Monday, August 5, 2013

The Fukushima disaster should have been predictable

I worked for General Electric Co. for a number of years and was qualified in their Senior Reactor Operator Program.

My personal assessment (and I will admit that I am not a professional engineer) is that their engineered systems for hydrogen control in containment were extremely weak. The "secondary containment" over the reactor buildings was more or less a corrugated metal shed, not what you might expect for a structure housing spent reactor fuel and subject to the possibility of hydrogen explosions. The basic strategy was to prevent the generation of hydrogen; but that strategy failed, too. And now we have a mess:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-japan-fukushima-panel-idUSBRE97408V20130805

Absolutely NOTHING good has ever come from nuclear energy. It is one of humanity's biggest mistakes. And it's truly ironic that Japan, of all nations, could ever have embraced nuclear energy.

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