Discussion on:

The nuclear situation in Japan is getting worse, experts worry about other plants in seismic zones

The Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear power plants are both in earthquake zones and are subject to tsunami damage being right on the Pacific Coast. There's got to be some serious questions about those two plants and their preparedness for an event like the one that hit Japan. It will probably be weeks before we know the full extent of the nuclear disaster in Japan.

I have a house in Cayman. In severe hurricanes, all the AC, propane and rlated equipment was wiped off the sides of the house as the surge of water hit. After Ivan in 2004 the equipment enclosures were desiigned to deal with these surges and all equipment including the emergency gen set remained intact. Clearly tsunamis and wind driven surges over history should have raised someones level of awareness to protect "emergency" equipment in an emergency. Hard to believe this oversight.

The fire is NOT in the spent fuel pool. A cooling water pump oil leak caused the fire in unit 4.

Facts are available at http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/

The perfect storm of a massive earthquake followed by a massive tsunami was bad enough to overwhelm the emergency systems in the reactors. The design of the Japanese reactors was probably considered to be excellent before the earthquake.

From what I have read, some of the emergency systems failed completely including the backup diesel powered generator. It is unfortunate that several nuclear sites are in an emergency situation at the same time. That sea water is being used to cool the fuel rods shows how desparate the situation is.

The failures and problems with these reactors should provide good analysis of the cooling and emergency systems for reactors. My guess is that this will only slow down the construction of new reactors like the gulf oil spill only slowed down the deep water drilling. The global energy needs are greater than technology can provide and energy costs are going to increase.

I think that sboverie is correct. We will learn quite a bit form this and move on with better designs.

Reassessment of design is the proper approach, not stopping all together. Like it or not nuclear energy will be necessary unless people are willing to give up all their electronic/electric conveniences.
These vintage ?70 and ?80 plants could use some overhaul and replacement.
And this was not an "extreme weather event", it was geologic.

It is way too early to engage in a meaningful debate about the real outcome in Japan. Any scientist that attempts to speak with authority about events there is not really behaving professionally. And for any scientist or journalists to not study other facts, such as current seismic design versus a reactor built in 1971, is simply irresponsible.

This may or may not become a greater tragedy. The levels of radiation exposure, while non-trivial, are not catastrophic at this point. The vast majority of significant isotopes and radioactive materials were in fact contained so far.

When tens of thousands are dead or injured from the sequence of natural events themselves, to focus so intent and prematurely on the nuclear power is practically maudlin. Especially when the motivation appears to be less about life and more about an energy agenda.

I am in the "green" energy industry, but will not yet exploit this tragedy for gain.

@Johno413: I had to smile; "...will not yet exploit this tragedy for gain." But I understand your point and wish there were a few more focusing on the facts at hand. Time will tell.

If America's nuclear plants provide only 20% of our energy, wouldn't you and everybody you know reduce your electric use by 20% so we could shut the plants down? What happened to conserving power? Do we have to be ever-fatted energy pigs?

@greg46107, in the world of earning a living, "exploiting" things is
not bad. The timing can be really atrocious, though!

@xrae00, it's not that simple. What nuclear provides is the most
stable base load, generating electricity 92% of the time. No other
type comes as close. Most utilities rely on nuclear first, then
other coal/gas facilities next. When demand decreases to a point
where baseload plant output isn't needed, it is much more simple
and economic to throttle back on a coal fueled generator, for
example. Removing nuclear would make grid management a little
more difficult in some regions, and would immediately spike the
demand for coal and gas. That most likely will drive up prices. In
the end, immediate or even short term elimination of nuclear can
be costly to the rate payer.

Anything causing a site blackout risks meltdown and subsequent uncontrolled damage. This time it was a dramatic episode. Next time it could be a simple coincidence of malfunctions and human errors.

If you can't switch it off, you are committed for ever, with no way out as options eventually disappear. It just isn't safe.

Earthquakes are not the problem. We know how to build nuclear plants which can survive earthquakes and in fact the Fukushima Daichi plants did survive the earthquakes. The containment vessels maintained their integrity.

The failure was due to the subsequent tsunami, not the earthquake. A review of existing and future nuclear plants is needed to assess tsunami vulnerability and make necessary revisions.

An interesting review of plant safety which includes Diablo Canyon and San Onofre is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42103936/ns/world_news-asiapacific/
Surprisingly, the most vulnerable plants are not on the well-known fault lines but in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.

The situation may look worst, but it can't escalate to a level 7.
These reactors are built using thick steel vessels containing the
fuel and that's a better design than used in Chernobyl. Once they
stopped the reactions, the rods have to cool down, otherwise the
water around them will keep being vaporized and on contact with
the zircon containers hydrogen is created, raising the risk of new
explosions. I believe they should have released the initial vapor
earlier and assumed the radiation damages to the environment,
instead of trying to contain it and lose control.
One thing we can't lose from our perspectives is that the design
used there in Japan are from US and the lacking of a secondary
cooling system is the ultimate culprit of building up pressure in
the water boiling system. Germans or French reactors use at
least two cooling set of valves. Independently of how this sad
episode ends up, we'll need to review our designing and make
like building inspectors require when we renew something in our
houses... that we update it to the most current code. We'll have to
bite the bullet and pay the price of renewing old nuclear plants we
still need.
Yes, I agree, everybody in the international community should
join forces and do the best each of us can for helping Japan now.
If we can't go and help physically, at least we all can make some
cash donation and make easy for those working in the scene to
provide the supplies the population need. In Sendai alone, there
are over 200K people living in shelters and their daily challenge
is to get water and food.

The reactors all shut down as they were designed to. It was the tsunami taking out backup plan #1 that was the disaster. They may have planned very well for individual events, but not so well for this combination.

What seismologists think about the design of nuclear plants is amateur opinion and not really newsworthy. They provide data to the engineers, but those kinds of calculations are WAY outside their expertise.

The pebble bed type of reactors, for example, can't go into meltdown like the traditional types do. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor)

And to say "you can't switch it off" about the traditional reactors isn't really accurate either. In fact, all of the Japanese reactors involved did "switch off" as soon as sensors detected the vibration of the earthquake. Control rods stopped the nuclear reactions from happening. The whole problem is dealing with cooling everything down AFTER it's "switched off", because there's still a lot of residual energy to be dealt with.

I think moving forward, there are certainly safer ways to construct new nuclear reactors, but you're simply not going to see all the utility companies of the world disassembling multi-million dollar investments in existing reactors and scraping them, simply because new, safer designs are possible. They need to stay operational at least long enough to generate a payback on their initial investment.

So in the meantime, I think the reasonable thing to do is look at ways to address cooling and redundancy for it. The Japan crisis illustrates how their existing setup wasn't redundant enough to give them enough options.

How about not builing nuclear plants on the beach? Especially in a seismic zone. Where's Sam Kinison when you need him?

@xrae00,
I have already reduce the electricity usage at my home by 36%. Thanks for asking.

They are worried about seismicity???

How about the tsunami that took out all the backup generators
and infrastructure making it difficult to cool and supplyu water
and move in support equipment???

The reactors survived the seismicity just fine!!!!! How about more
thought to the infrastructure that supports the reactor.

Not sure why they raised the level above 5. there still hasn't been
significant radioactivity outside the immediate plant area. I'm
thinking the typical alarmists.

If things are so bad why isn't the US putting in some equipment
to deal with it?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

@kingtj, yes, build pebble beds!!!!!

One other thing. How many people have even been made sick so
far?? ZERO???

There are SO many possible ways that disasters can hit a nuclear plant. The 9/11 attacks were going to originally be on U.S. nuclear plants, but they figured that they would be too heavily defended with SAMs, etc. Guess what? We have NO defense of our nuclear plants! Also, there is no way to ever get rid of the radioactive waste. We bury it. The half-life of Cesium-135 is 30 years. We're generating radioactive garbage that will be around for a very, very long time...and we want to produce MORE of it? What a travesty to leave this stuff that causes instant genetic mutations and cancer to future generations to have to deal with! I say, put solar on every single roof in America. We'd have enough energy. Nobody is putting the money and effort into this solution. It's sustainable essentially forever, doesn't endanger the earth, and doesn't leave a trail of crap for future generations to get sick and die from.

#19, You have no idea how many people are going to get sick from this incident. It's far from over at this point. As a starting point I suspect that some of the workers who remained at the plants trying to get them under control will get sick. Radiation poisoning is not something that makes you instantly sick until the dose is quite high. It will take years to add up the ultimate toll in human lives. I just hope it's not any worse than they've already said.

Everything is a trade off oil and coal are poisons and the burning is filthy. Every form of energy has a down side, radiation has a fear factor beyond the reality while the oil and coal and pesticide herbicide and persistent organic residues are hidden form of risk. When the real risk becomes 1 in 100 this is what is basically what is acceptable risk ( the risk level is set higher for any individual factor but synergy among all risks can bring the real cumulative risk this high, this is acceptable here in the US ) praise be Reagan! So place the risk in perspective after all the lining of cans had BPA. PCB and dioxin is forever no half life. This is not good but a better design might have helped no one has much experience with this kind of disaster of magnitude. I can only hope that containment can be maintained.

"What happened in Japan ?is clearly an indication that we haven?t properly thought about events that are well outside our historical experience but nonetheless possible."

Actually not...The problem is *NOT* that the powerplants haven't been thought out well enough...the problem is that the plants were designed with the flaws built in! The flaws that we are seeing in Japan were discussed ad-nauseum back in the 70s when they were designed. There even was a lawsuit in the works because the plants were built despite the flaws!
Everything that is happening was predicted to happen back in 1972!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html?_r=1&ref=asia
And this is the shame of all this...The world knew that this would happen and yet nobody felt it would happen to them!

@sboverie@..."The design of the Japanese reactors was probably considered to be excellent before the earthquake."
That's the problem...the design was *NOT* considered excellent...they were considered "good enough"...obviously, the design was *NOT* good enough!

@danny.sloop@.."These vintage ?70 and ?80 plants could use some overhaul and replacement."
We *DID* redesign the plants, but that was just to install vents to prevent dangerous buildup of Hydrogen gas inside the containment vessel! Kinda defeats the purpose of a containment vessel, right?

Look, we *CAN* build a nuclear power station that is safe and efficient...we just have to get politics out of it! These breeder reactors designed by GE were done because they won the lowest bid! Do *YOU* want a nuclear reactor in your backyard designed and built with the cheapest labor and materials? Not me! But it seems that every time government pokes it's head in some large construction endeavor, it fails miserably! Look at the "Big Dig" in Boston! What a fiasco that is! And it's killing people as we speak! hundred ton cement slabs are falling from the ceiling and crushing drivers below!

Those nuclear plants not located on or near fault lines are located mostly in low-lying coastal areas.

The single trend in climate change data is that scientists are being

It is not safe for us to assume that major sea level rises will take decades.

On some risks it's o.k. to respond after-the-fact (which Americans excel at,) but climate change and nuclear risks are poor choices for that particular tack to work.

I'd rather we move cities and facilities and harden them for extremes now instead of evacuating and recovering from devastation later.

The Equatorial bulge of this planet has reversed direction in recent years, which means that stresses around the planet have shifted significantly. Such a shift is nearly certain to increase tectonic plate movements. When combined with tera-tonnes of melt water--which will tend to flow to the equator adding their mass to the stress, betting that places like New Orleans or Holland have decades to prepare is asking for disaster.

Being prepared for a disaster which comes late or never is infinitely better than being unprepared when disaster strikes.

We have millions of people out of work who could be working to prepare or working to clean up pollution--100's of billions of dollars worth of unused labor.

wizoddg,

and how many inches will the oceans rise in the next 100 years???

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Poor models do not an emergency make.