From: rhoward@matd.gatech.edu (Robert L. Howard)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Another NUKE bites the dust ...
Date: 5 Oct 92 20:40:20 GMT
Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute

ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith) writes:

A few points.....

[ This was quoted material ]

>JAPANESE PLANT BARELY AVERTS CORE MELTDOWN

"Barely"  What does that mean?  The headline warns me right away
that this may be sensationalized.

>TOKYO (AP) -- A mistaken flip of a switch by a nuclear power plant
>worker caused a reactor's cooling pumps to fail, a government official
>said Wednesday, but an emergency system took over and prevented a
>nuclear meltdown.

Well, the emergency system worked...

>The automatic activation of the emergency cooling system prevented
>radiation from being released by the plant in the Fukushima district,
>70 miles northeast of Tokyo.

I don't know that this follows logically.  It's sort of like saying
"Plant operates normally.  No radiation released today.  Film at 11"

Now, *perhaps* a leak could have occured in this accident but then
again maybe it wouldn't have....

>Local officials sharply criticized the Tokyo Electric Power Co., the 
>plants owner, for not notifying residents for hours about the 
>emergency shutdown of the 18-year-old reactor.

What are they supposed to do?  Have strobe lights and klaxons
go off everytime some reading wavers?  The emergency backup 
systems worked!  Everyone was safe!

>It was the first shutdown using the emergency system since Japan's
>worst nuclear accident, at Mihama in western Japan in February 1991,
>when a small amount of radioactivity was released into the atmosphere.

Aarrgghhh....radioactivity!  We're all going to die!

What is a small amount?  Even TMI's releases wer pretty insignificant.

[ This is EMS speaking ]

>There you have it.  All the things that cause one pause about
>a nuclear plant in the back yard.

>One guy makes a mistake, and per the article, the plant is one system
>away from a meltdown.  Then the folks who are in charge don't bother
>to tell the public for the better part of a day...

Well, that's why they had that system too.  The system worked, I
don't see any point in notifying people (or calling out the
national guard, etc.)

Note too that this was an 18 year old reactor.  I bet you can't 
even make that kind mistake on a US plant anymore (even older
ones probably have had that switch / computer controller modified
5 times over).

>The article may be wrong, but that type of article is why the non-nukers
>take a bit of a circumspect view of a nuke in every village ...

Considering, I'd much rather have the nuke plant than about a hundred
other kinds of industrial facilities I can think of...

Robert
--
| Robert L. Howard              |   Georgia Tech Research Institute     |
| robert.howard@matd.gatech.edu |   MATD Laboratory                     |
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