I found this posting on Sam Smith's Progressive Review site. Seems there
was a lot more going wrong with the cooling systems before the Tsunami
ever hit, and the reactors should have been shut down well before the
wave. No longer a unique event, just criminally neglected maintenance
issues. Wear and tear from prolonged use. Sounds so familiar.
Natalia
From: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/MH12Dh01.html
It is one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis: How much
damage did the March 11 earthquake do to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors
before the tsunami hit? The stakes are high: If the quake structurally
compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every
other similar reactor in Japan will have to be reviewed and possibly
shut down. With virtually all of Japan's 54 reactors either offline (35)
or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety
looms over the decision to restart every one in the months and years after.
The operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has been damaged by the
crisis. On Tuesday it reported a 572 billion yen (US$7.4 billion) loss
on clean-up charges and compensating people affected by the explosions
at the Fukushima nuclear plant. TEPCO's share price is down about 80%
since the day before the disaster struck.
But the key question for the company and its regulators to answer is
this: How much damage was inflicted on the Daiichi plant before the
first tsunami reached the plant roughly 40 minutes after the earthquake?
TEPCO and the Japanese government are hardly reliable adjudicators in
this controversy. ''There has been no meltdown,'' top government
spokesman Edano Yukio famously repeated in the days after March 11. ''It
was an unforeseeable disaster,'' TEPCO's then President Shimizu Masataka
improbably said later. As we now know, meltdown was already occurring
even as Edano spoke. And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had
been repeatedly forewarned.
Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck:
The earthquake knocked out the plant's electric power, halting cooling
to its six reactors. The tsunami - a unique, one-off event - then washed
out the plant's back-up generators, shutting down all cooling and
starting the chain of events that would cause the world's first triple
meltdown. That line has now become gospel at TEPCO.
''We had no idea that a tsunami was coming,'' said Murata Yasuki, head
of public relations for the now ruined facility. ''It came completely
out of the blue'' (/"nemimi ni mizu datta"/). Safety checks have since
focused heavily on future damage from tsunamis.
But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes burst, snapped,
leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake - before the tidal
wave reached the facilities and before the electricity went out? This
would surprise few people familiar with the nearly 40-year-old reactor
one, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.
Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and
the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In 2002,
whistleblower allegations that TEPCO had deliberately falsified safety
records came to light and the company was forced to shut down all of its
reactors and inspect them, including the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant.
Sugaoka Kei, a General Electric on-site inspector first notified Japan's
nuclear watchdog, Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in June of
2000. The government of Japan took two years to address the problem,
then colluded in covering it up - and gave the name of the whistleblower
to TEPCO.
In September 2002, TEPCO admitted covering up data about cracks in
critical circulation pipes in addition to previously revealed
falsifications. In their analysis of the cover-up, The Citizen's Nuclear
Information Center writes:
''The records that were covered up had to do with cracks in parts of
the reactor known as recirculation pipes. These pipes are there to
siphon off heat from the reactor. If these pipes were to fracture,
it would result in a serious accident in which coolant leaks out.
From the perspective of safety, these are highly important pieces
of equipment. Cracks were found in the Fukushima Daiichi Power
Plant, reactor one, reactor two, reactor three, reactor four,
reactor five.''
The cracks in the pipes were not due to earthquake damage; they came
from the simple wear and tear of long-term usage. On March 2, 2011, nine
days before the meltdown, the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)
warned TEPCO of its failure to inspect critical pieces of plant
equipment, including the recirculation pumps. TEPCO was ordered to make
the inspections, perform repairs if needed and report to NISA on June 2.
It does not appear that the report has been filed as of this time.
The problems were not only with the piping. Gas tanks at the site also
exploded after the earthquake. The outside of the reactor building
suffered structural damage. There was no one really qualified to assess
the radioactive leakage because, as NISA admits, after the accident all
the on-site inspectors fled. And the quake and tsunami broke most of the
monitoring equipment so there was little information available on
radiation afterwards.
The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant. Each recites
the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the
reactors before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because
they are still working at or connected with the stricken plant. Worker
A, a 27-year-old maintenance engineer who was at the Fukushima complex
on March 11, recalls hissing, leaking pipes.
''I personally saw pipes that had come apart and I assume that there
were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There's no
doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant.
There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don't know which pipes -
that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the
turbine building for reactor one had come away. That crack might
have affected the reactor.''
The walls of the reactor are quite fragile, he notes.
''If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest
pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the
pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can
damage the equipment inside the walls. So it needs to be allowed to
escape. It's designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be
worse - that might be shocking to others, but to us it's common sense.''
WORKER B, a technician in his late thirties who was also on site at the
time of the earthquake recalls what happened.
''It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was
so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling,
and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall.
Others snapped. I'm pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored
on site had exploded but I didn't see for myself. Someone yelled
that we all needed to evacuate. I was severely alarmed because as I
was leaving I was told, and I could see, that several pipes had
cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes.
That would mean that coolant couldn't get to the reactor core. If
you can't get sufficient coolant to the core, it melts down. You
don't have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.''
As he was heading to his car, he could see that the walls of the reactor
one building itself had already started to collapse. ''There were holes
in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami.
We were thinking about survival.''
Worker C was coming into work late when the earthquake hit. ''I was in a
building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave
hit, I heard a loud explosion. I looked out the window and I could see
white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, 'this is the
end'.''
When the worker got to the office five to 15 minutes later the
supervisor immediately ordered everyone to evacuate, explaining,
''there's been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably
the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural
damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter
immediately.'' (It should be noted that several explosions occurred at
Daiichi even after the March 11 earthquake, one of which TEPCO stated,
''was probably due to a gas tank left behind in the debris''.)
As the employees prepared to leave, the tsunami warning came. Many of
them fled to the top floor of a building near the site and waited to be
rescued.
The suspicion that the quake caused severe damage to the reactors is
strengthened by reports that radiation leaked from the plant minutes
later. Bloomberg has reported that a radiation alarm went off at the
plant before the tsunami hit on March 11. The news agency says that one
of the few monitoring posts left working, on the perimeter of the plant
''about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the No. 1 reactor went off at 3:29
pm, minutes before the station was overwhelmed by the tsunami.''
The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did
direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Onda Katsunobu,
author of /TEPCO: The Dark Empire/, who sounded the alarm about the
firm, explains it this way:
''If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do
direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the
safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of
antiquated reactors that have the same systemic problems, the same
wear and tear on the piping.''
Onda Katsunobu's book detailed the history of accidents and cover-ups at
TEPCO in great detail. It was mostly ignored and sold only 4,000 copies.
Published in 2007, it was reissued this year. In many ways, it was
remarkably prescient book.
(P.1 of 2)
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