9.0 quake hits Japan

[BOF]

This should interest you. Someone has put together a wall of shame for journalists because of the OTT or just plain wrong reporting that has gone on since the tsunami.

[TheDon]

No surprise to see the sun featuring prominently there.

It's stupid just how ill informed most journalists actually are, I hate the media, the lot of them exist not to tell stories but to sell papers. It's no wonder print journalism is dying on it's arse when you can't rely on any of them to just tell things how they are.

[BOF]

The Germans calling the heli pilots 'kamikaze' was pretty funny

[peterms]

This is quite interesting. In a nutshell, the design was known 35 years ago to be flawed; the specific concern was the ability to withstand pressure if the plant lost cooling power; and the company have since made adjustments to address the weaknesses. Though since this is the company who have previously covered up incidents and falsified safety records, their assurances may not carry as much weight as they might like.

Fukushima: Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor Design Caused GE Scientist To Quit In Protest

Damaged Japanese Nuclear Plant Has Five Mark 1 Reactors

Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were reviewing -- the Mark 1 -- was so flawed it could lead to a devastating accident.

Questions persisted for decades about the ability of the Mark 1 to handle the immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling power, and today that design is being put to the ultimate test in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been wracked since Friday's earthquake with explosions and radiation leaks, are Mark 1s.

"The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant," Bridenbaugh told ABC News in an interview. "The impact loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and create an uncontrolled release."

The situation on the ground at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is so fluid, and the details of what is unfolding are so murky, that it may be days or even weeks before anyone knows how the Mark 1 containment system performed in the face of a devastating combination of natural disasters.

But the ability of the containment to withstand the events that have cascaded from what nuclear experts call a "station blackout" -- where the loss of power has crippled the reactor's cooling system -- will be a crucial question as policy makers re-examine the safety issues that surround nuclear power, and specifically the continued use of what is now one of the oldest types of nuclear reactors still operating.

GE told ABC News the reactors have "a proven track record of performing reliably and safely for more than 40 years" and "performed as designed," even after the shock of a 9.0 earthquake.

Still, concerns about the Mark 1 design have resurfaced occasionally in the years since Bridenbaugh came forward. In 1986, for instance, Harold Denton, then the director of NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, spoke critically about the design during an industry conference.

"I don't have the same warm feeling about GE containment that I do about the larger dry containments,'' he said, according to a report at the time that was referenced Tuesday in The Washington Post.

"There is a wide spectrum of ability to cope with severe accidents at GE plants,'' Denton said. "And I urge you to think seriously about the ability to cope with such an event if it occurred at your plant.''

Bridenbaugh Believes Design Flaws Were Addressed At Fukushima Plant

Bridenbaugh told ABC News that he believes the design flaws that prompted his resignation from GE were eventually addressed at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Bridenbaugh said GE agreed to a series of retrofits at Mark 1 reactors around the globe. He compared the retooling to the bolstering of highway bridges in California to better withstand earthquakes.

"Like with seismic refitting, they went back and re-analyzed the loads the structures might receive and beefed up the ability of the containment to handle greater loads," he said.

When asked if that was sufficient, he paused. "What I would say is, the Mark 1 is still a little more susceptible to an accident that would result in a loss of containment."

ABC News asked GE for more detail about how the company responded to critiques of its Mark 1 design. GE spokesman Michael Tetuan said in an email that, over the past 40 years, the company has made several modifications to its Mark 1 reactors in the U.S., including installing "quenchers" and fortifying the steel structures "to accommodate the loads that were generated." He said that GE's responses to modifications ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were also shared with the Japanese nuclear industry.

Bridenbaugh told ABC News that he is watching the events in Japan with a mix of anxiety and deep reflection. Many years have passed since he and fellow GE colleagues Gregory C Minor and Richard B. Hubbard publicly resigned, joined the anti-nuclear movement, and became known as the "GE Three."

Undoubtedly, he said, the containment structures at that Fukushima Daiichi plant are facing significant amounts of pressure -- and testing the very questions he was studying on paper more than three decades earlier. While he knew then that the Mark 1 had design limits, he said, no one knows now whether those limits will be surpassed.

[TheDon]

Yet they've still handled a disaster far outside the realms of what it was designed for extremely well.

I'd say most of the issues aren't with the reactors not being up to spec, but the spec not being high enough. They have afterall survived above and beyond their design goals.

All that article really says is that newer more modern reactors are even safer, the MK 1's aren't at the forefront of reactor technology, but then they're old. It's really no surprise that safety improvements have been made since they were designed.

[kidlewis]

to be fair it was reasonably close to the epicenter of a 9.0 earthquake. it's done pretty well.

[peterms]

Yet they've still handled a disaster far outside the realms of what it was designed for extremely well.

I'd say most of the issues aren't with the reactors not being up to spec, but the spec not being high enough. They have afterall survived above and beyond their design goals.

All that article really says is that newer more modern reactors are even safer, the MK 1's aren't at the forefront of reactor technology, but then they're old. It's really no surprise that safety improvements have been made since they were designed.

to be fair it was reasonably close to the epicenter of a 9.0 earthquake. it's done pretty well.

It seems we've been lucky.

What concerns me is that first the design was known to be flawed 35 years ago and was proceeded with anyway, and second the area is obviously known to be subject to earthquakes, but the planning was for a far less powerful earthquake on the basis that they planned for what had been observed over the previous few decades rather than what a geologist would have advised was possible.

Both of those things make me feel that despite what we are told about the nuclear industry being incredibly careful, in fact they were pretty cavalier about the risks, and it's more by good luck that we seem to have got away without something much worse having happened.

Add on to that the documented serial lying about problems experienced, and I think it leaves very little basis for trust about future plans and pronouncements about how safe it all is now.

[TheDon]

You make your own luck.

The design was known to be flawed, and the flaws were apparently dealt with (yet you don't believe they were).

Since then the reactors have held up to conditions above and beyond what was ever thought they'd have to stand up to, and yet you still think the flaws weren't dealt with and that somehow it's sheer luck that they've survived.

There's no such thing as luck, things either happen or they don't based on the conditions, luck is an abstract notion that exists entirely in the minds of people, it doesn't actually exist. The reactors have held up, the safety systems have done their jobs as well as can be expected against what has been described as a 1 in 1000 year event.

The earthquake was not a problem. They shut down fine, the systems coped, the backups came on line, everything was all going perfectly until the tsunami took out the backup generators. Speaking of which:

The Fukushima power plants were required by regulators to withstand a certain height of tsunami. At the Daiichi plant the design basis was 5.7 metres and at Daini this was 5.2 metres.

Tepco has now released tentative assessments of the scale of the tsunami putting it at over 10 metres at Daiichi and over 12 metres at Dainii.

Tell me again that these reactors were under engineered.

You seem to be missing the fact it's not just the Japanese saying how safe it all is now, it's nuclear experts from around the world. When you look past the scaremongering of the media and people who frankly don't have a clue (like the french foreign office) there's been a huge air of calm from the scientific community.

Go take a long read of these posts for some actual scientific evaluation of the situation.

[peterms]

The design was known to be flawed, and the flaws were apparently dealt with (yet you don't believe they were).

What I believe to be the case, from what I've read, is that at the point of being commissioned and built, the reactors were known to have design flaws so serious that it led to three scientists resigning because they did not wish to be associated with it; yet they were built anyway.

The flaws were later addressed by retrofitting. Whether that was adequate, I suppose we'll find out when an assessment is done a couple of years from now.

My concern is that they should have been built with such a level of known risk. It contradicts the assurances we are routinely given in these situations, and undermines similar future assurances.

Since then the reactors have held up to conditions above and beyond what was ever thought they'd have to stand up to, and yet you still think the flaws weren't dealt with and that somehow it's sheer luck that they've survived.

There's no such thing as luck, things either happen or they don't based on the conditions, luck is an abstract notion that exists entirely in the minds of people, it doesn't actually exist. The reactors have held up, the safety systems have done their jobs as well as can be expected against what has been described as a 1 in 1000 year event.

They were not designed to stand up to this event. That has been frankly admitted. If something does something it's not been designed to, I would call that luck, because it's plainly not design.

We keep hearing about this being a once-in-a-thousand year event. I imagine that scientists will understand that this means it is as likely to happen in year 1 as in year 1000, that it can happen several times in any 1000 year period over the course of a million years or so and still be a 1 in 1000 probability, and so on. Yet the evident aim of this 1 in 1000 line is to convey the impression that the chances of it happening are vanishingly small. It is a kind of statistical dishonesty, aimed at giving false reassurance.

The earthquake was not a problem. They shut down fine, the systems coped, the backups came on line, everything was all going perfectly until the tsunami took out the backup generators. Speaking of which:

The Fukushima power plants were required by regulators to withstand a certain height of tsunami. At the Daiichi plant the design basis was 5.7 metres and at Daini this was 5.2 metres.

Tepco has now released tentative assessments of the scale of the tsunami putting it at over 10 metres at Daiichi and over 12 metres at Dainii.

Tell me again that these reactors were under engineered.

You seem to be missing the fact it's not just the Japanese saying how safe it all is now, it's nuclear experts from around the world. When you look past the scaremongering of the media and people who frankly don't have a clue (like the french foreign office) there's been a huge air of calm from the scientific community.

Go take a long read of these posts for some actual scientific evaluation of the situation.

Yes, I've heard the line about "it was designed to cope with the earthquake, but not the tsunami". I understood that earthquakes cause tsunamis, and immediately precede them, so I'm struggling to find a logic in designing for one in the absence of the other. I suppose the standard General Electric design wouldn't have needed to cope with tsunamis, not being planned with the Japanese seaboard in mind. Which leaves the question whether the particular risks of that specific location were considered when commissioning this type of reactor. It would appear not.

I'm sure you're right that the reactors were over rather than under-engineered. My point is that they are stated to be designed to cope with conditions below the level of what occurred, and what could be predicted had a possibility of occurring, and we are being told that because it was a 1 in 1000 chance, that means that we should expect it not to happen. That may be a reasonable level of risk to take when climbing a ladder or crossing a road, but not in my view when dealing with something as deadly on such a scale and over such an area as this. Especially when the firm behind it lie about how the risks are actually being managed.

I've glanced over the link you gave. It contains a lot of facts. It doesn't address the key issue, that of risk.

[Cracker1234]

3 major aftershocks in space of 2.5hrs rock Japan, M6.6, M6.4 and M6.6 according to USGS - http://1.usa.gov/2y3Sy5

[Cracker1234]

look at how much this road has dropped start at 1:57 in

[TheDon]

And we think the pot holes on our roads are bad!

[Cracker1234]

FLASH: Two large quakes, one at 7 magnitude, strike in northeast Myanmar, near Thai and Laotian border

[Cracker1234]

One of the roads hours after the quake.

The bottom picture 6 days later.

[legov]

That's brilliant!

[mykeyb]

Plus they did 46 drives with the leftover tarmac as well.........................

[The_Rev]

New footage (I think) of the tsunami, and it's **** terrifying.

[Tegis]

Horrific

[Chindie]

Channel 4's documentary that ad a bit of analysis of the tsunami and earthquak is well worth a watch, was on on Thursday, should be an easy find on 4OD.

Clips from a US bloke in a park in Japan as the earthquake that it shows are simply bizarre - he sees cracks open in the ground, which he then watches open as close as the ground pulses with the tremors, in between which he also sees the pressure cause the water in the ground to surge up like little fountains everywhere.

[Mr_Dogg]

New footage (I think) of the tsunami, and it's **** terrifying.

Unreal.