Japanese Parliament: Fukushima a Man-Made Disaster 134
Bootsy Collins writes "The predominant narrative of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has been that the accident was caused by a one-in-a-million tsunami, an event so unlikely that TEPCO could not reasonably have been expected to plan for it. However, a Parliamentary inquiry in Japan has concluded that this description is flawed — that the disaster was preventable through a reasonable and justifiable level of preparation, and that initial responses were horribly bungled. The inquiry report points a finger at collusion between industry executives and regulators in Japan as well as 'the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture.' It also raises the question of whether the failed units at Fukushimi Daiichi were already damaged by the earthquake before the tsunami even hit, going so far as to say that 'We cannot rule out the possibility that a small-scale LOCA (loss-of-coolant accident) occurred at the reactor No 1 in particular.' This is an explosive question in quake-prone Japan, appearing in the news just as Japan begins to restart reactors that have been shut down nationwide since the disaster."
Re:Not one in a million (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh. I submitted this story in a hurry this morning before I left for work; and I typed "one-in-a-million" when the part of my brain that isn't dead had meant to type "once-in-a-millenium," which is the actual argument TEPCO makes.
I hate getting old.
Story from three months ago (Score:5, Informative)
Before commenting on this story, people might want to re-read the story about the Onigawa power station's survival [slashdot.org] that was posted here last March. There's pretty clear evidence that at least some managers of Japanese nuclear-power stations understood the tsunami danger and prepared for it. So the main questions should be: Why wasn't this understood by the entire management chain? And what are they doing to make sure they're preparing for the next such disaster?
I'd think that people in Japan should be checking on which of their power system's managers are busy studying this and related stories, and putting those people in charge of the surviving plants. If they don't, then it's just going to happen again at some unknown future date.
Similar comments would apply in most of the other volcanic zones on the planet. Here in the US, we might be checking to see which managers of critical infrastructure on the West Coast are aware of the story and studying it. We may not have the 1000-year history that the Japanese have, but we do have geological information about similar events along our coast.
Re:Not one in a million (Score:4, Informative)
Your little brain freeze notwithstanding, that was an exemplary summary of a complex report. The mea culpa is also appreciated.
For those who want to read a little more, there's a very good article over at Ars Technica [arstechnica.com], which in turn links to the full English report from the Japanese parliamentary inquiry [naiic.go.jp] as well as an IEEE Spectrum account of the immediate aftermath [ieee.org].
Re:oh, I don't think they're ignoring bad tech (Score:4, Informative)
In the US......What's with this guy from Barclay who was stealing these unimaginable sums and is allowed to quietly resign and disappear?
Uh, you realize that Barclays is in England, right? And he hasn't been let go quietly, he was brought before parliament, and a criminal investigation is ongoing. That's after a 290million pound fine.
Dang it, Popie, you should know better than this. Check your facts before posting.