the likelyhood of an explosion being caused by a meltdown, and then suggested he MIGHT be right regarding his assessment of the likelyhood of a full meltdown subsequent to the injection of Boron into the reactors.

Different issue, change of subject.

But yes, you did agree with him that meltdown was impossible - no chance - once the seawater flooding had begun. You were as wrong as he was, in that assertion - just to point to the obvious: the means of seawater flooding was mechanical and run by humans, the chances of a severe aftershock (even yet another big one with tsunami, as last century) were not 0, and the integrity of the containment structures necessary for flooding to work was not completely certain.

Meanwhile, you have since explicitly and pungently included my posts in with the paranoid, conspiracy mongering, vitriolic, and so forth. And I can reread my own posts for myself, if I've forgotten them, right here - nothing of the kind visible in them.
”
You mean aside from your chicken little 'Then they should have treated every fault on every plate margin as being capable of generating an M9+ earthquake', or your assertions regarding Montecillo and Prairie Island and the faults, and how because they might be linked to the New Madrid rift zone, then they should automatically be treated as if they're capable of generating an M8+ quake?

Corrected for the errors of paraphrase (every plate margin?) that is indeed what you term vitriol, paranoia, conspiracy mongering, and so forth. Comical, but you take yourself very seriously.

And you wrongly attributed me of those actions, and lumped me in with them. I've quoted you explicitly stating that you were lumping me in with them, several times now.

No, you haven't. You just refuse to back up, reread, figure it out for yourself, and apologize.

So you could quit spewing it, or ban yourself in the interest of intellectual integrity and self-respect, or something. Do you good, I believe.
”
Here's an idea - logout, click the 'forgot password' link, then delete the email.

? Now what?

I'm not sure why this coverup business is using up any bandwidth. Nobody I know of is asserting that no nutters have appeared on TV anywhere talking about conspiracy to cover up stuff, and nobody here has even hinted at deliberate, massive, conpsiratorial coverup of this incident by the IAEA, so there's little traction in the matter either way.
”
So now I'm lying? Because I can't find my way around a website to find an interview?

Sillier by the minute.

OK, I'll bite: what am I "blaming" them for, unbeknownst to me?
”
It's all right there, in the context of the discussion.

I can't find a single post of mine that blames any scientists for making scientific reports and assessments. I can find a couple in which I praise the making of scientific reports and assessments, as good science etc. So you need to clarify a bit - exactly what am I blaming who for?

All what - 6 of them? I can see where that would inspire great confidence in the intellectually vulnerable, and bankrupt anyone taking that confidence to a casino. Six whole tests passed. Let's go right out and build some nukes in a tsunami zone over a convergent plate boundary, just north of a bunch of recent 8.5s. - because that's the new common sense, now.
”
Bullshit.
That's not what happened.
The assessed the risks, using the facts and information available to them at the time, and designed the plant accordingly.

You missed the point, I wasn't talking about the actual construction of anything in particular, but hey: The fact that the original designers of the Fukushima plant were taking such huge risks on even scantier and less securely established science of the time, on exactly the same line of reasoning and reassurance, with the obvious threat right off shore and staring at them, underlines the problem with this stuff.

 

[ULTRA]

IAEA calls Jap emergency workers "heroic" following a visit to inspect the damaged plant. Although power has been restored, many of the pumps and valves were damaged by sea-water and have to be replaced. They added that wreckage was strewn around everywhere.

"The crisis has still not been resolved, and the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains very serious," Yukiya Amano, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told its board of governors Monday after a visit to the site. "Buildings have been damaged by explosions," he said. "There has, for the most part, been no electric power. Radiation levels are elevated. It is no exaggeration to describe the work of the emergency teams as heroic."http://news.blogs.cnn.com/

They (IAEA) say they still don't know what has been causing the smoke, but it doesn't appear to be raising radiation levels.

Other considerations are progressing with plans to pump in concrete being looked at.

Meanwhile, the USS George washington is evacuating from tokyo "to avoid radiation exposure". Staff of the diplomatic corps are evacuating thier families and, " More than 8,000 military family members have signed up for evacuation flights from Japan" CNN.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/2...families-in-japan-to-get-iodide-pills-monday/

 

[Trippy]

You are wrong in your "suggestion". Summary dismissal of what science we have, however uncertain and immature, is nowhere to be found in any recommendation or argument of mine.

No. This is precisely what you are arguing should be done. The simple fact of the matter is that the Science said that "An earthquake of that magnitude is not expected of that fault" and you insist that (to paraphrase) "An 8 year old with a pins and a map" could have figured it out, you are precisely dismissing the science.

But yes, you did agree with him that meltdown was impossible - no chance - once the seawater flooding had begun. You were as wrong as he was, in that assertion - just to point to the obvious: the means of seawater flooding was mechanical and run by humans, the chances of a severe aftershock (even yet another big one with tsunami, as last century) were not 0, and the integrity of the containment structures necessary for flooding to work was not completely certain.

Bullshit.
My exact words were:

Actually, Arthur might be right here - and here's why. If you'd bothered looking through the NEI site I linked to earlier, you'd understand that it's not just sea water that's being injected into the reaction vessel, it's sea water mixed with Boric acid. This is an important thing to note, because as well as the cooling effect of the water, the boron has a well documented quenching effect on nuclear reactors. They're not just cooling it, they're suffocating it.

2409536/116
I aknowledged the possibility that he might be right without agreeing with him, or disagreeing with him. However, because you can't get your head past the "He's not agreeing with me therefore he's pro-nuclear" mentality. What you're setting up is a false dichotomy, there is a third option, sitting on the fence, which is (more or less) where I am at the moment. I'm not agreeing with him, but I can see that his argument may have merit.

Corrected for the errors of paraphrase (every plate margin?)

Yeah, there was a 'convergent' in there when I typed it initially :shrug: don't know what happened to it, it probably got misplaced when I was doing some editing in notepad (misplaced, in this case, including being selected and replaced with a space without me noticing).

that is indeed what you term vitriol, paranoia, conspiracy mongering, and so forth. Comical, but you take yourself very seriously.

You'd know all about vitriol, paranoia, conspiracy mongering, and being comical wouldn't you? You've certainly displayed abundant aptitued in those areas.

See, I can play that game to.


No, you haven't. You just refuse to back up, reread, figure it out for yourself, and apologize.
No. Or, maybe I'll consider it when you start backing up some of the statements I've asked you to justify.

Does this sound familiar at all?

You were in fact deliberately minimizing the significance of the explosion, and attempting to characterize it as nothing to worry about.

And I paraphrased the comment to include it among the many here engaged in minimizing and dissembling the event...

I cited it back to you several times.
2709494/115

? Now what?

Actually that might have been wrong, I think there's a link in that email that you click on to verify the request that gets you a randomized password.

I can't find a single post of mine that blames any scientists for making scientific reports and assessments. I can find a couple in which I praise the making of scientific reports and assessments, as good science etc. So you need to clarify a bit - exactly what am I blaming who for?

In every post of yours I quoted.

For example when you make comments like this:
"Which is malpractice. The assessment needs to include the physcial ignorance available at the time, and the physical uncertainty available at the time, and some humble common sense available at all times - which would include a careful and sober consideration of a wide range of related situations, in time and in location."
Whether you realize it or not, you're ultimately blaming a geologist or a geotech for this failure.
Tepco approaches Consultant.
Consultant sends a Geologist to do fieldwork.
Geologist does field work, and desktop study.
Geologist writes report that says "Within these parameters it should be safe".
Report is peer reviewed.
Report is signed off by at least two people who are able to authorize publications for release.
Report is handed to Tepco.
Tepco gives the report to engineers who apply the required saftey margins to it, and then submit a design and a budget (or they might tender it to several organizations, and proceed with a design from there.

Every time you bag the science as inadequate, you bag the geologist who wrote the initial report that said "We can expect these parameters to be exceeded with a probability of 1 in 10,000,000"

You missed the point, I wasn't talking about the actual construction of anything in particular, but hey: The fact that the original designers of the Fukushima plant were taking such huge risks on even scantier and less securely established science of the time, on exactly the same line of reasoning and reassurance, with the obvious threat right off shore and staring at them, underlines the problem with this stuff.

Bullshit.
There was no obvious threat of an M9 eartquake occuring at this fault. Because there was nothing anywhere that suggested that this fault was capable of producing a quake of this magnitude (well, up until two weeks ago anyway).

Our disagreement, at this point boils down to whether or not the earthquake can be predicted. The state of the science up until two weeks ago said that this fault could not produce a quake of that magnitude, because the fault morphology was wrong, and as far as we knew it lacked the neccessary characteristics.

Your argument amounts to "Well, if it happened nearby here, and happened nearby there, then why not at this spot?"
You believe that an 8 year old with a map and thumbtacks could have predicted this quake would occur.

Meanwhile, not once do you seem to have stopped to consider the point that if Fukushima Daiichi was designed to a standard that had a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of being exceeded, that this might have been the 1 in 1,000,000,000 event?

I'm done with this conversation, I have no interest in pursuing it with you any further at this time (short of you producing something useful). You've demonstrated that you're everybit as utterly inflexible as Buffalo Roam, or Will Never is, making you every bit as bad as they are.

Don't waste my time by replying to this post, because it will probably go unanswered.

 

[chimpkin]

And if you ask me...since I've been through several hurricanes...neither is enough of a safety margin as far as I'm concerned...It should be at least a frigging week!!!

”
Yes assuming all the backup generators were to go out yes we would have only 4 hours on batteries, but we could only get that to happen again if say a tsunami were to wipe them out.

You've missed my point. A tsunami wiped them out at this location...that's not as much a concern with the plants in the States. Conversely, I don't believe Japan gets typhoons very often (although it CAN, can't it?).

But four hours is not enough time to scramble in a new set of generators if said generators are rendered nonfunctional.

I do not consider that sufficient for most of the continental US, considering the kind of weather we have here. Our weather is out to get us.

So the amount of battery life we need...is how much time it takes to get replacement generators delivered, hooked up and running.

This ought to be assessed on a plant-by-plant basis and an offsite heavy-equipment contractor who can get them there contracted to provide said generators...and then add a third more time/capacity for fudging of the amount of time the contractor says it will take to get generators onsite and running.

You see...
I've been through a flooding event in which the water came up 17 feet in about an hour and a half.

This from a tropical storm that basically did a sort of loop-de-loop over our city, went back out, restrengthened and returned...it was the victory lap of said tropical storm that put us up to 46 inches of rain in a seven-day period.
(Elsewhere I've mentioned the Level 4 CDC lab it flooded out...)
Tropical storms are usually NBD. This one,big deal. Billions of dollars damage.

Now a strong hurricane will cause severe flooding way inland of where it comes ashore.
Even just an exceptional spring storm here can be pretty dangerous.

I've seen just "regular" storm-related rainfall events that put stretches of major freeway under water.

(And next time, I'm making and selling a T-shirt with a good image of a bunch of submerged cars, and a surfer 'shopped in: "Hang ten on I-10!" Yes, I'm cheesy.)

LWR's themselves are pretty tornado-proof (I believe there was a strike on one in Missouri a couple of years ago) but if the generators are rendered unable to cool the onsite spent fuel, as might happen if a powerful tornado hit a plant...then we need time to get generators in.

Fetus, you're from the UK, correct?

Y'all don't usually have to deal with weather that's out to kill you as often, then.
Except maybe in Scotland, where it's trying to freeze you. If you're from Oz, then your weather does try and kill you regularly, but it's generally quietlybaking you to death.

The latest typhoon being an unusual exception.

 

[ElectricFetus]

You've missed my point. A tsunami wiped them out at this location...that's not as much a concern with the plants in the States. Conversely, I don't believe Japan gets typhoons very often (although it CAN, can't it?).

But four hours is not enough time to scramble in a new set of generators if said generators are rendered nonfunctional.

Usually the have 2, 4 or even 6 redundant sets of generators, to loss all of them requires a very rare and very catastrophic event, not just a simple typhoon or hurricane or earthquake, something fantastically horrible.

So the amount of battery life we need...is how much time it takes to get replacement generators delivered, hooked up and running.

Or, or, crazy idea here: how about this: we just have more generators on site! They can run a lot longer then batteries, as is all nuclear power plants have many of them in multiple redundancies, often even in separate building throughout the installation. Now the 3rd generations reactor now being built have either more layers of active safety or passive safety systems that don't require power or supervision to kick in.

Fetus, you're from the UK, correct?

aaah you can look up my profile, yes? Uk, what the bloody hell gave you that idea? But sure where I live somewhat close to a nuclear powerplant and its safe from any natural disasters except maybe tornadoes.

 

[Trippy]

Meanwhile, not once do you seem to have stopped to consider the point that if Fukushima Daiichi was designed to a standard that had a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of being exceeded, that this might have been the 1 in 1,000,000,000 event?

I'm done with this conversation, I have no interest in pursuing it with you any further at this time (short of you producing something useful). You've demonstrated that you're everybit as utterly inflexible as Buffalo Roam, or Will Never is, making you every bit as bad as they are.

Don't waste my time by replying to this post, because it will probably go unanswered.

Actually, I do have one more thing to say.
It's why I don't believe that Iceaura actually knows what he's talking about, and why I have so much trouble (on this matter at least) taking him seriously.

Japanese legislation is couched in terms of peak ground acceleration, not magnitude, and there's a good reason for this. A magnitude 7 earthquake can cause more damage and raise larger tsunamis than a magnitude 9 earthquake, even within the same region, and on the same fault.

So his talk about designing for a magnitude 9 earthquake, and accompanying tsunami, even if there was (before two weeks ago) credible evidence that this fault might have been capable of generating a M9+ tsunami, is pretty much meaningless.

 

[chimpkin]

we just have more generators on site!

Which is swell, until you get the thousand-year flood event (that we seem to get every ten years now) the F-4 or 5 tornado, the pop-up hurricane (I've been through one of those, full-on, a near miss from another pop-up)...

I don't think they're being redundant enough. I want more redundancy, and I'm willing to be redundant about it!

(Hmm...maybe we should send a congressperson to every nuclear powerplant-that would certainly add some onsite redundancy...)

Japanese legislation is couched in terms of peak ground acceleration, not magnitude, and there's a good reason for this.

Yes...yes I can see that...

Frankly I don't know as much as you, and it's quite possible Iceaura does not either

I do not believe that totally invalidates our perspectives and concerns, however.

In fact...I think that what happens with someone or a group of someones who has or have overwhelming technical expertise is a state of overconfidence that you have covered everything conceivable...and then something comes at you from the proverbial left-field and you say "Oh crap! I did not anticipate that! that's beyond design tolerance!"

So...it does to not casually dismiss what the less-expert have to say...because while they are less-trained, they are also MAY be less rigid in their thinking, less-specialized.

Nuclear is very safe-the engineers get it right almost all the time.

It is just that when they do NOT, it has been bad(Sellafield, Hanford, Chernobyl) and has the potential to be even worse.

This is our planet, and (depending on where you're talking about) our taxes...and we'll be eating, drinking, and breathing the radioactive particles if something really hits the fan.