News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift. Parent comment

Re:Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift by WalterBright on Thursday December 22, 2022 @02:53PM (#34097768)
The Fukushima design was a textbook example of the zipper effect. One failure led to another to another to another until it melted down. At every point in that chain, simple (and cheap) design changes would have prevented it from propagating.

For example, if the diesel generators had simply been put up on a platform (so they weren't drowned when the seawall was topped), nothing further bad would have happened. If the hydrogen relief values vented outside rather than inside, the reactor buildings would not have blown up. Etc.

The same goes for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The designers of both should have consulted some airplane engineers. At Boeing a lot of effort was expended preventing cascading zipper effects.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift by moloch-hai on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:03PM (#34101533)
The fact is, those design changes did not happen, and not because they were not thought of. Rather, management rejected adding them in each case, in detail.

Fixing faulty engineering processes has been demonstrated. Management, not so much. We have sound reasons to believe no systematic management improvements would be evident in future nuke projects.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift by WalterBright on Thursday December 22, 2022 @10:34PM (#34102082)
Regarding venting the overpressure hydrogen gas outside instead of inside - was that rejected in detail?

Besides, my experience is that engineers do not think of these things until after the fact. Have you noticed them in any academic book on engineering? I've never noticed them in any, nor in any software engineering book.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift by moloch-hai on Sunday December 25, 2022 @12:39AM (#34124643)
Venting hydrogen is a thing after you already have a meltdown. It is already too late to forestall disaster. You already have one.

What was rejected include an adequate seawall, and backup generators where a tsunami would not flood them. We know the ideas were rejected, because at a sister site only a few miles up the coast, rejections were overcome.

[ Parent | on HN ]