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Page added on May 21, 2011
The Fukushima meltdown was always worse than thought
SP at TOD ANZ has a look at the failure of the nuclear power zealots at “Brave New Climate” to provide accurate or unbiased commentary when looking at the Fukushima disaster – Fukushima was always worse than thought.
While a prominent Australian based pro nuclear site went in hard and fast (prematurely) extolling the safety of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor and its operators; decrying any popular press report of dangers as alarmist, two months on a clearer picture begins to emerge.
Several themes were proposed about the failure in the face of the massive earthquake that struck the Tohoku region. But one, which increased in height with time, was that no one could have foreseen the danger presented by the Tsunami. This has now been revealed as false. It was foreseen; TEPCO was warned. …
Through out the early phase of the disaster BNC continued to claim that no damage had occurred to the containment. Many fancy annotated pictures (the site loves them) with big arrows were posted. In fact investigators are now conducting an inquiry reassessing the time-line of events and now believe that the reactor containment may have been damaged by the earthquake. This is not totally surprising given the size of the earthquake.It also explains the later leaks. …
Much is made of the “defense in depth” strategy adopted by nuclear power plants. But defense in depth surely means more than just repeating the same (potentially flawed) subsystem over and over. Two examples. Almost all of the diesel generators were located in the basement. Mainichi Daily termed this a “lack of diversity”.
Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic has an article noting how successful the PR blitz was at hiding the truth during the first 2 months of the disaster – “One of the Japanese nuclear reactors experienced a total meltdown, but we’re only finding out two months after the accident” – Meanwhile, the Disaster at Fukushima Continues.
The No. 1 nuclear reactor at Fukushima Daiichi melted down in the first day after the massive quake and tsunami cut power to the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted Sunday.
As Nature News’ Geoff Brumfiel reports, workers went into the unit recently “to recalibrate some of the sensors on the reactor.” Much to their surprise and dismay, they found that the core experienced a total meltdown. The zirconium alloy tubes that hold the uranium fuel pellets during normal operation all warped and the uranium is now lying at the bottom of the pressure vessel, or possibly even outside of it in the basement below or outside the concrete containment building. With all the fuel piled up at the bottom, there is some danger that the nuclear reaction could have restarted. As of now, engineers on the scene aren’t sure what happened.
The revelation that the reactor experienced a total meltdown doesn’t change the situation at Fukushima that much. The temperatures inside the reactor now appear to be low enough that whatever happened to the fuel is not continuing. The same cooling and cleanup operations must happen.
But what the information does highlight is that when a nuclear reactor gets damaged, the people in charge have to make a lot of decisions with imperfect information. The scary thing about a nuclear disaster like this is that here we are two months later and new (and very important) news about what happened is still coming out.
The same thing actually happened at Three Mile Island, where eight months after the accident, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist declared, “Little, if any, fuel melting occurred, even though the reactor core was uncovered. The safety systems functioned reliably.” A few years later, robotic sorties into the area revealed that half the core — not “little, if any” — had melted down.
When I wrote about Three Mile Island and the data problems they had back in 2009, I hoped that better sensors and great computing power might make it easier to understand a nuclear disaster as it happened. As more information has emerged from Japan, it’s clear that no matter how many drones and computer models we throw at a nuclear meltdown, it can still defy our capacity to understand it in real time. And that unknowability has to be incorporated into how we evaluate the risk of nuclear power disasters.
The WSJ has a look at a number of the failures that occurs on the first day after the earthquake – Fukushima Daiichi Diary: Other Problems.
A Wall Street Journal examination of the first 24 hours after the Fukushima Daiichi accident shows that disaster piled on disaster, worsening the nuclear crisis faster than anyone had initially thought could happen. Here’s a more detailed look at some of the other problems that the stricken plant, regulators and operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. were grappling with.
13 Comments on "The Fukushima meltdown was always worse than thought"
Fredrik on Sat, 21st May 2011 10:15 pm
How many people have died because of the radiation? Unless people start dying, this is nothing more than a messy expensive industrial accident.
none on Sat, 21st May 2011 10:56 pm
This article is just a last spasm of the anti-nuke crowd. All BS. Nothing to see here…
DC on Sun, 22nd May 2011 1:31 am
It must be nice to be a shill, make your own hours, the pay is good?. All you have to do is astro-turf on websites commited to an honest assesment of our energy prediciment. You forgot some of your favorite talking points, here let me help you.
Nuclear is da Safest energy der is!
Nuclear is the cleanest energy eva!
Nuclear is the cheeeeepest energy in the world, unlike those granola-munhcing hippies with there impractial windmills and solar panels!
Sure accidents can and do happen, but if we just close our eyes and repeat nuclear is safe, nuclear is safe, then it is!
O and you forgot to throw in a questionable ‘sciencey sounding survey’ like
“More people die from choking on hot dogs than are killed by nuclear power.
See, its easy to be a Nuclear Shill!
SP on Sun, 22nd May 2011 3:22 am
@ Frederick
“How many people have died because of the radiation? Unless people start dying, this is nothing more than a messy expensive industrial accident.”
And what about the environment? The fish? The displaced? You’re all heart.
Because of the nature of the release any deaths (or illness) will be difficult to prove (if they occur)… in the same way that no individual weather event can be blamed conclusively on climate change.
That does not mean it is not a concern.
One of BNCs big problems is credulously accepting the official line coming from TEPCO. As if nuclear engineers don’t play “bend the truth”.
There is a pervasive attitude at BNC that only ‘engineers’ or ‘physicists’ or bearded ‘mathematicians’ or other so called ‘hard science’ gurus are somehow qualified to interpret the ‘hard numbers’.
The recent revelations basically mean that two months worth of ‘technical analysis’ at BNC has less meaning than the BNC teamsters think. Regardless of the volume of text, the skill of the diagrams or the supposed hard numberedness.
The nature of science is exploring uncertainties. So anybody who blithely boasts that they won’t be wrong, as Barry did, deserves some baste on their lamb. This is not the attitude of a scientist.
AgentR11 on Sun, 22nd May 2011 4:22 am
Nothing that has “xyz zealots” as a group descriptive in its first sentence can be thought of as anything other that hostile propaganda. It completely destroys the articles ability to be considered on rational, scientific, and unbiased terms.
Grover Lembeck on Sun, 22nd May 2011 6:05 am
That’s right, DC! Not only is nuclear energy safe, reliable, clean and cheaper than plastic forks, it’s also mostly waste free; there’s no greenhouse gasses from nuclear energy!
Accidents? Why, the worst nuclear accident ever only killed 3 people, and the folks in Fukushima (which killed 0 people!) will be able to head home any day now!
Go nuclear for a better tomorrow! A cleaner tomorrow! A tomorrow with a slightly higher mutation rate, giving us all SUPER POWERS!
That’s right,I said it, go nuclear for a MORE SUPER-POWERED TOMORROW!
none on Sun, 22nd May 2011 7:48 am
It is useless to say “Nuclear is Dangerous” or “Nuclear costs a lot of money”
You have to say: “Nuclear is more dangerous and costs more than …”
And then fill in the “…”.
But you can’t can? Because it so happens that every other energy source – if you really get into the details – is MORE expensive and MORE dangerous.
RICHARD RALPH ROEHL on Sun, 22nd May 2011 8:05 am
So… the designers of the nuke plants @ Fukushima had decided to put the spent fuel rod pools on the second floor (above the reactor)?
Only an insane anarchist or a full blown psychopath would advocate nuclear power. Indeed! Nuclear technology is an evil that even Satan would not do.
Edpeak on Sun, 22nd May 2011 8:29 am
Nuclear is “inexpensive”? What a joke! They can’t get the private sector to invest in them, never mind insure them, even AFTER the massive government guarantees.
“Go free market!” they shout out loud, then queitly returnt to insisting the govenrment (read: we, the taxpayers) bear almost ALL the costs of any future nuclear disaster, since they can’t get insured in the private sector.
Energy profit ratio? Very unimpressive.
And that’s just for starters.
We haven’t even started talking about nuclear waste, or terrorism..
Let’s even put all of that aside, and ask “if you ignore a half dozen huge dangerous glaring problems, then is nuclear finally able to pretend to be ok?”
And then the answer is, hell no. Nuclear “rennaisance” isn’t likely to happen since they are inefficient, bad energy profit ratio, too slow to come online soon enough to make a difference for peak oil or climate destabilitation, and super expensive (and have to be shut down often during heat waves, exactly when you most badly need extra electricity) but if the “rennaisance” ever did happen over the next 20 or 30 year? Then we’ll be looking fondly back at the year 2011 when it was “only” China, Russia, USA, France, UK, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and India, that were nuclear. Proliferation bad as it is today, would get that much worse.
But the lovers of CENTRALIZED power (in both senses of the word) can’t give us the big macho ‘cool geez whiz’ Science of Centralized Big Energy, so they ignore the alternatives and will never admit nuclear above mentioned disasterous flaws.
Landrew on Sun, 22nd May 2011 8:47 pm
The problem with your assertion,”How many people have died because of the radiation? Unless people start dying, this is nothing more than a messy expensive industrial accident.” We have no idea how many people will die. Cancer is an ugly medium/long term death. You should have said how many people died of a nuclear explosion? This thankfully was not a power on failure as in Chernobyl. You appear to be a industry spokesperson when you deny contamination as serious. I am pro-nuclear, however, these are very poor designed reactors and should have been shut-in logically. The problem was greed, greed failed us all. The industry needs to acknowledge the greed and failure to act rather than re-act! Now we are done, not another reactor will be built (except China) in the democratic world. Nuclear is done, skewered on it’s own greed. My dream of a thorium muon catalyzed reactor is now dead.
Kenz300 on Sun, 22nd May 2011 10:11 pm
The nuclear disasters at Fukishima and Chernobyl have poisoned the air, water, land and food of the surrounding areas.
25 years after Chernobyl the government is looking for a billion dollars to build a new containment structure. How much will it cost the store the nuclear waste forever? What is the poisoned land, water and air worth. We have not seen the end of either of these disasters yet. Nuclear power can not get funding to build and insure against the risks without massive government support. The cost and risks are too high.
none on Mon, 23rd May 2011 3:12 am
Edpeak: ““Go free market!” they shout out loud, then queitly returnt to insisting the govenrment (read: we, the taxpayers) bear almost ALL the costs of any future nuclear disaster, since they can’t get insured in the private sector.”
Don’t make me laugh?!?!
Who is going to pay for climate change disaster?!?!?! The Coal, Nat Gas and Oil sector?!?!?!
Get your head screwed on man!
Edpeak on Tue, 24th May 2011 9:57 am
Sorry, can’t hear your laughter over the roar of the rest of us laughing at the absurd pro-nuclear claims, “none”
The quote from us you were referencing, “none”, was a direct reply to the claim that
“EVERY other energy source…is MORE expensive”
Which is not only factually false (there are very cheap alternative sources) it’s also logically false. It’s logically false since you can’t claim other sources are more expensive and your nukes are “cheap” when you don’t have true costs for nuke power. And you don’t have true costs for nuke power by design because of the
“insisting the govenrment (read: we, the taxpayers) bear almost ALL the costs of any future nuclear disaster, since they can’t get insured in the private sector.”
just referenced.
The rest of your comment is hard to follow unless one concludes that you believe that “it’s either coal/oil/NG climate disaster or a huge ramp up of nuke power” which is a false dichotomy. Nuke power CANNOT ramp up fast enough, never mind the false “fast and cheap and safe enough” that is claimed, it can’t even ramp up fast enough.
Humanity should massively ramp up renewables including the storage technology for wind and solar power, massively, and alongside it, sharply cut energy use down to, by say 50% from our US per capital level to Europe’s and in Europe to cut to lower per capita levels than they have.
“But be realistic! we don’t do that!” you cry. Sure, and if you want to play the “be realistic” game, we also “don’t do that!” when it comes to putting safety above short-term greed with nuke power, either, and there will be:
massive nuclear weapon proliferation,
on top of
massive unsolved radioactive waste
on top of cost overruns, low energy profit ratio, and disasters
over the never 30 years. This “realistic” assessment is far more grim.
The former “unrealistic” one is one that we can come closer to, and if we get part-way there, we can continue to get the “rest of the way there” with future further steps.
With nuke power the “let’s be realistic” works differently: we can’t say “we got part-way there” when the Genie is out of the bottle in terms of proliferation of nuclear weaopns, we can’t say “let’s get the rest of the wya there to our original vision of safe, cheap, fast enough” when the Genie is out of the bottle for massive nuclear waste, or the rest..