On 12/17/2016 12:35 PM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo , Nightjar
escribió:

Neither the wave nor the earthquake did any damage to the nuclear
reactors themselves. What caused the problem was not being able to get
external power back on line within the next eight hours and the cooling
pumps then shutting down.

What was interesting was that Tepco had actually built new diesel backup
generators in a more secure location and these weren't affected, but
they didn't relocate the switchgear from the basement of the reactor
building, so when that flooded with tsunami seawater the generators were
effectively disabled.

wikipedia: "In the late 1990s, three additional backup generators for
Units 2 and 4 were placed in new buildings located higher on the
hillside, to comply with new regulatory requirements. All six units were
given access to these generators, but the switching stations that sent
power from these backup generators to the reactors' cooling systems for
Units 1 through 5 were still in the poorly protected turbine buildings.
The switching station for Unit 6 was protected inside the only GE Mark
II reactor building and continued to function.[63] All three of the
generators added in the late 1990s were operational after the tsunami.
If the switching stations had been moved to inside the reactor buildings
or to other flood-proof locations, power would have been provided by
these generators to the reactors' cooling systems"

Thanks, I didn't know that. Seems an odd oversight. I'd like to think
the UK operators would not have made such an error, and that it would
certainly have been picked up by the Regulator.