Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Did you read the report I put?

No, I'm just trusting that you'll be honest about what it is saying. I don't need to read a report to persuade myself that a 40 year old plant was designed based on the best available knowledge of 40 years ago. That seems like something of a given. I'm just not sure where you are going with that, it doesn't obviously suggest negligence to me.

You're not saying what tolerances you want them to design to. We both agree that there are scenarios that can and might happen. Obviously is is possible for a tsunami to take out buildings built near the shore in Japan so it doesn't surprise me that people raised it as a risk. A lot of buildings got taken out that day. That doesn't obviously suggest negligence to me; obviously a lot of people were happy living with the risk.

> EU raised the maximum permitted levels of radioactive contamination for imported food following Fukushima

Oh well then. I had no idea. I thought the consequences were minor and now I have learned ... there you go, I suppose. I'm not really sure what to do with this new information.

> I'm just not sure where you are going with that, it doesn't obviously suggest negligence to me.

You didn't read the report or search for information about the matter, but I have not problem to repeat it for you,

The General Electric's design was originally designed to be placed 30-35 meters above the ocean, instead of this TEPCO modified such design and constructed at sea level (almost) recurring to studies convenient to their purpose, cheaper, this in one of the more tsunami-prone countries, with an history of ones reaching 20-30 meters. When those -for them- convenient studies was not longer justifiable, as deeper studies did finally refute them, they decided to just keep ignoring all the warnings and requests to reinforce the safety. They knew the nuclear plant was in danger, they always knew it, General Electric didn't designed at 30-35 meters above the ocean by coincidence, and this happened with a supposed regulator always closing the eyes to this, conveniently, across those years, ignoring even pipes with fissures.

Well, this obviously suggest negligence to me. Decades of bad decisions with a strong smell to corruption.

> You're not saying what tolerances you want them to design to.

What about tolerance to avoid a meltdown of the core, specially under two events, an earthquake and a tsunami, exactly what happened after ignoring the warnings and requests to reinforce the safety.

> Oh well then. I had no idea. I thought the consequences were minor and now I have learned ... there you go, I suppose. I'm not really sure what to do with this new information.

Keep the sarcasm for other places, if you don't mind. It is not a mere gentlest engineering disaster as it reached the whole planet, with ate TEPCO's cesium-137, specially the Japanese. And it is not a mere gentlest engineering disaster when you have to force vulnerable people to go to ground zero to move contaminated land and water.

> What about tolerance to avoid a meltdown of the core, specially under two events, an earthquake and a tsunami, exactly what happened after ignoring the warnings and requests to reinforce the safety.

I wasn't going to reply but that seems like it moves the conversation forward; so why not?

It seems to me your design goal is fundamentally incompatible with a lot of the specific complaints of negligence. If you want a design that doesn't melt down when there is an earthquake and a tsunami, then moving the reactor to higher ground isn't helpful because it won't achieve the design goal. The design is still fundamentally vulnerable. Moving the reactor up 35m still leaves it vulnerable to a large enough tsunami and a big enough earthquake.

If your solution is moving the site uphill, then your design goal should be talking in terms of a 1 in X year event. If you want the risk completely mitigated then in this case it isn't relevant where the site is since the obvious way to achieve that design goal is just build something that doesn't fail when flooded. Coincidentally that seems to be the approach that the newer generation designs use - change how the cooling works so that it can't melt down in any reasonable circumstances, tsunami or otherwise.

I will note that there is a reading of your comment where you want the design to be able to tolerate this specific event. I'm ignoring that reading as unreasonable since it requires hindsight, but in the unlikely event that is what you meant then just pretend I didn't reply.

> Keep the sarcasm for other places, if you don't mind. It is not a mere gentlest engineering disaster as it reached the whole planet, with ate TEPCO's cesium-137, specially the Japanese. And it is not a mere gentlest engineering disaster when you have to force vulnerable people to go to ground zero to move contaminated land and water.

Which one do you think was gentler and a story of similar popularity as Fukushima? It is pretty usual to have multiple people actually die and it be the engineer's responsibility once something becomes international news. Even something as basic as a port explosion usually has a number of missing people in addition to a chunk of city being taken out. To anchor this in reality, Fukushima at a class 7 meltdown might have done less damage than a coal plant in normal operation. Coal plants aren't pretty places and air pollution is nasty, nasty stuff.

> It seems to me your design goal is fundamentally incompatible with a lot of the specific complaints of negligence. If you want a design that doesn't melt down when there is an earthquake and a tsunami, then moving the reactor to higher ground isn't helpful because it won't achieve the design goal.

My goal? My solution? My design!? you must be now kidding,

- GE original design 30-35 meters above the sea.

- Warnings about reinforce safety along one decade.

- Tsunami at Fukushima's nuclear plant, 15 meters above the sea.

> I wasn't going to reply but that seems like it moves the conversation forward; so why not?

Foward to... nothing it seems. You just replied with hypotheticals like if the event didn't happened, and as if such event would have been impossible to avoid, with some kind of dissociative reflexions that surpass the cynicism. I'm the one that is not going to reply.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com