Title: TEPCO failed to link data device to backup power
Source: NHK WORLD English
Date: Thursday, January 19, 2012 14:28 +0900 (JST)
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it failed to supply emergency electricity to a devise that sends information on the reactors to a government nuclear safety agency. [...]The device provides key information including reactor temperatures and radioactivity levels near buildings to the government-controlled Emergency Response Support System, or ERSS.
The lack of real-time data may have affected the government’s immediate response to the disaster.
TEPCO says it had planned to connect the device to an emergency power source in November 2010 — 4 months before the March 11th disaster. The utility says it did not complete the procedure as an available cable was too short to connect the device. [...]
Watch the report here
sending...
“The cable was too short”..didn’t plug it in…
Sounds….like an excuse for the DVD player not working.
Reminds me of when the “unidentified piece of machinery” punctured and collapsed the flood berm at Ft. Calhoun, and of the flooding at Cooper, too.
Bobby1 posted his analysis of the CDC mortality data, and St. Louis had 36.4% more deaths in 2011 than in 2010.
Bobby1
January 17, 2012 at 9:26 am · Reply
EXCESS DEATHS IN US 2011 SUMMARY
http://freepdfhosting.com/ccafb5715d.pdf
http://i40.tinypic.com/2q39p8p.jpg
- 53,682 excess US deaths in 2011 since Fukushima
- Dramatic increase in Pacific region mortality in November and December
http://enenews.com/forum-possible-fukushima-related-anomalies-deformations-yellow-rain-metallic-taste-mouth
“Cable too short” must be a corporate excuse. No natural human male would admit that!
lol
It sounds like the Stuff is gone!
Hey Blown Camaro, you were right! They need to look even further
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down
They should have said they tripped and fell into the lifeboat.
Oh, wait. That was another disaster.
Ouch. [trying to stop deeply ironic chuckling...]
Keystone Kops
“Cable was too short”
Unplugged brain?
h.
FD has Tweets from Happy about this http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/01/result-of-endoscope-operation-on-1192012/
Whaaat?
Tepco Cut Backup Power at Fukushima Before Crisis, Sankei Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-19/tepco-cut-backup-power-at-fukushima-before-crisis-sankei-says.html
The supply was cut during maintenance work in November 2010 and wasn’t reconnected, the paper reported
Tepco had no comment yet.
@Whoopie,
long known fact, @ATS we have all the data,
4 or even 5 months ago we found the both lines!
When you want to know more have a look there,
you don’t need to be above Secret for this!
Oh! Thanks Human. Didn’t know that.
@whoopie, i cant find it so quick
but will try to locate it later, or tommorrow
because now i am on my phone!
Fukushimas Powerlines was really involved
into the development of this crisis, together
with a broken transformer, this whole crisis become
so bad because of theEnergy problems!
We are expected to entrust the fate of our planet and all its citizens to a bunch of morons who can’t even plug something in? Push those idiots out of the way and get someone in there who doesn’t have to have help tying their friggin shoes.
It appears they truly dont know what the heck their doing Ariana
This is actually a “good news” story, I suggest. It illustrates that little human errors, of the kind each of us makes every day, can be the cause of a nuke catastrophe.
It takes discussion away from the red herring “thousand year event” of the tsunami, and brings focus to the reality that in a hugely complex system something will eventually go wrong.
In nuke systems the consequences can be devastating, and will be, sooner or later – far beyond anything that might happen in other man-made tragedies. Fukushima is the big one to date. The next one or the one after that will be bigger, and the effects are cumulative. These are not airplane crashes, coal-mine collapses, and the like. They are orders of magnitude greater in their effect. When you balance that unprecedented scale of risk against the alleged benefits from a highly subsidized, uninsurable, corrupt, secretive industry, then…
SHUT THEM ALL DOWN. (ya think?)
No Question shut them all down. It’s gonna be a fight of our lives though. They wont go Quietly Into The night.
You’re right Whoopie – fight of our lives indeed – ironic that we’re trying to save their lives too.
Perhaps they will go into the night with hair, teeth and nails falling out. Projectile diarrhea throughout the IAEA complex in Vienna….
It’s not much consolation that their end of Lifeboat Earth is sinking, but it may be all the consolation we get.
aigeezer,
The thing about the 1000 years is it’s not a red herring. A tsunami within that period constitutes too high a risk within the safety guidelines for the location and type of construction of the plant. Given the shelf the Tohoku Plain sits on, it was a no-brainer this would eventually happen.
Hi Fudo. I don’t think we’re far apart – see what you think of this attempt at refining my position. I had in mind the pro-nuke argument that goes something like “Fukushima was a 1000-year event, so it will never happen elsewhere, so we can keep on building nuke plants anywhere”.
I don’t dispute at all your point that the Fukushima plant is badly sited. Rather, I claim they are all badly sited.
In my view, the essence of the decision is that the magnitude of the consequences of a failure dwarfs the importance of the statistically small likelihood of a particular cause of failure.
You remind me (appropriately) that a particular cause (tsunami risk) was in itself enough reason to make the Fukushima plant site unacceptable. I agree, but I add that even without it the plant should not be built. I’m thinking that if there is a reason that no nuclear plants should be built at all (huge risk, regardless of trigger event), such an argument is more powerful (more useful) than an argument that a particular plant should not be built.
My fear is that the pro-nuke forces will make lists of specific risks that they can handle statistically and sweep under the rug. The next crisis may come from something on their list, in which case they say “we were just unlucky, it was a 1000 year event” or from something not on their list, like a too-short cable (see today’s news) in which case they say “we can’t anticipate everything but we learned our lesson and it will not happen again”. My position is that one such circumstance or the other will inevitably lead to the next TMI/Chernobyl/Fukushima event, and the one after that, and the one after that….
Whaddya think?
SHUT THEM ALL DOWN
@aigeezer
I agree. The next nuclear accident in the world will most likely be triggered by a different and unique set of circumstances.
Using recent history…think of the Ft. Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska, USA that was surrounded by flood waters this summer. The water was only a few feet from breaching the emergency sand bag barrier they put around the plant. (Which was damaged during the flood by a worker in a bulldozer.) We came very close to the plant being flooded. Also at that time the floodwaters upstream were putting tremendous pressure on the dams along the river. If one of the dams would have given way the flooding would have been too great for any amount of emergency workers to hold back.
Actually we shouldn’t even be so focused on the rectors what about the spent fuel pools? Here is another possible unique circumstance…terrorists fly planes into Reactor buildings targeting the spent fuel pools. Here is another one…an F-5 tornado hits Reactor buildings taking out the spent fuel pool. The spent fuel pools have no containment and the buildings surrounding them are constructed one grade above the rental storage buildings people rent to store all their extra stuff.
That being said Japan is very shaky lately with the earthquakes they could very well have the exact same thing happen in our lifetimes.
The salient point is that for any and all disasters they can foresee (and design around, hopefully) or not foresee (1000-year events), the bottom line is that if conditions do happen to be that bad, there is nothing they can do to control the consequences. If they cannot have control in the worst of circumstances, then it’s too dangerous a technology to pretend control in the best of circumstances.
Period. End of debate.
End of rational debate. Start of political debate.
Well, sure. Politics is what will ultimately shut them down. But much of the politics will be based upon the notable failures of the industry to be capable of really engineering against the inevitable, or being able to walk away when it happens. Since the people foot the bill either way, they should get to choose.
With all the facts on the table, not just the ones politics (and the censure pen) allow us to know.
My thinking is a bit more granular. Any victory relies on a string of small wins that ultimately turn the tables. It’s difficult to change opinion, so the battle should be economic.
With Nuclear Energy if you factor in the entire product life cycle (waste disposal/accident clean up costs) it’s highly inefficient.
Unfortunately, most large industrial companies don’t take responsibility for these costs.
This is the reason Tepco is arguing in court that the Cesium that lands on your property doesn’t belong to them, only the Cesium that’s still in the plant.
Winning this battle over responsibility for costs would ensure their liabilities outweight their margin and make the business unprofitable.
Unfortunately, this is probably the only no nuke approach that might work. Their economic “bottom line” has to be dismal.
No amount of human suffering, pain, death nor logic will win this fight…..financial disaster will.
Excellent post.
Fair enough Fudo. Normally I prefer granular thinking also – especially at an individual action level.
Are you thinking of the Tepco fight as a kind of test case? If so, I fear nuke advocates would just fall back on the “1000 year event” argument to say it was a special case…. hmmmn… so what?… the pro-nukes will do what the pro-nukes will do… You’re right. It’s got to start somewhere. You are on to something good – Go get ‘em.
How about:
SHUT THEM ALL DOWN, USING FUDO’S ECONOMIC ACCOUNTABILITY APPROACH AS PLAN A.
Excellent logic on your part. I’d challenge the assertion that inherent ineptitude leaves room for more of the same. Sad reality is, there is no more room. Our species has run out of room for more reckless errors. This shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that nothing should be done to correct the mistakes but that it’s time to consider practical solutions.
That government or main stream media hasn’t revealed the dire circumstances of Fukushima, hints that it’s now in our hands. It’s become glaringly evident (from stories such as this one) that those who crowned themselves as professionals are in reality, completely incompetent and incapable of handling this technology. For such reason, we don’t have to listen to their objections. Their obvious incompetence is argument enough.
I’m thinking generations and generations of humans will needlessly suffer if we fail to put practical solutions on the table. Such solutions must include all concerned parties (including the disdainful). It’s time to wipe away the tears and start suggesting solutions. Unplugging nuclear power is but one solution to preserving life on this planet. We need others if we’re to avoid the ‘down-sizing’ of human populations. We must attempt to meet the basic needs of those who are willing to accept conditions that ensure the survival of all. The truth of this horrific event will ultimately weigh heavily in favor of consensus.
Evil is only winning because we’ve failed to offer any alternatives to it’s selfish temptation. Other than recriminations, rhetoric and jingoism, are we willing to offer long-term solutions? Because diversity is our greatest strength, when combined, it quickly becomes the cement that holds-all together. We must cease attacking those that we differ with, while remaining focused on a secure and humane future and environment. The ‘enemy’ will only blunt their blade against righteous truth…
New Tweet to HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/fukushima-nuclear-reactor-images_n_1215665.html
For lack of a nail…the kingdom was lost?
The excuses people think up when caught short.
“The dog ate my cable.”
HOW FREAKIN’ STUPID can a Company be? Don’t they know that most of the informed world are looking at them as total *uck ups? What a bunch of deliberate *ss *ucks!
Calm down Cindy. You do know that Tribble’s supposed to be soothing…
So we are now led to believe that none of the agencies which should have received this “key data” ever highlighted the fact that they had not received it. If you listen to the video from NHK then there is one crucial phrase: “the lack of real time data may have affected the Government’s real time response to the disaster”. You work it out, ten months on and we’re still playing the same old games. At the end of it all, this is about human, animal and plant life for generations to come and the pollution of the whole planet. There is no honourable way out of any of this, sooner or later pathetic old men and a pathetic old industry are going to have to face up to it.
@Siouxx: I totally agree with your words. This is one of the reasons, any further argument is pointless. Fukushima’s proven that the promised ‘economics’ of nuclear power were nothing more than a dream. This was their only viable argument and it’s now obvious that it’s a bankrupt energy source. The world’s population will now have to pickup the tab for what is likely to be trillions-upon-trillion of dollars in property losses, medical expenditures and lost human productivity. This promises to be the nail that closes the coffin on nuclear power…
Total numnutz. Makes Homer Simpson look like a genius…
Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh? Cable to short huh?
A Cable too short to touch the depths of despair,
now a billion years for humanity to repair
A little white lie spoken this day,
is meant to make the facts go away
Oh yes, heads will roll,
while those responsible will take a stroll
Higher electric costs to pay
so the chosen elite can run away
At a beach side resort
they will spend their days
While their victims die,
in so many painful ways
For they have no where to run,
because sadly, the damage has already been done
A Cable to short to reach those in despair
has left children suffering there