>Yes; there are few better alternatives. But we are going to have to be very careful about how we build them.
I don't know about that....even just careful would have sufficed in this case (using an intelligent definition of careful). Placing your backup generators at low elevation seems like an amazingly bad design choice. I mean really, how much does it cost to build a very tall tower to house your backup generators? In projects this capital intensive, it is a rounding error.
>What we should be thinking about is what the risk is in future; not what it has been in the past. If I told you I had an energy source that had a known 0.01% of ending the world, each year, but a clean 50 year track record, would you allow me to continue with it? Of course not!
Total hyperbole (ending the world)....but your general assertion is absolutely correct. Nuclear power is statistically by far the safest form of energy, but there is a very large inherent risk, that while not terribly hard to manage, must absolutley be managed properly, without exception. And I'd say in this case, was not handled properly, at all.
I am sadly disappointed in the nuclear industry in general, and also the Japanese...I expect more from them than I expect from other countries. I may be wrong about one or more things though in this assessment, but that's how I think about it at this point in time.
You can't design against a 7m tsunami wave following a 9.0 earthquake. What exactly does low elevation mean when the wave is 7m high?
A tsunami wave that reaches 5km from the shore has so much water and pressure that designing against it is nearly impossible.
Looking at past events and errors it's always easy to say that it was a stupid to do it like it was done. Anticipating future events and their inherent risks and designing against them is nearly impossible. That's the danger of nuclear power, it's able to multiply the risks of every natural desaster. You design for a 5m wave - there comes the 7m wave - you design for a 20m wave - the wave was 23m high in some areas.
"Must be managed properly" is not an sentence we should have in anything we design that can have these catastrophic effect, because there's human error, and it will always be there, even in the best planned facilities on the globe.
Everything you essentially say is ridiculous, seems perfectly reasonable to me. Building a very tall tower, just a metal skeleton with skinny legs, to house your bakup power, seems perfectly reasonable to me. Or even simpler, just build that tower on top of the reactor, in this case.
Comments
>Yes; there are few better alternatives. But we are going to have to be very careful about how we build them.
I don't know about that....even just careful would have sufficed in this case (using an intelligent definition of careful). Placing your backup generators at low elevation seems like an amazingly bad design choice. I mean really, how much does it cost to build a very tall tower to house your backup generators? In projects this capital intensive, it is a rounding error.
>What we should be thinking about is what the risk is in future; not what it has been in the past. If I told you I had an energy source that had a known 0.01% of ending the world, each year, but a clean 50 year track record, would you allow me to continue with it? Of course not!
Total hyperbole (ending the world)....but your general assertion is absolutely correct. Nuclear power is statistically by far the safest form of energy, but there is a very large inherent risk, that while not terribly hard to manage, must absolutley be managed properly, without exception. And I'd say in this case, was not handled properly, at all.
I am sadly disappointed in the nuclear industry in general, and also the Japanese...I expect more from them than I expect from other countries. I may be wrong about one or more things though in this assessment, but that's how I think about it at this point in time.
You can't design against a 7m tsunami wave following a 9.0 earthquake. What exactly does low elevation mean when the wave is 7m high? A tsunami wave that reaches 5km from the shore has so much water and pressure that designing against it is nearly impossible.
Your tower would have been nearly as high as the reactor itself http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-66018.html nobody sane would have proposed something like this before this event.
Looking at past events and errors it's always easy to say that it was a stupid to do it like it was done. Anticipating future events and their inherent risks and designing against them is nearly impossible. That's the danger of nuclear power, it's able to multiply the risks of every natural desaster. You design for a 5m wave - there comes the 7m wave - you design for a 20m wave - the wave was 23m high in some areas.
"Must be managed properly" is not an sentence we should have in anything we design that can have these catastrophic effect, because there's human error, and it will always be there, even in the best planned facilities on the globe.
Everything you essentially say is ridiculous, seems perfectly reasonable to me. Building a very tall tower, just a metal skeleton with skinny legs, to house your bakup power, seems perfectly reasonable to me. Or even simpler, just build that tower on top of the reactor, in this case.