Short Sharp Science: Quake took out Fukushima cooling system before ts...

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Quake took out Fukushima cooling system before tsunami

11:41 17 May 2011 Environment Technology

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Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent It wasn't only the massive tsunami that stripped the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant of its essential cooling capability on 11 March: the magnitude-9.0 megaquake had almost immediately caused a failure of the number 1 reactor's primary emergency backup cooling system, which uses the steam generated by the reactor to push coolant around it. Japan's public broadcaster NHK says the news was revealed in the nuclear plant's operational records released by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on 16 May. "An emergency condenser system at the Number 1 reactor functioned for less than 10 minutes after the earthquake. The failure lasted for three hours," NHK World reports today. This early, pre-tsunami overheating may have speeded the reactor's meltdown. The revelation will be seized on as further evidence that nuclear plants have no place in seismically active zones - even if they have high tsunami walls and backup power sources sited well above any potential high-water line. Last week, prime minister Naoto Kan asked for - and got - the closure of what is thought to be Japan's worst placed nuclear plant, in Hamaoka, which straddles two subduction zones. It may re-open after a 15-metre tsunami wall is built in three years' time - but how backup cooling systems themselves cope with the severe physical agitation of megaquakes will doubtless now inform the wisdom of that decision. Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Japanese government has been privately concerned that tsunamis posed strong threats to nuclear plants, while outwardly suggesting that the Fukushima magnitude-9.0 quake and 15-metre tsunami was "beyond expectations". The Mainichi Times unearthed a December 2010 report from the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organisation - a government body - that said:

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Our analysis shows that a tsunami of a certain height - some 7 metres in the absence of a sea wall and some 15 metres if one were present - or higher would have almost a 100 per cent chance of damaging the reactor core.

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The lack of action on such warnings is fuelling the growing notion in Japan that its nuclear power firms and the thicket of regulatory bodies (that often employ the former's retired staff, in a process called amakudari) have too many vested interests to regulate a safety-critical industry effectively. But similar worries are being expressed about the toothless nuclear regulatory

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Short Sharp Science: Quake took out Fukushima cooling system before ts...

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/megaquak...

situation elsewhere, such as the US. There was some good news from Fukushima today, however. Nature News is blogging that the explosion at the plant's number 4 reactor building may not been caused by a hydrogen build-up from its own crippled reactor, but because hydrogen from the damaged number 3 reactor seeped through shared gas treatment pipework into reactors 4's building. This might mean the fuel pile is unharmed and that consequently reactor 4 could take a lot less time, effort and risk to clear up.

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