Japan Plans To Scrap Nuclear Plants After 40 Years 229
An anonymous reader writes with this news as carried by the San Francisco Chronicle: "After the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima plant, 'Japan says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety.' If, however, a nuclear plant is deemed still safe it may continue operation."
if it ain't broke (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:if it ain't broke (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point.
Older plants don't have as many safety features as newer plants, as well existing safety features may degrade as they age. So instead of plants simply getting older and less safe they're proactively saying "this plant will be shut down by X unless you can prove it's still safe enough to continue".
OTOH... (Score:5, Insightful)
That also implies that if a plant is unsafe, it still gets 40 years. Otherwise, what does the time limit mean? At the end of 40 years, a plant is either safe or unsafe. If safe, they can keep going. If unsafe, why was it still running?
Re:OTOH... (Score:5, Insightful)
That also implies that if a plant is unsafe, it still gets 40 years. Otherwise, what does the time limit mean?
It means that they expect plants to be worn down by use. Plants that are less worn are deemed less likely to be a problem, even if they have fewer safeguards. Plants that are both worn and with fewer safeguards will (ostensibly) not be tolerated.
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Situation, same as normal (Score:5, Informative)
40 years was the original design life for nuclear reactors. Of course, this article is pretty much 'life as normal'. In the USA you get a permit good for X years, normally 40. When a reactor reaches the end of that life, the owner of the plant has to decide whether to shut it down or move for permit renewal, where they have to, guess what, prove the plant is still safe to standards. That most likely means spending some millions on plant refurbishment/upgrades.
Look at Fukushima - it was scheduled to be shut down.
That being said - I DO support replacing old nuclear plants with new ones - they're more efficient and safer.
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Re:Situation, same as normal (Score:5, Informative)
"Has a reactor ever failed because of old age? Fukushima certainly didn't. "
Fukushima absolutely *did* fail due to age. The primary pressure relief system failed, primarily due to age. It took several hours before pressure relief started.
Beyond that, many reactors have suffered failures due to neutron hardening of the plumbing, particularly in the primary cooling loops. Re-piping is a common occurrence, and has added operational costs well beyond predictions. It has been the cause for massive cost overruns here in Ontario, for instance.
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I can't find any indication the failure of that valve was age related. Some of the sites I came across point to a design problem. Do you have a link?
Re:OTOH... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe most power plants do. But most power plants aren't nuke plants. So when they fail after 50-100 years, they don't nuke a quarter of Japan. Or Europe. Fukushima and Chernobyl did. Damn right they're not smartphones.
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If they can't guarantee a safe lifetime of 40 years, they won't build it in the first place.
Re:OTOH... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right .....
And, of course, Fukushima was less than 3 months over 40. If the tidal wave had been 3 months earlier, everything would have been fine?
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The tidal wave was expected to happen 1000 years later, actually.
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I think you forgot to close your sarcasm tag. Or have I missed the story on Slashdot about the 100% accurate tidal wave prediction technology they are using?
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Indeed, I'm ashamed for simply echoing the GP. -_-;;
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If the tidal wave had been 3 months earlier, everything would have been fine?
While you are right to be dubious, my take here is that the real problem is evolution of human knowledge over these time spans. In theory, one could keep Fukushima going forever even after a big disaster like the tsunami. Just rebuild the nuclear reactors exactly as they were and keep going. But we know that would be a bad idea.
But we can engineer nuclear plants so that they achieve standards of safety. Not a guarantee that nothing bad will happen, but a reasonable expectation that bad things will happe
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I don't think the earthquakes and tsunamis have changed much in the past 40 years. The possible nuclear meltdown safeguards certainly have changed by now, but the modelling of how likely such an earthquake would be to affect the site is almost guaranteed to have been the same exactly up to few days after it happened (takes time to react and update the models).
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Re:OTOH... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you believe that a nuclear plant goes into operation immediately when the last construction worker on-site finishes his final designated task? That seems a bizarre way to run things, in any country. The nuclear plant is inspected prior to commencing operations, and is presumed safe until its next inspection. Can you know before the box is open, whether Schrodinger's cat remains alive? This is not a new thought-experiment.
The decision that Japan has made, is that 40 years is a reasonable length of time to check in on a nuclear plant, to see if it still meets current safety standards. It may no longer meet standards because of normal wear and tear on the facility, or it may be because the standards have been raised. Seeing as the previous modus operandi was to build a nuclear plant and let it continue until it explodes, I'd say that this is a clear and marked improvement.
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In the US, it's a continuous process:
- US Nuclea [nrc.gov]
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Which is the point the GG*P allures to. If there are continual inspections, what does the optional 40 year limit actually mean? If the plant was deemed unsafe at the last inspection, it is shut down before 40 years are up. If the plant passes its inspection as usual after 40 years, it can continue to operate as usual.
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Re:OTOH... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing as the previous modus operandi was to build a nuclear plant and let it continue until it explodes, I'd say that this is a clear and marked improvement.
Be serious. They ran them until they were deemed unsafe or uneconomical. No-one thought that such a large tsunami would ever hit Fukushima, or any other the other places where tens of thousands of people were washed away. Clearly that was wrong but there were regular safety inspections and they did deem to the plant fit to continue operating.
The real problem is that nuclear power is so expensive that that power companies and governments are reluctant to build new facilities when they can keep the old ones running. Governments are also unwilling to impose further regulation, e.g. forcing Fukushima to upgrade its emergency cooling systems, because ultimately the cost gets passed on to them or their citizens. Obviously power companies won't do anything safety related unless forced to by regulation or insurers since it affects their bottom line and shareholder dividends.
We need to start making better use of our fusion reactor. It is fuelled for a few billion years and all the management, running and waste disposal is outsourced with the energy beamed directly to us in vast quantities. The fusion plants work the same way as nuclear and most other energy types, i.e. using fusion power to generate steam that drives turbines. They are totally safe too, the worst accident possible being a high pressure steam or molten salt leak.
Re:OTOH... (Score:5, Insightful)
That also implies that if a plant is unsafe, it still gets 40 years. Otherwise, what does the time limit mean? At the end of 40 years, a plant is either safe or unsafe. If safe, they can keep going. If unsafe, why was it still running?
People like you are why I always feel the need to write long pedantic posts :/
First lets establish the obvious in that safety isn't a binary condition, it's a continuum.
Now older plants are less safe for two reasons. 1) they were built when the technology was less advanced, 2) they are old.
Now if a plant is unsafe enough it will obviously be shut down before the 40 year mark, the only reason to believe otherwise is if you're being deliberately obtuse.
However, we're looking at the situation where a plant is safe enough that there's no immediate reason to shut it down, but if someone started the ball rolling and did a really tough safety inspection it might end in the plant being shut down.
What this law does is start the ball rolling.
I'm sorry to sound snippy but comments of the type "I'm going to misinterpret a statement so I can make a clever remark" really bug me and detract from the discussion.
Re:OTOH... (Score:5, Interesting)
First lets establish the obvious in that safety isn't a binary condition, it's a continuum.
This needs to be expanded on. Safety is not only a continuum but it's an ever changing continuum as new standards for what is deemed "safe". I work at a plant which is quite unique around the world. It's unique in that we've never had a death on site. Does that mean we're safer than other sites? Hell no.
Looking back at our history we had scaffolders holding onto the top of a tower with one hand with no safety harness on and with the other mounting a scaffold pole. We had a really old control room with a large window facing the plant less than 10m away. We've never had an incident that has damaged that building but that doesn't mean it is safe. We had to build a giant cement bomb proof bunker for our new control room and more recently move all day staff off site.
When the plant was built there was no emergency shutdown system. Now 50 years later we still use some of the original kit but with a number of SIL rated shutdown systems in addition to the modern control system. Not to mention 50 years worth of changes in process design, check valves and relief valves in critical positions, a massive relief flaring system, etc.
That point I am trying to make is that if you build a site and maintain a site perfectly to the standards of the day it was designed then eventually it will be deemed unsafe simply because you're ignoring years of changes in standards and lessons learnt from the process safety industry.
40 years ago you weren't held liable for not putting up a wet floor sign either.
Re:OTOH... (Score:4, Insightful)
That also implies that if a plant is unsafe, it still gets 40 years. Otherwise, what does the time limit mean?
You're missing the point. The plants were up to contemporary safety standards when they were built. They aren't now - not because their safety standards have necessarily decreased, but because contemporary safety mechanisms are so much better.
This is saying that older plants must measure up to modern safety techniques, you can't "grandfather" in an old plant, just because its been operating for a long time.
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We grandfather in almost everything else?
Imagin if every building had to meet new building and environmental codas, what about cars! the safety standers on those change all the time.
Their are things that can be forced onto older plants, but you might find that most if not all plants if told they have to either implement new codes top to bottom in the next 5 years or shut down would shut-down.
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"Safety" is not a boolean value.
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The Fukushima plant was 40 years old. A month before the accident, the Fukushima plant was given a permit to operate for another 10 years. The Tokyo Electric Power Company that owns and operates the reactors, the nuclear safety agency in Japan and the Japanese government all convinced themselves the reactors were safe.
What will change with this new rule?
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I can't find the link but I thought the existing plants were already past their expected lifespans, but were still operating because the authorities deemed them safe enough to continue operating. So how does this new wordplay change anything?
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Yeah..And if the neighbors don't like the smell, they can get used to it, just like the Japanese people can get used to a little bit of non lethal radiation :/
Hell, they've done it before [wikipedia.org].
In Other Words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Japan will continue to use nuclear plants after 40 years after some political/financial lubrication and rubber stamping a safety report, just like every other first world nation with old plants in the news lately.
War is peace; Freedom is slavery, etc...
Mmm...chocolate rations...
Re:In Other Words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. It's our weird world of thinking -> "We won't build new nuclear power plants (which are safer, and benefit from technology advances), because nuclear power is unsafe; but we will continue to operate the older nuclear power plants (which are less safe, and are slowly crumbling) because we have already spent the money building them."
There are days when I think the inmates are running the asylum.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are days when I think the inmates are running the asylum.
You have just described how democracy works.
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Does anyone else wake up in the morning, spend a moment thinking through all the various systems of rule the human race has conceived of, and feel that none of them are satisfactory? Not one of them.
Democracy when you're younger -> everyone gets a vote, everyone is intelligent / cares to carefully understand or weigh each issue before casting a vote.
Democracy when you're older -> why am I always in the minority? if everyone is intelligent, why are they constantly voting for plans that will backfire in
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While my comment was admittedly cynical, I do believe in democracy (maybe because I'm still young :) ). People have, in fact become much more educated over time. 100 years ago most people spent 4-8 years in school, now it's 12-20 years. Society developing, and in places where democracy has been around for long enough (like in Western Europe) it starts to stabilize and become more and more effective. Sadly, this is a very slow process, and sometimes I get the feeling that bureaucracy, legal and financial sys
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I want my benevolent dictatorship back.
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>>Apparently he hasn't the brainpower to realize that "secular atheist" and "radical islamist" governments are contradictory.
I won't criticize your brainpower for copying and pasting the same quote twice, as it was an honest mistake.
But the two are strange bedfellows. Secular atheists are generally on the side of Palestinians, whereas evangelical Christians and Mormons generally take the side of Israel. Why would Christians support Jews and atheists support Hamas? Hell, you tell me. But that's how the
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Well, there's a bit of a reason for that, in so far I can determine.
The (Evangelical) Christians have an odd thing for the Jews since they are "the Lord's people." It's actually kind of odd: when I grew up, the official message was that "the Jews {read: all of them} killed Jesus" -> thus making general anti-antisemitism an okay thing, because, you know, they killed Jesus. And that they remained 'bad' people because they still wouldn't accept Jesus. That Jesus was, according to their very own guidebook, a
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Bravo for this series of quotes! Thank you.
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The operators of the existing plants would want to keep them running in any case. Simply because those plants are already paid for, so keeping them running longer typically means to get higher profits. This would apply if you wanted to build new gas-fired plants, offshore wind parks or new nuclear power stations.
If you want to replace old nuclear plants, you have to say: "These plants are unsafe to operate, we need something else, be it energy X, Y or Z". There is no way any energy supplier would replace
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If you won't build the new ones, won't continue running the old ones, and can't or won't build enough conventional capacity to take up the slack, what are you going to
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So, where did the inmates run off to? Seriously, I am almost sober enough that I might want to follow in their footsteps / escape plan. ^_^
So, no change? (Score:3)
Re:So, no change? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it means that now, a plant has to be shown to be unsafe to be shutdown. With the changes, a plant has to be shown to be safe to qualify for an extention. It basically means more inspections.
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It sounds like they're saying they'll all be shutdown in 40 years unless they're safe. Thus making it sound like if they are newer than 40 years they don't have to be safe. Of course that's from the summary which so often has little or nothing to do with the article.
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I tend to doubt the truth of the actual wording is any less stupid than it sounds like from the summary.
Makes Sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, what? (Score:3)
40 years old nuclear plants will be shut down, unless they're still safe. --> 40 years old nuclear plants that are no longer safe will be shut down
One would assume that this has been the policy all along. Hell, if a nuclear plant is deemed "no longer safe" they should shut it down whether it's 20, 40 or 60 years old!
So, they'll keep doing what they have always been doing, except that they now introduced arbitrary time limit, which they can circumvent if they want to.
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I also thought that's what they were doing as well, and that Fuku has recently passed it n-decade review?
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Have you actually seen any pictures of "Fuki" since March 2011? That thing is in no condition to be run. Hell, it's in no condition to shut the windows at night! The best you can hope is that it stays halfway upright until the fission material has been discarded as safely as is possible at this stage.
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Reactors five and six are in perfect shape and could be restarted today. That won't happen for political reasons, but there's no technical reason not to.
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Japan's energy future (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll be interesting to see if Gen 3+ and Gen 4 nuclear reactors will be allowed longer terms of lease, given that they have less parts to fail and more passive saftey systems. I think that nuclear could really be a keystone of Japan's nuclear energy future. That, and the Japanese have done research on how to extract uranium from the sea after Uranium prices spike in the future once easily mineable resources become exhausted. If we don't get breeders or thorium running, Japan has done the research.
http://www.jaea.go.jp/jaeri/english/ff/ff43/topics.html [jaea.go.jp]
Japan's only major energy resource is the sea. And the sea has enough Uranium to keep Japan ticking long after their population dwindles away due to their low birth rate.
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They are way more expensive than wind generators.
And forget about the "base load" vs "intermittency" argument.
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They are way more expensive than wind generators.
And forget about the "base load" vs "intermittency" argument.
Firstly [citation needed] and while you find one for how nice and "cheap" wind power is I'll find you one for how nice and cheap nuclear is. This is afterall Japan where they don't have the governmental and insurance overheads of the USA.
Secondly, ok lets forget the baseload argument. Japan doesn't have the land to put enough wind farms up to power its population. Run the numbers. It just can't happen unless you start to put wind farms out at sea which double screws your supposed "cheaper" argument.
Thirdly,
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Well, of course, because if we don't you won't be able to pretend wind energy is cheaper.
Re:Japan's energy future (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, let's just forget about the key reason why wind power can never form the bulk of power generating capacity. Hell, who cares about facts.
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Cheaper.... to construct? Certainly. To operate on a per/TWh generated over the lifetime of the plant basis? Not even close. In fact, it's a joke.
Let's talk about the fact that nuclear power is SAFER (as in less deaths per TWh generated) than wind power. Oh, you didn't think about that one, did ya?
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You'll have to tell me - I'll be pretty old forty years after the first Gen 3+ plant gets finished (AP1000 under construction in China) and most likely well over 100 and dead some 40 years after a Gen 4 reactor gets built.
Extraction of Uranium from seawater is nothing other than an as yet unapplied joke so long as there is a lot of very easily mined ore full of Uranium, Copper, Silver and Gold (eg. Olympic
Passing an inspection to stay running is NEW?! (Score:3)
So what have they done up to this point? Shouldn't all plants require safety inspections, all the time, and if they're not up to standards they get shut down? Age of the plant shouldn't matter at all -- in fact, a plant built 50 years ago should be held to the same standards as a plant built 2 years ago. It doesn't matter if putting generators in the basement next to the ocean was deemed to be okay in 1967. If current standards say your backup power has to be protected from tsunamis, then the plant has to be fixed, or shut down.
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just pay a bribe to pass.
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This is about making an announcement for the sake of it and continuing as usual, just like when Germany pretended they were getting out of nuclear power for reasons other than not wanting to spend the money to run the things.
I'm not sure about how the standards apply for non-nuclear thermal power stations in the USA. There are huge thick books full of case studies of what happens when you run various power station components to destruction and they are all US examples. In places where they actually ca
What will happen to radioactive waste? (Score:3)
They are dependent on nuclear energy obviously, and 40 years is probably quite a feat. But after those 40 years, when there is radioactive waste that will last for thousands, and after leaving certain zones inhabitable for centuries... was it worth it?
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Oh, bullshit. The Japanese people are as against nuclear weapons as they were the day after they got nuked themselves. Yes, the nuclear plants are partly strategic, but the reason is the country doesn't have energy re
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Breeders can use the really active stuff but are of course net producers of waste instead of users of waste (like some people applying magical thinking assume them to be).
To su
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I was trying to put what I thought was an interesting, provocative yet reasoned argument which questions the effectiveness of the nuclear energy "path". Looks like someone got irritated and can't discuss "like adults do".
Back to my point, if you will, leaving zones of the planet inhabitable for centuries is a very high prize many aren't willing to pay. Who says deaths/twh is the correct metric? Oh, maybe that is one of the reasons this news: they would like to find a better energy source!
BTW, color me suspi
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Making areas uninhabitable for centures? Hardly, that's just FUD. I mean, chernobyl wasn't even THAT bad, and that's basically as bad as nuclear disasters come, they had fucking radioactive lava. Even that was the distant exception- the USSR in the 80's was well past its prime, and Chernobyl was of exceptionally poor design being run by an unstable authoritarian regieme. Hell, two cities that were directly nuked during WWII are doing fine today with regard to habitability.
Besides, modern reactors don't have
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The first rule of nuclear power is: you don't talk about the liquidators. The second rule of nuclear power is: the energy costs don't include the ridiculous amounts of economic strain that a major accident creates.
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And dose coal power include the cost of the environmental impacts? Air pollution etc?
If you had to cost in a full scale meltdown in the cost, no plant would ever be built. If you had to scale in the cost of a major car accident into every car, they wouldn't be built. What you do scale in is reasonable safety codes that get updated for any new developments.
Oh great (Score:2)
R and D of nuclear reactors (Score:3)
If you look at the history of the Research and Development of nuclear reactors you will notice they were scaled up from test reactors to full sized commercial reactors very quickly. Speaking in general terms if you look closely at the design of most commercial reactors they just look like big versions of the test reactors. Even the AP-1000 and the EPR reactors suffer from a plethora of design inadequacies that demonstrate the full life cycle of a reactor was not considered.
I reason this because the simplest and most obvious design change to Nuclear reactors would be to build them underground which would mean any nuclear accident would be automatically contained and the entire facility sealed off and, if necessary, flooded with water. It would also mean decommissioning and disposal of the reactor could take place in-situ and that would avoid the energy costs (around one third of the reactors lifetime output) incurred. I've only ever seen an IFR reactor design underground but there are many other safety features that can be applied.
The argument for Nuclear Power generally ignores the entire nuclear industry paradigm and focuses on reactor technology as the answer, whilst the argument against focuses on the consequences of an industry that was rushed into existence based of the premise of nuclear weapons production. But I believe there is a middle ground based on spent fuel containment and a proper infrastructure to support it.
There is little doubt that Fukushima would be much easier to deal with now if the spent fuel pools were empty but the truly sobering thought is that US reactors of the same design have up to five times the density of spent fuel contained in those pools and the same type of accident in one of those reactors would almost certainly result in a un-contained plutonium fire.
It is possible to build a much safer nuclear industry but it would start with an international effort that incorporated the Joint industry findings the NRC commissioned AND the EPR design enhancements applied to all new reactor designs. That and a proper infrastructure program to handle spent fuel would answer most of the arguments the critics have of the Nuclear industry.
It's really only attributable to the arrogance of the 50's thinking that leaves legal artifacts like the Price-Anderson act in existence long after it's use by date and demonstrates that announcements such of these are as insincere as the regulatory enforcement that led Japan, and the world, into this mess in the first place.
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Not quite. After shut-down the core continues to produce heat at 6% of nominal output. This heat must be transported away, or you will get a meltdown. If you build teh reactor underground, this gets much harder. Building underground also does not
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I think he's saying, fuck it, in that event let the crew evacuate and let it melt down and to hell with it. Just leave it entombed well underground. I would assume he's not thinking of three feet of earth here, but REALLY WELL underground. That's not too different from what was done with underground nuclear tests. Believe me, the pressure due to a melted down nuclear reactor is not even close to the pressure of an exploding nuclear weapon, and that was pretty fully contained, so what do you think the proble
I remember reading Asimov's 'Foundation' (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember reading Asimov's 'Foundation'; where people after colonising the whole galaxy, fell into lackluster apathy and gave up on their knowlege of science, abandoning nuclear energy in favour of combusting carbon based fuels. I'm glad Asimov's not alive to see the day when the human race lives up to the end of days scenario he thought so terrible before even touching the stars.
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Yes, that one particular example in particular struck a cord. Paraphrasing:
The signs of decline are everywhere, recently a nuclear power plant melted down in (some star system). Their viceroy's response? Nuclear power plants are hard to maintain due to the lack of nuclear engineers. So, train more engineers? Unthinkable. Instead they opted to restrict nuclear power.
Great series, depressing insight into the decline and fall of the modern-day Empire.
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It's depressing in general tone, but I wouldn't say in general that having empires fade away is necessarily a BAD thing. Not if you have republics rise in their place. That was more or less what "Foundation" was about.
There are different kinds of nuclear reactor (Score:2)
I'm not an expert on reactors but I don't this attitude of there being a 'nuclear plant' as if there were only one type there are different types and even the growing popularity of liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs).
Canada, where I live, has plants using natural uranium in vessels that are not pressurized and they work fine without all the drama.
Japan can do as it pleases of course I understand why but everyone else is freaking out over misinformation.
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That's why Australia wanted one in the 1960s and why Turkey was blocked from buying one a few years ago.
Also, what do you mean by "every growing popularity"? Is one planned anywhere? Didn't the Indians take that technology, update it by about three decades, leave out the fluoride, and start work on a modern design instead of that stillborn dream of the 1950s?
Reading isn't that hard... (Score:2)
Obviously, Japan HAS been running Nukes for the LAST fourty years, and now AFTER 40 YEARS OF SAFE OPERATION they will close nukes they deem unsafe, and ones they deem safe will remain in operation.
What exactly is the news here? They will close 'unsafe' power plants and keep 'safe' plants up and running. Did Japan knowingly keep unsafe power plants online?
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That would be a yes.
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The engineering was fine, they just didn't have a backup backup generator that was hardened against tsunami. It surprises me a bit that nobody thought to plan for that eventuality being located where it is, but they didn't. The plant itself survived a significant earthquake and only had troubles because it couldn't cool down when it lost power.
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The engineering was fine, they just didn't have a backup backup generator that was hardened against tsunami.
So it wasn't fine. It could have been protected merely by locating the site a little further inland.
Take the village of Aneyoshi - it was basically wiped out in 1896, suffered major destruction in 1933, and in 1960 they were fine because they had moved to higher ground by then. So that gives us around 30 years between major tsunamis - the Fukushima site would have had to assume at least one durin
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No, the design of the reactor complex was fine, they could also have engineered a taller wall to protect against it as well. At some point you do have to draw a line as to how over engineered you're going to be. Based upon what was understood about the risks they built what they could, and considering that the wave was substantially larger than what they were anticipating things went quite well.
I'm just surprised that they didn't have a secondary backup generator in case something happened that prevented th
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Based upon what was understood about the risks they built what they could
They assumed the risks so their site would be viable, and they put protections in place which were not too expensive to run the reactor economically. This was a very large tsunami, yes - but the site was not where the waves were highest. A smaller quake could have occurred at a worse location, and the site would have been hit even harder.
The Fukushima plant assumed a max wave height of 5.5 meters. That's less than historically repo
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The plant in question did have issues coping with the water.
So... the engineering was fine then?
Not sure why engineering is judged on a sliding scale here. Did the plant survive a massive but not unprecedented earthquake/tsunami or didn't it? Japan is one of the few countries on earth that's plagued by earthquakes on a regular basis, every once in a while a massive one. Shouldn't the absolute worst case have been part of the planning? If it was, then the planning obviously wasn't good enough. If it wasn't then why the heck was that thing built in the first place?
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Locating the site farther inland requires more pipes to be dug, which bring in cold water from the ocean. Longer pipes are at a greater risk from earth quakes breaking them.
The only flaw in the building layout was locating the emergency generators in an underground bunker that was designed to be protected against earthquakes. That bunker was flooded by 20 feet of water drowning the generators.
instead of guessing about the engineering specs why don't you look them up? They put the generators in a location
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The Onagawa nuclear power plant was 75 km closer to the epicenter, but it was built at 15 meters above sea level. It did fine. Maybe you want to look that up? Maybe if you try to designs and one performs far worse than the other (under better circumstances), that's some indication which design is better?
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I love this 'I'll build a wall to keep out [hurricanes|tsunamis]' mentality that Japan and the folks in New Orleans have - I think it shows great chutzpah!
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There are other parts of the plant layout I don't understand. The wiring closets were below ground level under the reactors, meaning they could be flooded and would have been in any case hard to get to in an emergency. Engineers have been fretting over a loss of power problem for years and deemed it the most likely problem to cause a meltdown. And yet the reactor building is designed such that you can't run emergency external power to the pumps without going under the reactor.
And why is the spent fuel p
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Did you mean the inferior design of the plants they brought from the US? Or are not talking about the one that blew?
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Also look into Thorium for the reaction process, which has fewer risks and more advantages compared to Uranium.
Care to show me an active, commercial scale Thorium based reactor? There aren't any. India is presumably working on one.
Personally, I would rather take my chances with a well defined, well researched, well engineered technology than one that has yet to see the light of day in real world terms. By all means, do the damned research - make and run an 10 GW Thorium reactor and get back to us.
The problem isn't engineering - it's politics and economics. Politics in that companies running nuclear plants had ma
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See, that's the difference between your view and mine. You seem to be saying that's a reason to write off thorium. But it makes me say, what is wrong with the establishment for not aggressively developing thorium technology. The time is coming, not all that far off, when uranium fuel for nuclear power will run out. At that point, you can either have no nuclear energy, or you can be sure to be well ready with thorium based de
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But unless its different where you are, its a tick the box and pay the fee event, the 'age' at which you require a doctors approval is still almost a tick in the box too, no real work goes into check on these.