Japan Earthquake: Engineering and the Illusion of Total Safety

Everything has a probability of failure - everything.

Some things are just less probable than others, but you can never get to zero as you approach that asymptote.

In the end it boils down to just how much risk mitigation are you willing to pay for?

Architect Minoru Yamasaki was the lead architect in the team that designed the World Trade Center Towers #1 and #2. He believed the team had engineered the building for any eventuality, including impact by an aircraft. The Empire State Building had taken (and survived) a hit from a B-25, why believe the WTC would be exempt from such a thing?

And, we all know how that turned out. Had information about a Boeing 767 been available when the building was designed, things may have turned out differently.

You are correct. The money spent on nuclear weapons,armed forces,conventional weapons etc could be used for extra safety of human lives

Weapons do not start wars, people do. Actually, it is more like regimes do.

Any nation that disarms itself is soon overrun, pillaged, and raped (figuratively and literally) by those that are armed. You only need look to history to see that.

Amen.

I had to erase a good deal of what I'm inclined to say when someone in Germany takes a cheap shot at us (We didn't start WWI or WWII, but we bailed a whole lot of others out, who were Germany's victims in that one) (And I'm of German descent, 100%. But I'm American first)

On top of that, we provide more humanitarian aid at great expense, both personally, and as a Government, in all cases than nearly all the rest of the world's nations combined.

But we're still reviled.

Good thing we don't give in to baser instincts and turn our backs on them all.

But if we had disarmed, then or now, we certainly would be overrun, pillaged, and raped (O, R & P)(figuratively and literally). And despite the fact that Germany and Japan would both have done so with glee, we just keep on giving.

Of course, we get the O, R, & P treatment from the UN all the time, anyway. But I guess we lay down and ENJOY that! We certainly seem to keep inviting them back in.

If we plan properly we can reduce impacts of disasters. Can't we build thick walls along the coast like Holland to reduce effects of Tsunami?. For earth quake why can't we spend some money and build quake-proof buildings. For nuclear disasters why can't we build multi-layers of cooling systems.

You will understand the impossibility of your suggestion if you Google "Maginot Line". France completed this fortification by 1935 at a cost of around 3 billion francs. The specification of the defences was very high, with extensive and interconnected bunker complexes for thousands of men, there were 108 main forts at 15 Kilo meter intervals, smaller forts and casements between with over 100 Kilometers of tunnels. Further in 1939-40 further improvements were done all along the Line. The so called impregnable line of French defences was neatly bye passed by German army which in less than 20 days scythed right through France.

They have a multi-layed power system set-up for the cooling system to run the pumps. A first layer was off the main grid, 2nd was diesel generators, and the last was battery powered. From the reports I heard from the media all three failed.

None of these power systems was very useful as the water intake was either damaged or obstructed.

And the managers were unable to clear this: blame them if they had had a possibility.

RHABE

http://defense-update.com/wp/20110314_japan_disaster.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DefenseUpdate+%28Defense+Update%29

I also heard that each one of the power systems didn't work properly, or simplely didn't turn on.

"- why is there no re-burning of the hydrogen (produced by water and red-hot metal) inside the reactor-containment? Any modern car-battery has this."

I wonder if it because the hydrogen production is an indication of cooling failure and so it was considered useful to have the hydrogen blow open the outer containment building to give easier access for external cooling attempts.

I've thought that also. Or at least that it is fortuitous for the same reason.

OTOH, I don't know that I would be willing to gamble that the explosion would NOT crack the inner containment vessel, so, personally, I'd probably have tried to find a way to breach the outer, without waiting for the Hydrogen gas to do the trick.

future designs may incorporate a relief valve where potential hydrogen production or pressure from the reactor building can be relieved , and or passed into a large accumulator , then filtered before release to atmosphere as a method of containment of potentially radioactive gases , and harm minimisation

pressurized hydrogen is more explosive if confined ... one for the hindsight book

If there is a better way to produce energy density to feed our demands as a society other than nuclear that has less overall risk then lets get on with it..Not being an engineer but definitely an engaged observer of what is,especially since the advent of internet shareability of knowledge/ideas etc.. i see the sheer beauty of harnessing the atom to generate what we as a civilization crave....dependable/predictable/uninterrupted power...electricity does it best at this point in time..Big turbines spinning by the force often of water or steam generally the best way to produce a large volume of the product that is both manageable and taxable...Herein is the ultimate cause of the latest melting down event..The governments of the planet require order to be self sustaining...we require order in our electricity availability to make cars/planes etc..etc..If we made smaller turbines requirering less volume/density of water/steam etc..we could still have orderly electricity ...but control of revenue generation would be complexified and much revenue would be lost...So maybe Tesla was wrong and Edison was right..DC locally vs AC over distance would require signifigantly smaller turbines such as those nuclear reactors proposed by Hyperion...25 MW Nuclear generators for neighbourhoods...Police would then have something to really protect to earn,at least in Canada,their wages..

Here is a very good saying that should be taught to everyone," If man made it, then God can tear it down", the God here is of course nature, and this saying is very true!

Xanasax

From some of the posts it appears it comes down to a diety and the cost of how far do you go. It is rubbish to say you couldnt anticipate an earthquake and that size and the following tsunami. Japan has always been an unstable area, highrise buildings are built in tokyo and other major cities to withstand this sort of event and they did. The question has been raised how far do you go before the cost becomes prohibitive and makes it financially unviable to go ahead with the works. The cost to build something like a nuclear power plant and to make it safe has to take into account probable consequences of failure.If the cost of engineering the plant becomes prohbitive then it shouldnt be built end of story. This doesnt mean its the engineers fault i have found you are always presented with options and someone somewhere said this is enough and we dont need anymore, this is all we can spend and still make a good dollar. That person/persons guessed wrong, if this is the result and dont forget chernobyll then we do need to spend more on safety and how we build the plants and if this makes them economically unviable then we should be looking at alternatives not saying jeez that was the best we could do under the circumstances

Grochy. I couldn't agree with you more. But your comments beg the question of how to assess and measure costs, usually money and/or human lives but perhaps other factors waiting for us to develop suitable measurements.

It also leaves us wondering about technologically advanced entities (usually nations but occasionally non-government groups like large businesses) with a moral structure different from ours.

We see such differences even among our own small group of CR-4 commentators.

History is replete with forgotten stories of expensive engineering feats that never turned into usable hardware or construction for lack of a potential profit. Had the moral standards of the people overseeing those efforts been different then those things may have been built. Often the only thing needed would have been material greed of the leadership. The same can be said when personal political power is an objective.

We'll probably never know for sure if such factors played in the design of Fukushima. Or if what happened was due simply to mistake of some decision makers born of excusable ignorance followed by 30 years of blind trust.

Ed Weldon

Thank you. A voice of reason, from an experience viewpoint. Needed, but not always found. GA to you.

I'm from the Bay Area, myself, having grown up in the Sierras, attended all four years of High School in San Jose, met and married my wife while living in Alameda, lived two years in Guam and three in Japan while in the US Navy. I've been in earthquakes in every place, with or without Tsunamis, as well as a devastating Super-Typhoon (Pamela) in Guam. NO ONE CAN PLAN FOR EVERY EVENT.

But we all still have to make choices and live (sometimes die) with the consequences. When you don't have to live where quakes rattle and roll, it's easy to condemn the choices made by those who do. Ditto those who live in Typhoon land. Or Hurricane land.

Don't criticize another until you've walked a mile in his shoes. Then when you do, you'll be a mile ahead of him, and he'll have to chase you barefoot.

Now that you are done groaning at that, I WON'T bother to chase you barefoot. Instead I'll go back to living with my choices, and their consequences.

We all can, if we're adult enough. And we all will, whether we like it or not.

Here's an article dated Dec. 2, 2011 from Power Engineering,

Report: Tsunami, not earthquake, caused nuclear disaster at Fukushima

The March 11 earthquake was not a major factor in the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, according to a report from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Investigation Commission. The commission found that the tsunami was the "direct cause" of the disaster.

That pretty much confirms what I was saying.

another " cause " is that a year earlier the Fukushima plant was supposed to be decommissioned but due to a questionable decision between TEFCO and government they issued approval for continued operations.

did anyone get a special handshake to approve that ? .......time will tell.

A factor in delayed decommissioning would be GFC - global financial crisis , as too in the Chernobyl incident where a weak economy played a part in overextending aged infrastructure without carrying out recommended maintenance. If you think Japan is a wealthy country you are very wrong , at least 19 japanese banks were insolvent since 2001 but propped up by their govt , that so called rich country has invested in the US stock market to the point where they owned around 70 % of it prior to the GFC so how much of their wealth has been destroyed ?

Fukushima was a 1960's design by General Electric , If we call that generation two , then we are probably up to Generation 7 now in designs.

"Generation 7" could probably be bombed with conventional warheads without risk of fission occurring so the people screaming for a nuclear ban are misinformed.

Good engineering design relies on good engineers , and yet i can walk up to brand new machinery used in the mining industry that had 200 engineers working on it for 3 years and pick out failure points and nominate how long they are going to last in the field before they fail...and they do.

I had an engineered solution to stop the leaking oil well in Gulf Of Mexico but couldnt get anyone to listen , what do we put that down to ?

a bag full of hindsight has no functional value for resuscitating dead human beings , but post disaster analysis will put value into every engineers textbook for the next 100 years.

My favourite saying was that good engineering design must include a good understanding of the associated human behavioural dynamics , but i need to modify that to also include a wider array of natural disaster phenomenon too - so i learnt something here as well.

If we can't avoid earthquake areas (like Virginia recently!) we just have to be ready. Some machines need to shut down or go to a safe mode quickly when shaking starts. There is research to quickly spread the work of a large quake far away (electricity is faster than even P waves) so we can have even minutes of notice. Until that is widely available, we can have sensors to detect quakes in progress like this one http://www.icpdas-usa.com/products2.php?PID=3567 . Now if we just have a salt water detector... Eric in Harbor City CA.