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On Tue, 15 Mar 2011 06:02:30 -0500, Ignoramus11979
wrote:
On 2011-03-15, lid wrote:
An which technocrat put the diesel back-up generators at Fukushima at
ground level where they could suck up tsunami water shortly after
kicking on in the first place? And did he commit ritualistic suicide
yet as required by the Japanese Bushido code? Inquiring round eyed
guys want to know.
It is easy to be smart after the fact. Not so easy is to anticipate
everything.
i
I realize that, however, I am also aware of a few of the intricacies
of the Japanese social order.
I can practically guarantee that some junior engineer involved with
facilities design on this plant questioned, to himself, as to weather
putting the generators at ground level was a good idea and anticipated
a water problem in the event of a tsunami.
However, in Japanese society, "the nail that sticks out gets pounded
down". I have seen this principle in action. This make for a real
reluctance to become the nail that sticks out amongst the Japanese.
The junior facilities engineer most likely failed to press his case to
elevate the generator house based on this principle. He didn't want to
be the nail that stuck out. I am sure he now regrets this.
As a result of these dynamics, we now have a stock market and nuclear
contagion that threatens to affect me directly.
The idea with building a nuclear plant is to get it right the first
time. Hindsight is now worthless.
Dave
Engineering is really the art of optimizing trade-offs. They said they
thought the generators were safe from a tsunami due to the sea walls, so
there were probably other issues that made it seem better to put the
generators lower. Perhaps a man-made hill would be more likely to fail in
an earthquake. Perhaps placing them higher would make them more prone to
typhoon damage. If there is a perfect solution to an engineering problem, it
is not called a problem.
The systems of a nuclear plant will never be designed perfectly. In my mind
the only safe way to make a nuclear plant is to have a reaction process that
does not go out of control even if EVERYTHING fails. There are new designs
that might meet this criteria. The pebble bed design has some promise but
research reactors have had some minor radiation releases that show every
technology has un-anticipated pitfalls. The key, I think, is to make
everything as safe a practical, but inherently limit the worst possible
case.