Re:Regulation, more regulation, only lawyers win (Score 3, Insightful)

Mistakes were made, but the operators did what they could with what they had. Those in the nuclear industry don’t fault their actions. They were heroic. The Fukushima reactors *were* shut down safely. It's an automatic event during a loss of offsite power, and for some plants, a seismic event. All the rods inserted into the all the cores. There's nothing an operator can do to stop it. But, there is still a massive amount of decay heat that must be removed long term, on the order of 100s of MWs initially, then falling over the course of several months. The diesel generators and decay heat removal systems all worked properly in order to remove this heat. The isolation condensers (IC) (unit 1 only), and reactor core isolation cooling (RCIC) systems on the other units started and began maintaining water level in the reactor pressure vessels (RPV) and removing decay heat. There are numerous high pressure (> 400 psi) and low pressure ( 400 psi) water supply systems. RCIC is a high pressure steam driven turbine relying on steam from the RPV and DC power (batteries) to supply power for the valves. The isolation condensers are passive natural circulation heat exchangers. These two systems are designed to be used for short term cooling until the RPV pressure can be lowered to allow the low pressure systems to take over. The low pressures systems require AC power from either offsite or the diesel generators. 41 minutes after the shutdown, the tsunamis took out the diesel generators and the DC switchgear. This is where things went south. The operators ended up with no way to cool the cores. There was little they could do to combat it. Batteries were pulled out of cars to power DC valves. A portable generator was use to power some instrumentation. A fire truck was used to try to maintain water levels until a hydrogen explosion destroy the connections. All the while these guys were taking massive doses of radiation and with the knowledge that their families were likely dead.