Japan Earthquake: nuclear plants Fukushima part 2

[etudiant]

Thank you, hiddencamper, jim hardy and rive, for your expert inputs.
If I understand your input correctly, the reactors can't run at much less than full power, because they are set up to feed the grid and if the grid goes down, the reactors trip. That does help explain why there was no help possible from 5 and 6 as well as the regulatory concern about station blackout, which was clearly well founded.
Seems the only contribution that 5 and 6 could have made was if there could have been a separate site wide power link for the emergency diesels. Battery chargers were probably not available either.

That salt water does not play nice with electrical is understood. What is murky is why the instruments and valves were still operable, even if only on battery power.
Is there a separate set of control circuits that bypassed the flooded electrical switchgear?

Overall, it seems, based on the earlier discussions, that even with hindsight the reactors were doomed once the tsunami hit. Was there a course available that might have minimized the resulting damage?

 

[Hiddencamper]

Thank you, hiddencamper, jim hardy and rive, for your expert inputs.
If I understand your input correctly, the reactors can't run at much less than full power, because they are set up to feed the grid and if the grid goes down, the reactors trip. That does help explain why there was no help possible from 5 and 6 as well as the regulatory concern about station blackout, which was clearly well founded.
Seems the only contribution that 5 and 6 could have made was if there could have been a separate site wide power link for the emergency diesels. Battery chargers were probably not available either.

That salt water does not play nice with electrical is understood. What is murky is why the instruments and valves were still operable, even if only on battery power.
Is there a separate set of control circuits that bypassed the flooded electrical switchgear?

Overall, it seems, based on the earlier discussions, that even with hindsight the reactors were doomed once the tsunami hit. Was there a course available that might have minimized the resulting damage?

At very low power levels, you just dump excess steam to the condenser. You can run at any power level, but in general you won't have the turbine online below 25% for any extended amount of time.

Units 1/2 had no AC or DC, so they had no ability to control any valves or instruments.

Unit 3 did have DC power for a while, so they were able to operate RCIC/SRVs/HPCI.

Not sure why you think instruments or valves at units 1/2 were still working.

The only real way to minimize damage for unit 1 would be to get drywall temperature and vessel pressure measurements. They would have identified reference leg boiling, indicating their level instruments were frozen upscale high. Then they would enter the flooding EOP and could attempt to blow down and start flooding containment earlier. If unit 1 containment flooding occurred earlier, it would have minimized the release rates drastically and wouldn't have complicated saving units 2/3 which did have injection for some time.

 

[etudiant]

I misread some of the earlier discussion to indicate that 1 and 2 still had some instrumentation even after the tsunami, enough to allow the operators to run the RCIC. Is that a misperception so that they were basically dead electrically from the time the tsunami hit? Would depressurizing the reactors immediately before the flooding have been the least damaging choice, even though it would have probably also left the reactors scrap?

 

[jim hardy]

Seems the only contribution that 5 and 6 could have made was if there could have been a separate site wide power link for the emergency diesels.

that sounds right
The conductors for an extension cord sized for a diesel are big, like like fire hose size , not something you just uncoil and plug in .

What is murky is why the instruments and valves were still operable, even if only on battery power.
Is there a separate set of control circuits that bypassed the flooded electrical switchgear?

Switchgear powers big equipment directly, and little equipment indirectly through step down transformers and smaller power panels distributed throughout the plant.

One of the small loads is the station battery chargers. In my plant they and the batteries are located upstairs . Batteries power 130VDC to 120VAC inverters for instrumentation.
So instruments remain available until the batteries run down , a matter of hours.
So do some valves it they're powered by DC and didn't get flooded .

old jim

 

[Hiddencamper]

I misread some of the earlier discussion to indicate that 1 and 2 still had some instrumentation even after the tsunami, enough to allow the operators to run the RCIC. Is that a misperception so that they were basically dead electrically from the time the tsunami hit? Would depressurizing the reactors immediately before the flooding have been the least damaging choice, even though it would have probably also left the reactors scrap?

Unit 1 didn't have RCIC. It's an HPCI/IC plant. I still haven't seen a reason as to WHY they couldn't black start HPCI at unit 1, but I'm guessing HPCI inboard steam isolations went closed the same time the IC inboards went closed (likely use a similar 'fail safe' leak detection system).

Unit 2's RCIC was in service when the tsunami hit. RCIC uses DC power for most of its valves, and as long as the inboard steam isolation valve does not go shut (AC motor operated), you can black start RCIC by manually opening the trip/throttle valve and the injection valve.

When unit 2 lost DC power, the RCIC governor valve failed to the open position. With no servo current applied to the governor, it is spring loaded to fail open (maximum injection). The pump filled the reactor to the steam lines, then two phase flow went down the steam line into the RCIC turbine, causing it to slow down to around 1/3rd flow or stall out, until level dropped low enough to get clean steam through it and the RCIC turbine would spin back up. It was 'passively' controlling level at the steamlines until it overheated and stalled out. If operators were able to access the room, they should have manually controlled the trip/throttle valve to control injection rate/level, but to my knowledge they didn't have access due to the flooding.

As for depressurization. From a practical perspective, depressurization would have helped minimize the potential for containment damage when the core melted through the vessel, however there are a lot of limits/issues with this. For one, you need DC power to operate the Safety-Relief valve solenoids to perform the blowdown, so you couldn't do this easily at units 1/2 without battery packs. The other issue is that you cannot intentionally violate cooldown rate. The 100 degF/55degC per hour cooldown rate is a strict cooldown limit. EOPs do not allow exceeding this limit unless you hit an Emergency Depressurization Required contingency, and you are not allowed to anticipate the requirement to blow down early unless the steam dumps to condenser are available (they weren't). So you cannot do an "early" blowdown, only a normal cooldown.

Emergency depressurization would not "scrap" the reactors, GE reactors are designed for an emergency blowdown and reflood, and require a vessel analysis after that is complete to verify the integrity of the vessel. Some plants have blown down rapidly before, at Laguna Verde in Mexico, an SRV stuck open and depressurized the core in under an hour from NOP/NOT, and they are still operating the unit today.

For reference, the only times you can perform an emergency blowdown or exceed the cooldown limit for a BWR:

Level below top of fuel and steam or spray cooling cannot be established. Primary containment parameter being exceded and cannot be recovered (temp/pressure/torus level and temp, etc), secondary containment safe temp/rad limits exceeded due to a primary coolant leak, offsite rad release in excess of legal limits due to a primary coolant leak, and finally, if all level indication is lost in order to provide temporary steam cooling and flood the reactor to the steamlines.

 

[mheslep]

@etudiant
salt water in switchgear renders it unuseable ...

Marine high power electrical gear is somewhat robust to salt spray, and is not permanently unuseable even if flooded for a time after a clean up. Dropping the standard marine power cable in the water for instance, the kind found around every marina, to follow your example, won't cause it to burn up. For a coastal plant to not have electrical backup equipment without some resilience to salt water, if that is actually the case, is curious.

 

[Hiddencamper]

Marine high power electrical gear is somewhat robust to salt spray, and is not permanently unuseable even if flooded for a time after a clean up. Dropping the standard marine power cable in the water for instance, the kind found around every marina, to follow your example, won't cause it to burn up. For a coastal plant to not have electrical backup equipment with some resilience to salt water, if that is actually the case, is curious.

The plant was considered a "dry" site, which is why the switchgear and diesels were allowed to be at lower elevations and not in watertight cubicles.

 

[gmax137]

... The plant was considered a "dry" site ...

Criterion 2—Design bases for protection against natural phenomena. Structures, systems, and components important to safety shall be designed to withstand the effects of natural phenomena such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, tsunami, and seiches without loss of capability to perform their safety functions. The design bases for these structures, systems, and components shall reflect:
(1) Appropriate consideration of the most severe of the natural phenomena that have been historically reported for the site and surrounding area, with sufficient margin for the limited accuracy, quantity, and period of time in which the historical data have been accumulated,
(2) appropriate combinations of the effects of normal and accident conditions with the effects of the natural phenomena and
(3) the importance of the safety functions to be performed.

There are about 60 of these General Design Criteria. This one is Number 2 for a reason.

 

[Hiddencamper]

There are about 60 of these General Design Criteria. This one is Number 2 for a reason.

In order to meet that GDC, you need to demonstrate that you are protected from hazards. At the time the plant was build, it WAS in compliance with it's tsunami analysis. In 2009 when TEPCO identified that a tsunami much larger than anticipated could have struck the site, they were no longer in compliance with their tsunami analysis. The regulator allowed continued operation under the pretext that a loss of all seawater pumps could be coped with using compensatory actions and other installed equipment (like the air cooled diesel generators - similar to station blackout generators in the US), as well as TEPCO getting an independent analysis performed by another organization.

This is where the real flaw is, because the comp actions were not sufficient for the type and level of damage which could have occurred. It's clear that TEPCO did not properly evaluate the effect a massive tsunami could have on the site, and the regulator did not challenge them.

But from a pure design standpoint, the site was designed over 40+ years ago, to standards and analysis from 40+ years ago, which is WHY the original design is the way it is.

 

[mheslep]

The plant was considered a "dry" site, which is why the switchgear and diesels were allowed to be at lower elevations and not in watertight cubicles.

Was considered? Clearly. But by whom and via what rationale?

 

[Hiddencamper]

Was considered? Clearly. But by whom and via what rationale?

Some excerpts from the following:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/111202e14.pdf

The major buildings of the Fukushima Daiichi NPS are located at an elevation of O.P. +10 m for Units 1 to 4, which suffered major damage, and at an elevation of O.P.+13 m for Unit 5 and 6. When obtaining the establishing permit, the Chilean tsunami had been envisioned as the greatest tsunami in history, and the tsunami height at that time was O.P. +3.1 m. At present, the tsunami height of O.P.+6.1 m, that was evaluated based on the “Tsunami Assessment Method” of the JSCE, is used for the design purpose. It was recognized that there would not be any tsunami that could run up to the level of the buildings.

Investigation on the plants revealed that EDGs are not located inside the reactor buildings that require air-tightness. U.S. plants that were under construction when Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 was designed were designed to plant-specific seismic criteria as early as 1969, - 16 - using the existing subsurface conditions for the individual plants. U.S. designs are unique to the site soil conditions, supported by rock or a unique subsurface formation, or on spread-footer foundations. Hence, most of the buildings in which EDGs are installed did not require foundations built on base rock. In comparison, many buildings in Japanese NPSs have basement floors due to the necessity of being built on the base rock layer for seismic reasons. Due to such differences, EDGs were installed on the foundation (the lowest floor) in Japan in consideration of the large components’ seismic adequacy and vibrations.

Since Dr. Satake’s paper proposed wave source models, although they were not verified, TEPCO conducted a trial calculation using the two models proposed in the paper in December 2008. The result of the trial calculation showed a tsunami height of O.P. +7.8 m to 8.9 m (O.P. +7.8 m to 9.2 m, if a different accounting method for high tide is used) in front of the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini NPS intake points.

 

[nikkkom]

NHK reports that a sarcophagus structure is under consideration, to seal off the buildings with the fuel inside.
Given the groundwater issues, is this a plausible option for even the relatively short term?

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160713_25/

I like this idea a lot.

 

[etudiant]

As for depressurization. From a practical perspective, depressurization would have helped minimize the potential for containment damage when the core melted through the vessel, however there are a lot of limits/issues with this. For one, you need DC power to operate the Safety-Relief valve solenoids to perform the blowdown, so you couldn't do this easily at units 1/2 without battery packs. The other issue is that you cannot intentionally violate cooldown rate. The 100 degF/55degC per hour cooldown rate is a strict cooldown limit. EOPs do not allow exceeding this limit unless you hit an Emergency Depressurization Required contingency, and you are not allowed to anticipate the requirement to blow down early unless the steam dumps to condenser are available (they weren't). So you cannot do an "early" blowdown, only a normal cooldown.

Emergency depressurization would not "scrap" the reactors, GE reactors are designed for an emergency blowdown and reflood, and require a vessel analysis after that is complete to verify the integrity of the vessel. Some plants have blown down rapidly before, at Laguna Verde in Mexico, an SRV stuck open and depressurized the core in under an hour from NOP/NOT, and they are still operating the unit today.

QUOTE]

Again, thank you hiddencamper for another very informative post.
It suggests that there needs to be a more effective emergency stop provision for current reactors. The Fukushima operators did their best to execute the shutdown procedures, yet their reactors would still have poisoned the Japanese heartland for centuries if the winds had not swept the debris out to sea.
Clearly reactors need a switch to allow them to fail in a manageable way if continued operator control is lost. Is that even possible?

 

[Astronuc]

Was considered? Clearly. But by whom and via what rationale?

TEPCO submitted an analysis and the regulatory authority accepted/approved it.

In the report cited by Hiddencamper, see section
3.4 Tsunami evaluation
(1) Evaluation of tsunami height
The establishing permits for the units of the Fukushima Daiichi NPS were obtained
between 1966 and 1972. At that time, there was no guideline for tsunami and the units were
designed based on the known tsunami traces. Specifically, the maximum tide level that was
observed at the Onahama Port (O.P. +3.122m), which was caused by the Chilean earthquake
and tsunami of 1960, was established as a design basis.

In 1970, the “Regulatory Guide for Reviewing Safety Design of Light Water Nuclear
Power Reactor Facilities” (hereinafter referred to as the “safety design review guidelines”)
was established. In the guideline, tsunamis were referred to as one of the natural conditions
that should be considered and the facility was required to be able to withstand the harshest
natural force that was foreseen based on past records. . . . .

Somehow, the utility and government regulator convinced themselves that the tsunami level was not going to be more than 5.4 to 5.7 m. Much of the eastern coastline in the Tohoku region was not adequately protected as is evidenced by the substantial flooding in areas like Sendai.

However, there were historical records of such tsunamis. One simply had to go looking for them.

 

[etudiant]

Fukushima can clearly be classified as a regulatory failure, as Astronuc's above post again makes clear.
Unfortunately, regulatory failure is not uncommon, as illustrated by experience elsewhere, in the financial industry for example.
That puts a heavier burden on the nuclear engineers, they have to allow for inadequate regulation in the design and operation of the plant.
The Fukushima disaster proves that that is beyond the capability of the current reactor installations. That threatens the industry's survival imho.
At this point, there are about 500 power reactors world wide, so maybe 15,000 reactor years of operation cumulatively. With at least 3 loss of reactor accidents in that time there is about one per 5000 reactor years. That suggests a going forward rate of one disaster per decade. It does not seem a sustainable path, so what are the possible remedies?

 

[mheslep]

That suggests a going forward rate of one disaster per decade. It does not seem a sustainable path, so what are the possible remedies?

Only if the reactor designs and method of operation continued as they did with the accidents. It may be that Fukushima style threat of accidents remain from tsunamis. But otherwise they are not the same designs, do not operate in the same manner.

 

[Rive]

he Fukushima disaster proves that that is beyond the capability of the current reactor installations. That threatens the industry's survival imho.

Not really, IMHO. Not through real dangers. This accident proves that except the oldest designs the reactors are quite well built. (Without the soon-be-closed U1 the disaster might had gone a different way.) Two of the three made it out of a beyond design basis accident with limited environmental damage, without actual loss of life. Compared to other industrial accidents that's quite something.

 

[etudiant]

The expectation, at least in the US, is that reactors will have their initial 40 year service life extended in 20 year chunks, with no fixed sunset limit,. Hence the existing inventory of reactors will not be replaced anytime soon by new designs. So the risk factors will only move very slowly.
It is a mistake, imho, to think of Fukushima as an accident with limited damage. If the winds had been different, Japan would have lost its heartland. The Reagan was getting unacceptable contamination although never closer than 100 miles from the site. Merkel's decision reflects her recognition that the small risk of a national catastrophe is too high a price to pay for cheap power. The very disparate circumstances of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima indicate that there are multiple avenues to failure, so there is not a silver bullet fix.
Ideally, reactors need an off switch that works unconditionally. The PIUS design from the 90s seemed one such option and there may be others, but none have gained market acceptance. That leaves the world with many aging nuclear plants that can fail very messily. A huge challenge for the industry and its regulators.

 

[mheslep]

The expectation, at least in the US, is that reactors will have their initial 40 year service life extended in 20 year chunks, with no fixed sunset limit,.

The positive feedback RBMKs are gone already. So no Chernobyl style accident applies to the statistical case you are trying to make.

" If the winds had been different, Japan would have lost its heartland."

That's a bold claim. Do you have some evidence to show how that's even plausible, given the exclusion/evacuation zone was 30 km, and the outskirts of Tokyo are 160 km.

2011:

 

[Hiddencamper]

The expectation, at least in the US, is that reactors will have their initial 40 year service life extended in 20 year chunks, with no fixed sunset limit,. Hence the existing inventory of reactors will not be replaced anytime soon by new designs. So the risk factors will only move very slowly.
It is a mistake, imho, to think of Fukushima as an accident with limited damage. If the winds had been different, Japan would have lost its heartland. The Reagan was getting unacceptable contamination although never closer than 100 miles from the site. Merkel's decision reflects her recognition that the small risk of a national catastrophe is too high a price to pay for cheap power. The very disparate circumstances of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima indicate that there are multiple avenues to failure, so there is not a silver bullet fix.
Ideally, reactors need an off switch that works unconditionally. The PIUS design from the 90s seemed one such option and there may be others, but none have gained market acceptance. That leaves the world with many aging nuclear plants that can fail very messily. A huge challenge for the industry and its regulators.

The reactors were "off". The scram system is fail safe and uses pre stored energy; and we know all reactors at Fukushima were off when the earthquake occurred. BWR control rods each have a pressurized accumulator which can insert the rod. On a loss of power, the scram pilot valves fail open causing this accumulator to inject underneath the control rod drive piston. In the event the accumulator fails, the control rod drive hydraulic pumps or the reactor's own water pressure can cause the rod to insert.

Please take some time to learn about decay heat. It will explain to you why Fukushima and three mile island accidents occurred, even though at both places, the reactors were shut down hours before core melting began.

 

[Astronuc]

Ideally, reactors need an off switch that works unconditionally. The PIUS design from the 90s seemed one such option and there may be others, but none have gained market acceptance.

As Hiddencamper indicated the reactors were scrammed, i.e., shutdown, and appropriate cooling was actuated. All went well until the tsunami hit and took out the power. Decay heat cannot be turned off, since it comes from alpha (from actinides, particularly transuranics) and beta decay (from fission products), and that is inherent in the process. That's why we have residual heat removal (RHR) systems, which performs shutdown cooling among other tasks.

http://nrcoe.inel.gov/resultsdb/SysStudy/RHR.aspx
See also Decay Heat Removal (page 3-7) of http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/for-educators/03.pdf

As I recall PIUS used natural circulation, so as long as the coolant inventory is maintained in the primary system, the natural circulation removes the heat. That is the principal behind GEH's ESBWR.

The expectation, at least in the US, is that reactors will have their initial 40 year service life extended in 20 year chunks, with no fixed sunset limit,. Hence the existing inventory of reactors will not be replaced anytime soon by new designs. So the risk factors will only move very slowly.

There is a lot of research going looking at aging effects in plants. There is no certainty that plants will automatically get another 20 years beyond 60 years. That will only happen if it can be demonstrated that the RPV and other major systems do not degrade at 60 years and beyond. If a plant experiences a component failure due to aging, any life extension will likely come to a halt. There is a lot of monitoring going on at the moment.

 

[Sotan]

I am sure that by "Ideally, reactors need an off switch that works unconditionally" etudiant meant some kind of design that includes the safe and efficient management of decay heat after SCRAM - including in terrible circumstances such as the prolonged loss of power that happened at Fukushima.

 

[Hiddencamper]

I am sure that by "Ideally, reactors need an off switch that works unconditionally" etudiant meant some kind of design that includes the safe and efficient management of decay heat after SCRAM - including in terrible circumstances such as the prolonged loss of power that happened at Fukushima.

And that is ultimately going to require gen 3+ or newer designs.

ECCS was really designed around the idea that a rupture of the primary coolant system can lead to an unrecoverable core melt which ultimately causes containment failure. If you prevent core melting from even starting, you protect the containment boundary. It wasn't really designed under the idea that you have these multi-day long loss of power events.

Decay heat removal can be accomplished in a number of ways. Active DHR is one method. Venting of containment is a less preferred method that can be employed. With newer reactors there is the possibility for passive decay heat removal as well.

 

[etudiant]

As Sotan notes, the issue is graceful failure despite decay heat.
If that takes gen3+ or newer designs, as hiddencamper indicates, none of the current reactors are adequate. Merkel's decision to shut them down seems logical in that light.

My comment about Fukushima taking out Japan's heartland reflects Kan's comment that he was considering evacuating Tokyo and the US government evacuating dependents from Yokosuka.
The contamination map is a helpful indication of how lucky Japan was, the finger of highest contamination was deposited during a brief westerly wind shift in overwhelmingly east winds. The Reagan at 100 miles out was finding ambient radiation sufficient to reach the public exposure limit in 10 hours, according to official sources quoted here: http://apjjf.org/2014/12/7/Kyle-Cleveland/4075/article.html

 

[Hiddencamper]

As Sotan notes, the issue is graceful failure despite decay heat.
If that takes gen3+ or newer designs, as hiddencamper indicates, none of the current reactors are adequate. Merkel's decision to shut them down seems logical in that light.

My comment about Fukushima taking out Japan's heartland reflects Kan's comment that he was considering evacuating Tokyo and the US government evacuating dependents from Yokosuka.
The contamination map is a helpful indication of how lucky Japan was, the finger of highest contamination was deposited during a brief westerly wind shift in overwhelmingly east winds. The Reagan at 100 miles out was finding ambient radiation sufficient to reach the public exposure limit in 10 hours, according to official sources quoted here: http://apjjf.org/2014/12/7/Kyle-Cleveland/4075/article.html

It's only a logical decision if one looks only at consequences at not risk. But that's really for a different discussion topic.

 

[etudiant]

It's only a logical decision if one looks only at consequences at not risk. But that's really for a different discussion topic.

Well, there are obvious downsides to her decision, including much increased coal consumption and higher costs.
However, the German nuclear industry had also blotted its copybook with several instances of extreme sloppiness, notably the Juelich pebble bed reactor and also the Asse nuclear waste salt mine depository (somewhat akin to the WIPP). So there was no basis to be confident that its performance in an emergency would be better than it was at Fukushima. Indeed, the Juelich performance suggests the operators are a major risk factor in an off design situation. That is hard to plan for, but cannot be ignored.

 

[mheslep]

...
My comment about Fukushima taking out Japan's heartland reflects Kan's comment that he was considering evacuating Tokyo and the US government evacuating dependents from Yokosuka.

The discussions about evacuating Tokyo are not the same thing as showing how the "heartland" could be destroyed.

The contamination map is a helpful indication of how lucky Japan was, the finger of highest contamination was deposited during a brief westerly wind shift in overwhelmingly east winds.

You're repeating your earlier assertion. If the wind blew in another direction during the accident, shifting the higher sv/hr radiation in another direction, how would that have made things materially worse? Any easterly wind during the accident would have blown most of the radiation out to sea.

 

[etudiant]

The discussions about evacuating Tokyo are not the same thing as showing how the "heartland" could be destroyed.
You're repeating your earlier assertion. If the wind blew in another direction during the accident, shifting the higher sv/hr radiation in another direction, how would that have made things materially worse? Any easterly wind during the accident would have blown most of the radiation out to sea.

Iirc, the winds were persistently blowing out to sea from the plant, during the first two weeks of the accident. I mistakenly said they were blowing from the east, I should have said west. My error and I apologize for causing confusion..
There was only a relatively brief swing to a more inland orientation that laid down the more contaminated corridor. It seems reasonable to me that if the winds had not been so favorable, the level of contamination the Reagan experienced while 100 miles from the plant would instead have been inland, rather than offshore. A 100 mile radius around Fukushima would reach Tokyo and cover much of the Honshu plain, which is considered the Japanese heartland.

 

[jim hardy]

Is this old news ? First i'd heard of it, stumbled across it tonight.
excerpts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/w...ecutives-over-fukushima-nuclear-disaster.html
Japan Indicts 3 Former Executives Over Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
TOKYO — Japanese prosecutors indicted three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, on Monday, charging them with criminal negligence for their role in reactor meltdowns after an earthquake and tsunami five years ago.
.....
The three executives — Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75; Sakae Muto, 65 (no relation to Ruiko Muto); and Ichiro Takekuro, 69 — are accused of failing to take measures that would have protected the nuclear plant from the damage the tsunami wrought.Studies by seismologists before the tsunami had suggested that waves higher than the Fukushima plant’s roughly 30-foot sea wall could strike the Pacific Coast, the site of the plant.

“They know that measures were necessary, but for economic reasons they did nothing,” said Yuichi Kaido, a lawyer and politician who supports the Fukushima plaintiffs’ group.A rarely used feature of Japanese law allows committees of private citizens to examine prosecutors’ decisions on whether to indict suspects. In certain circumstances, they can order those decisions reversed. Two such committees revived the Fukushima case, and both determined that the Tepco executives should be criminally charged.Prosecutors initially declined to bring charges in the case. They said there was not enough evidence that failings by Tepco or its leaders had amounted to criminal wrongdoing. But their decision angered Fukushima residents and antinuclear campaigners, who formed the organization led by Ms. Muto, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Plaintiffs Group, to demand a review.

i still think had somebody apprised executives of the danger they'd have done something.

 

[nikkkom]

i still think had somebody apprised executives of the danger they'd have done something.

Historically, Japanese management was known to be quite bad when it comes to such matters as knowingly putting people in danger. For example, did you know about this outrageous story?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

Yes, it was in 1960s, but I'm not sure this does not still linger in the culture.

 

[jim hardy]

For example, did you know about this outrageous story?

no, first i'd heard of it. I hope we no longer use mercury in pesticides here .

When i look back over my life i am amazed how environmentally insensitive we were sixty years ago. "Down the drain" used to be the end of it.
It's human nature to toss our troubles 'over the fence' . We're populous enough now that doesn't work any more.

Jailing those old guys wouldn't do society any direct good, they don't hold up gas stations or snatch purses
but the humiliation of indictment will send shock waves through executive circles.
I remember about 30 years ago a series of industrial accidents at a Ford foundry killed some workers.
US threatened oops initiated charges against Ford executives for the deaths and threatened them with prison time.
All of a sudden the safety culture down at my level took a major turn toward seriousness - safety meetings became more frequent and longer, management participation became active and serious, safety equipment like earplugs and eyewash stations and first aid kits became cornucopian and we got an onsite medical clinic. Despite its being a completely unrelated industry !

We can only seek perfection and settle for progress.

old jim

 

[etudiant]

Historically, Japanese management was known to be quite bad when it comes to such matters as knowingly putting people in danger. For example, did you know about this outrageous story?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

Yes, it was in 1960s, but I'm not sure this does not still linger in the culture.

Minamata was a dirt poor area of Japan, way out in the sticks. Shellfish, fishing and agriculture were the major activities. So the community was thrilled to get a set of chemical operations that brought jobs and a measure of prosperity to the area. Because it is low lying and tidal land, with a sluggish stream running through it, the effluent of the plants was carried all over, but no one thought anything of it. Then the cats,which ate mostly fish scraps, began to act strange, It is only when people began to lose the ability to walk that a real investigation began and quickly pinned down the nature of the problem. Admitting this was not easy for the companies though. It was a bitter fight for the victims to get any compensation. The chimney of the plant still looms over the area, perhaps as a reminder.

It is relevant that Japan's last two operating reactors are in Kyushu, the home island where Minamata is located. The recently elected governor, a relative outsider, ran on a platform of shutting down these reactors, even though they are inland, by a lake and far from any ocean. Clearly the population in Kyushu is much less willing to trust corporate assertions than perhaps elsewhere in Japan.

 

[nikkkom]

Minamata was a dirt poor area of Japan, way out in the sticks. Shellfish, fishing and agriculture were the major activities. So the community was thrilled to get a set of chemical operations that brought jobs and a measure of prosperity to the area. Because it is low lying and tidal land, with a sluggish stream running through it, the effluent of the plants was carried all over, but no one thought anything of it. Then the cats,which ate mostly fish scraps, began to act strange, It is only when people began to lose the ability to walk that a real investigation began and quickly pinned down the nature of the problem. Admitting this was not easy for the companies though. It was a bitter fight for the victims to get any compensation.

You missed my point.

My point is that the company *actively fought against* attempts to figure out why people are falling ill. When in-house research clearly showed that it's their effluent was causing it, they ordered it to stop!

Chisso failed to co-operate with the investigation team from Kumamoto University. It withheld information on its industrial processes, leaving researchers to speculate what products the factory was producing and by what methods.[20] The Chisso factory's hospital director, Hajime Hosokawa, established a laboratory in the research division of the plant to carry out his own experiments into Minamata disease in July 1959. Food to which factory wastewater had been added was fed to healthy cats. Seventy-eight days into the experiment, cat 400 exhibited symptoms of Minamata disease and pathological examinations confirmed a diagnosis of organic mercury poisoning. The company did not reveal these significant results to the investigators and ordered Hosokawa to stop his research.

But this wasn't the end.

They installed a *BOGUS* effluent "treatment" system and were duping people for nine years, while people continued to be poisoned!

On October 21, 1959, Chisso was ordered by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to switch back its wastewater drainage from the Minamata River to Hyakken Harbour and to speed up the installation of wastewater treatment systems at the factory. Chisso installed a Cyclator purification system on December 19, 1959, and opened it with a special ceremony. Chisso's president Kiichi Yoshioka drank a glass of water supposedly treated through the Cyclator to demonstrate that it was safe. In fact, the wastewater from the acetaldehyde plant, which the company knew still contained mercury and led to Minamata disease when fed to cats, was not treated through the Cyclator at the time. Testimony at a later Niigata Minamata disease trial proved that Chisso knew the Cyclator to be completely ineffective: "The purification tank was installed as a social solution and did nothing to remove organic mercury."

The deception was successful and almost all parties involved in Minamata disease were duped into believing that the factory's wastewater had been made safe from December 1959 onward. This widespread assumption meant that doctors were not expecting new patients to appear, resulting in numerous problems in the years to follow, as the pollution continued. In most people's minds, the issue of Minamata disease had been resolved.
...
Finally on 26 September 1968 — 12 years after the discovery of the disease (and four months after Chisso had stopped production of acetaldehyde using its mercury catalyst) — the government issued an official conclusion as to the cause of Minamata disease

 

[etudiant]

Thank you for adding the extra color.
I thought that just noting that it was not easy to get admission and much harder to get compensation would indicate the conflict.
The extra details you add about corporate duplicity is quite revealing, as it surely underpins the current reluctance of the people of Kyushu to believe the reassurances of the power company regarding reactor safety. The large Kunamoto quake this April, even though centered on a more northerly part of Kyushu, probably heightened voter concerns further.

 

[Gary7]

the US government evacuating dependents from Yokosuka

I hope this isn't seen as splitting hairs, but I think the above requires some qualification. The Navy authorized voluntary evacuations of dependents.

http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/military-begins-voluntary-evacuation-of-families-in-japan-1.137999