[Marxism] more seismology info on Japan's nuclear reactor

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

here's some information on seismology near the latest Japanese nuclear
plant accident site.

i have a lot of respect for David Walters and his work in operations
inside running power plants. but the issues are siting, design,
construction, inspection, and maintenance. if the vibrations from the
quake were that severe, are the appropriate Japanese authorities going
to redo all the scans on the welds? we already know contractors shortcut
these scans during construction.

and for the record David, i am trained as a astrophysicist and as an
engineer. [ "references available on request"   ;-) ].

Les




Nature 448, 392-393 (26 July 2007) | doi:10.1038/448392a; Published
online 25 July 2007

Quake shuts world's largest nuclear plant

David Cyranoski

[snip]

Catalogue of errors

Because the earthquake occurred on a national holiday, only four people
were available to fight the transformer blaze, so it took around 90
minutes and the help of local firefighters to put it out.

[snip]

The list of malfunctions, damages and mistakes rose from an initial 50
to 63 in the ensuing days, and included an admission by the company that
the 1,200 litres of contaminated water that poured into the ocean was
50% more radioactive than it had previously stated. Perhaps most
worrying was the discovery, nearly three days after the quake, that
radioactive iodine gas was still being vented from one of the reactors.

TEPCO built the facility to withstand a magnitude 6.5 quake â the
Japanese safety standard for reactors located on sites not above an
active fault line. But it has now emerged that the offshore epicentre of
last week's quake is on an active fault line that probably extends
directly under the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. A preliminary investigation
of the quake and its aftershocks has revealed a fault line of up to 30
kilometres long.

Akira Fukushima, of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency in
Tokyo, says that four fault lines were identified at the site in 1980
before the facility was built, but that all were considered inactive.
Nature has heard claims from Japan's seismologists that data indicating
an active fault line was potentially under the site were ignored when
the plant was enlarged.

Hiroaki Nakata, a seismologist at the Hiroshima Institute of Technology,
says that TEPCO found a seven-kilometre-long fault line in 1996, during
investigations as part of its application to install two new reactors on
the plant, but failed to investigate it fully.

Nakata has produced a map showing where fault lines taken from TEPCO
data should have extended. "When we find an active fault, we check
features surrounding it. There's no reason for TEPCO to have stopped
when they did. There are many places where they missed â or
intentionally avoided â seeing fault lines," Nakata says.

Daisuke Suzuki, TEPCO spokesman for the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, says
of new guidelines to govern reactors and quake resistance, "The 2007
guidelines require us to look back 130,000 years, rather than the
previous 50,000, so we might find evidence that it was active."

"The new guidelines also require geomorphological techniques to be used
now, which may have revealed that the fault was longer if we had used
them before," Suzuki says. He admits the earthquake was probably caused
by movement of this fault. "If so, it must be longer than seven
kilometres to have caused such a large earthquake."

[snip]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7152/full/448392a.html   (not
sure if this one is free)


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