Bolted wrote:
On Mar 28, 12:45 pm, "Nightjar \"cpb\"@" "insertmysurnamehere
wrote:
Of course the plant is wrecked, but the point is there was no nuclear accident.

Out of interest is that still your view? No nuclear accident at all,
not even a little one?

It all depends on what a 'nuclear accident' is.

If a nuclear accident means 'an accident where radioactive material
beyond regulatory limits was released'' then sure there was an 'nuclear
accident' So if a train is wrecked when carrying low level waste, its a
'nuclear accident' or someone in a hospital drops a barium meal and
spills it , is a 'nuclear accident' or a cat scan machine goes on for 5
times the time it should, its a 'nuclear accident' or baby swallows the
guts of a smoke detector its a 'nuclear accident'



If OTOH a 'nuclear accident' is an accident where a reactor fails due to
a design fault or operational cockup and CAUSES that release, then no it
wasn't.

There was nothing wrong with those reactors nor their normal operational
procedures, nor indeed their safety systems per se.

Its all very easy with 100% hindsight to say they should have predicted
the total loss of all quadruply redundant power and backup systems, the
physical damage to containment tanks and so on..when they designed and
built the thing. But that is hardy realistic. And in a sense not TEPCOS
fault. They built it to the standard the were required to, and indeed
they nearly got away with an event massively larger than it was designed
for, and they have succeeded in keeping releases well below the calamity
level. Its now a risk/benefit assessment process to minimise further
releases and get the thing back to regulatory containment as fast as
possible. Which they are doing, and doing well.

Frankly e.g. Macondo was a far far greater dereliction of duty by ..well
we don't yet know where the responsibility really lies, and may never.
Far higher loss of life directly attributable to mis management and no
bloody excuse for botching a routine operation. Not a hurricane,
earthquake or tsunami in sight, there.

And far more direct environmental damage though, as we have seen, there
also there was a hysterical overreaction.