Think of the reactors being on the main floor of a 2 story house. The
spent fuel rods (which also have to kept cool) are store in the attic of
the same building.
___________________________________
John Hermanson | CPS, Inc.
21 South Ln., Huntington NY 11743
631-424-2121 | www.zuiko.com
Olympus OM Service since 1977
Gallery: www.zuiko.com/album/index.html
On 3/15/2011 5:42 PM, Brian Gray wrote:
> Chuck Norcott& Andrew fildes wrote
>
>> Thanks for the generator details. I was curious how that happened.
>> This may well go down as the worst engineering design disaster in
>> history. Also, I'd never heard of "The Black Swan" and have just added
>> it to my Amazon wish list.
>
>> Chuck Norcutt
>
>
> On 3/14/2011 2:15 AM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
>
>>> That would make sense but it may be at the cost of other
>>> functionality - I'm too tired to check. But making it the default -
>>> dumb stuff. I was listening to a story about the Japanese tsunami on
>>> the radio an hour or so ago. It appears that the designers of one of
>>> those nuclear (nooculer if you're murkin :-)) power plants built a
>>> big concrete sea wall to protect the plant. The tsunami simply swept
>>> over the wall and drowned the plant generators which had been
>>> cleverly positioned just below the wall. This shut down power to the
>>> cooling system and made it impossible to Scram the reactors. It
>>> sounds really dumb now but I'll bet it didn't at the time they built
>>> it.
> A UK nuclear engineer lecturing locally tonight stated that the
> Fukushima generators were raised high enough to cope with the highest
> anticipated tsunami, but the one last week was half a metre higher than
> that highest expected.
>
> Another lesson learned. But already the proposed designs under
> consideration for possible future UK reactors should not require
> generators or other external power supply for some time - with
> instrumentation powered by batteries for a significant period.
>
> Personally, I am inclined to congratulate those who forty years ago
> designed and built the pressure vessels which have stood up to so much
> in the last few days. A very expensive accident in financial terms
> but not, so far, in human terms.
>
> Brian Gray
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