{"id":100,"date":"2011-03-18T17:48:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T06:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/?p=100"},"modified":"2011-05-02T14:32:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T04:32:20","slug":"the-fukushima-nuclear-power-plant-disaster-%e2%80%93-japan%e2%80%99s-very-own-inevitable-%e2%80%9cchernobyl%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster \u2013 Japan\u2019s very own inevitable \u201cChernobyl\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant<\/span><\/a> (Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japanese), is a nuclear power plant located on the Pacific facing, east side of Japan. \u00a0It was first commissioned in 1967, which means it is pretty old by nuclear power plant standards, on the verge of decommissioning.\u00a0 Thus, design and safety standards would likely not be as high as modern nuclear plants.\u00a0 With six separate generating units located on its site, it has a combined power of 4.7 GW.\u00a0 This is big and makes Fukushima I one of the 15 largest nuclear power stations in the world.\u00a0 By way of reference to other “green” energy projects, it provides the equivalent capacity of the ground-breaking Snowy Hydro Scheme<\/a> in Australia that took 100,000 people 25 years to make.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong>: Model<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The Japan earthquake and subsequent tsunami<\/span><\/a> that hit on March 11, 2011 was the fourth most powerful ever recorded with a magnitude of 9.1, twice more powerful than the initial estimate<\/span><\/a> of 8.9.\u00a0 The plant has suffered major damage<\/span><\/a> from the quake disabling the reactor cooling systems and triggering a widespread evacuation surrounding the plant. Three others that were more powerful since the late 1800s when seismometers started measuring ground motions were in 9.5 in Chile in 1960, 9.2 in Alaska in 1964 and 9.1 in Sumatra in 2004.\u00a0 However, this was still an extraordinarily large quake and resulting tsunami.\u00a0 Neither of which the Fukushima power station was designed to withstand.\u00a0 This may seem a bizarre design-limitation considering the locales geology and the major fault lines that surround the area.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources: Nuclear Plant locations<\/span><\/a>, Fault lines<\/span><\/a>, Satellite map<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Unit 1 was designed for a quake\u2019s peak ground acceleration<\/span><\/a> of 1.7m\/s2<\/sup><\/span><\/a>. \u00a0All units were inspected after the 1978 Miyagi earthquake<\/span><\/a> when the ground acceleration was 1.2m\/s2<\/sup>, but no damage to the critical parts of the reactor was discovered. <\/sup> However, this month\u2019s Sendai earthquake recorded a ground acceleration of 3.43\u00a0m\/s2<\/sup> near the epicenter.\u00a0 Though, the actual measure of ground acceleration at the Fukushima site is not yet known.\u00a0 It is highly likely the earthquake exceeded Fukushima Daiichi\u2019s design strength by a long margin.\u00a0 It is also worth noting, that whether most of the damage was done by the quake or by the Tsunami still remains to be ascertained<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources: Satellite map<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan has been subjected to one other significant nuclear power plant outage due to the vagaries of the Earth in the last 50 years.\u00a0 This is hardly surprising due to the fact that it is situated on a very tectonically active zone.\u00a0 On July 16 2007, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, which is on the opposite side of Japan, had to close 3 out of 7 reactors after a 6.8 magnitude quake caused a fire, minor radioactive leaks and dozens of other malfunctions.\u00a0 It is interesting to note that both power stations were only designed to survive much smaller quakes.\u00a0 Questions have to be asked whether Japan\u2019s nuclear power stations have been systematically underspeced with regards to safety.\u00a0 Are they robust enough to survive the somewhat inevitable quakes, and big ones at that?\u00a0 In addition, the sea walls at Fukushima were seen to be grossly negligent with regards to tsunami, wave reflection.\u00a0 They were incapable of withstanding the presumed, 15m wave.<\/p>\n

Were the Fukushima and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plants really designed to withstand the outliers in the geological, disaster distribution, a \u201c1 in 1000 year\u201d event?\u00a0 That is rare, very rare, too rare to be reasonably accounted for?\u00a0 Can our engineers be expected to account for them in their design and make a project economically viable?\u00a0 That is a tough question to ask.\u00a0 How long is a piece of string and how rare is unreasonably rare? \u00a0But, when you take the globe as a whole, these \u201c1 in 1000 year\u201d events occur somewhere quite often. Furthermore, quakes<\/span><\/a> and tsunamis<\/span><\/a> bigger that Fukushima\u2019s have happened before even in Japan and they will happen again.\u00a0 When designing a nuclear power station, should you not raise the bar to account for these seriously unlikely, but still plausible events?<\/p>\n

Building nuclear power stations on the coast at a major fault line; Risky business?\u00a0 Was this just a disaster waiting to happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus, should we ditch nuclear?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Nuclear has its dangers, we can add Fukushima to the 2 previous, famous disasters: Three Mile Island<\/span><\/a>, which contrary to popular perception lead to no deaths, and Chernobyl<\/span><\/a>, constructed in the low-tech, low-maintenance, Soviet era of the \u201870s.\u00a0 All major industrial works are dangerous.\u00a0 India\u2019s Bhopal disaster<\/span><\/a>, at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plan, which many of us have forgotten about, was way worse in both its short and long term consequences.\u00a0 If you play with fire, you\u2019ll eventually get burnt.\u00a0 But, if Man never played with fire we would still be living in caves, not planning inter-stellar travel.\u00a0 14%<\/span><\/a> of the world\u2019s energy comes from nuclear and, in the grand scheme of things, the safety, track record is exemplary and will only get better as designs become intrinsically safer and safer.\u00a0 The Pros and Cons debate of nuclear as a leading, energy source is massive and I\u2019ll leave that for a rainier day.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that however much Fukushima is a terrible disaster with a death toll of 14,000<\/span><\/a> and rising, these deaths were by the tsunami, not by the nuclear power station.\u00a0 The co-incidence leads us to believe that there is a causality between the two.\u00a0 This is misinformation.\u00a0 The power station did not cause these deaths.\u00a0 The wave (and\/or quake) did destroy the power plant and this particular plant was particularly vulnerable, but that doesn\u2019t mean the technology and concept itself is flawed.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to paint the whole nuclear picture with the same brush.<\/p>\n

Nuclear energy production has a large stigma attached to it, sometimes justified, but much of it is unfounded.\u00a0 It abundantly provides relatively cheap<\/span><\/a>, “green\u201d<\/span><\/a> energy and should not necessarily be disregarded due to often uninformed fears.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant (Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japanese), is a nuclear power plant located on the Pacific facing, east side of Japan. \u00a0It was first commissioned in 1967, which means it is pretty old by nuclear power plant … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[21,24,19,23,20,22],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fukushima-nuclear-disaster","tag-disaster","tag-earthquake","tag-fukushima","tag-japan","tag-nuclear-power-plant","tag-tsunami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}