An Earthquake and a Tsunami Hit Fukushima
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- The earthquake and tsunami in 2001 which hit Japan. Casualties from the earthquake and tsunami, and what it did to the nuclear power plant at Fukushima. Examination of the defense in depth and the details of the nuclear reactor construction and components. How reactors are refueled and why that was important at Fukushima. Time sequence of the events and the work done in the aftermath to keep the core and the spent fuel covered. Blast panels: why they are there and what happened to them. Radiation dose at Fukushima and other places by comparison.
It annoys me that Germany's response to Fukushima was to begin to ban nuclear power. Germany, a country far less prone to earthquakes than Japan. And they replaced it in large part with dirty coal.
Could be much less annoying if you'd look up the numbers. Despite nuclear power was reduced approx. to half as much as in 2007, coal also got reduced from 46 % in 2007 to 38 % in 2019. Don't panic. Sorry, forgot the link: strom-report.de/strom/
@xellossaxon "Nuclear energy is unsafe"
False. Your uninformed opinion is not relevant.
@xellossaxon Nuclear energy has been proven to be safe for 60 years. Spare us your uneducated opinion.
I'm an electrician for the largest solar power provider (sorry, I'm not sure what word would translate best) in the US. The efficiency and reliability isn't anywhere near nuclear or coal yet.
If I had to guess based off of the numbers alone the future is nuclear, at least in the next couple hundred years.
@xellossaxon It's good that you ban nuclear energy, it's very dangerous. I am glad that in Poland we have none nuclear reactors, which were banned after Chernobyl accident. Now we are using different source of energy, mostly water based and wind based
I feel like I could watch hours of this guy lecturing ANYTHING.
You like listening to an conman? They can be fun to watch but their message is bogus.
@@adjeboog3646 what is the con?
He is really good
@@adjeboog3646 what makes him a conman?
Nuclear words made understandable
As more of the details get found, it could have been mitigated if not prevented.
1. Tepco's own engineers had noted that the sea wall was not tall enough. Shot down by management.
2. Tepco's own engineers had recommended relocating the backup generators so they would not be on the lowest elevation on site. Management did not follow this, wishing to keep it to the original GE design from 1969.
3. Three Mile Island had taught us that the Hydrogen could be mitigated with equipment like catalytic hydrogen burners, which were added to many other plants around the world, but ignored by Tepco.
So basically Tepco Higher Ups mismanaged the whole damn thing.
Many technological disasters have been caused by cost-cutting managers ignoring warnings by engineers, with Fukushima being a prime example. Managers should never be allowed to undermine what scientists and engineers have stated as being necessary for safety.
The reactors worked perfectly for 40 years, the earthquake was the 4th most severe in human written history and the tsunami was the highest ever recorded in Japan. It is very easy to be an armchair critic with 20-20 hindsight, much more difficult to work in the real world though.
Could have been much worse though, imagine if Boeing had been involved!!
@@forestpepper3621 it would be safe to say most have been caused by cost cutting
Bureaucracy is the death of all achievement period.
Anyone seen the new Star Wars Movies? Perfect example (a different context sure, but it shows that it happens EVERYWHERE)
I was living in Tokyo, Japan when the earthquake hit. I wish I had had such thoughtful, informative and calm explanations at the time.
As opposed to Tokyo, Mexico
@@cptnoremac LOL! in Mexico we say 'vamos a Tokyo' (let's go to Tokyo) but what we really mean is 'let's go smoke weed'. As in Toke-yo. LOL
We need more professors like this in the world.
Sure, more Profs who spread bs like 0 people died from the triple meltdown at Fukushima.
@@feanorn8409 Show a Fukushima radiation death.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk
Not an immediate death from a lethal dose of radiation but from Cancer. Those are the long enduring
effects of events like this. But no, in this case no one immediately died from exposure like what happened
at Chernobyl.
time.com/5388178/japan-first-fukushima-radiation-death/
why would you want someone who spend time throwing electronics into water to show that indeed it stops. wow. who knew.. entertaining for idiots. i wonder why in university they dont waste time with this shit, because they want to teach you stuff not impress you with childish experiments. entertainers entertain, teachers should teach. getting you excited is YOUR job and your parents. thats what i think anyway
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk could and would if you get permission to get past the checkpoint and eat anything in the 23km deep no mans zone.You catching on yet?
You are such a fantastic teacher, thank you so much for this.
Did he make you feel better about dying?
@Dreamhelmet
Dreamhelmet is a noted and known anti-nuke nut.
@Frank Heuvelman re: "Most of the old nuclear plants ... "
>> Non-sequitur to my post; why are you addressing me on this? What is your factual basis for making your claims? More 'hype' from the anti-nuke nuts is still just HYPE. Nuclear is the cleanest, greenest way make electricity, EXCEPT for the BrLP (inaptly named) SunCell (tm) which uses the Hydrino reaction or Hydroelectric power from dammed rivers.
@Frank Heuvelman re: "This is why America has left the global community, you know."
Inanity. Has (literally) nothing to do with 'the price of tea in China'.
I wish I had a teacher like this, maybe I would have been more into siences
Gabriel Ojanperä gotta get in to university for this shit.
@@gowersup6441 Gotta have money for this shit
@@SUPERHEAVYBOOSTER that's right, siences
@@orthranus3352 true
if you watched this video then you are into science, fuck academia though
I like how a "Chernobyl core" is a unit of measurement.
This guy does a wonderful job of explaining complex systems.
I don’t know how I came across these videos. But I’m now watching them all. This professor is fantastic.
I certainly wish my teachers in college were as energetic and could explain technical terms in easy to understand and grasp. Perhaps I would have stayed an engineering major!
That's the way to recognise if someone understands the topic. If he does - he can explain it simply and easily.
Yeah. This guy is great.
The gap between knowing nothing and knowing something can be greatly shortened by experts who can put it in terms the know-nothings understand. Experts who write training materials that only other experts can understand are not very helpful.
Did you switch to basket weaving?
Yea I agree. I could build a reactor now and operate it myself. Piece of Cake. Jk but I understand reactors much better
I have watched this and other examples of your videos on multiple occasions. Thanks for the making them interesting and informative.
By far the most accurate and reasonable assessment of the Fukushima disaster. So much disinformation out there on this topic. Glad to have found this channel.
I really like this guy because he cares about how the audience perceives what he is expounding on. If he was the Engineer involved in the shuttles rocket boosters of the Challenger shuttle and he presented his findings on the seal mechanics I guarantee they would have postponed the launch.
Thank you so much for the video. Excellent explanation of what happened!
love the vids, thanks for posting.
This guy is awesome. I wish I would've had a teacher like this when I was in school.
Westinghouse built the plant as a package with the standard layout they use everywhere. Reactors at back, then turbines , then transformers , then cooling pumps and finally back up generators. That puts the most important safety backups in the most risk of seaward flooding.
It's well know that tsunamis are common in the area and the Japanese know exactly how damaging they really are. All PWR reactors are vulnerable to loss of coolant, so management really should have heeded their engineer's warnings and at least moved the back up pumps and generators.
Not trolling but I believe the reactors at fukushima were GE (maybe Hitachi as well). Not Westinghouse. Also they were BWRs.
You always, ALWAYS make your videos very interesting, Professor!
Great explanation. Keep up the great work.
I thought it was pretty impressive that you could write backwards until I realized the footage is flipped
Me too. haha
Best explanation ever
Very educational and informative. Thank you.
what a teacher, top stuff! wish i had one like him.
So what do we learn from this? Put some submarine snorkels on your backup diesel pumps.
A good idea but probably the substation and interconnects got swamped. Also, how tall do these snorkels have to be for a 40 meter wave? 40 meter snorkel? Might be doable. Best to elevate the backups and fuel tanks.
1-Put your diesel generators high above ground
2-Try to use passive safety system as much as posible
3-That metallic fuel should replace ceramic fuel
4-Add a secondary containment dome to BWRs like PWRs have
5-Consider beyond-design-basis accidents
We learned that if you mess with nuclear fission you are screwed.
The most important thing to learn about Fukuyama is that people can have extremely selective memories. Hundreds of thousands of people died from the Tsunami but all people can remember is that the reactor failed and 5-6 workers were killed.
If sometime in the future, a meteor hits a nuclear reactor, I'm sure it will be the same thing. People will remember that the reactor "failed" and forget that it was caused by a meteor.
the workers that were killed (I heard 2) were killed by the tsunami. Zero were killed by the nuclear event
Yep, no one has died from Fukushima radiation even eight years later
I have found all your videos very engaging please make more!
Its a really cool way to present !!
Cool and totally fake.
The term “tsunami” and “tidal wave” are used interchangeably here (in fact “tidal wave” is used more frequently). I’m guilty of making the same slip of the tongue, even though they are different phenomenon. Still, a great lecture. BTW - it was my geology TA at U of I who explained this to my class (way back when I attended this great institution in the Stone Age 😂).
I did not know they are different. I'll have to read up on that.
Around 2:10 “in a town called Fukushima”. Nope. Near the towns of Ōkuma and Futaba; Fukushima is the name of the prefecture.
Good catch
Prefecture means town in American. But good job virtue signalling.
@@dickfitswell3437 Oh, I hadn’t realized! Thanks for the correction. I bow before your superior knowledge.
😂😆
Great handle, by the way. I assume the Fitswell is a reference to your hand...
@@lev5821 Thanks. But it's a minor detail. The video itself is quite good fact-wise, so this little quirk shouldn't undermine its overall credibility.
@@dickfitswell3437 Nice try but totally wrong, a Japanese prefecture is what you in the USA might refer to as a county, however many Japanese prefectures are larger than several of the smaller states in the USA both in land area and in population.
As Jim Lockhart said, 大熊町 (Okuma Town) and 双葉町 (Futaba Town) are the nearest TOWNS to the nuclear power plant.
Actually were several mistakes in this particular presentation - most importantly, the tsunami did not reach 40 meters at Fukushima. The height at the nuclear plant was around 15 meters with the turbine halls being under 5 meters of water at some point. The Tsunami did reach run-up heights of around 40 meters but that only happened in valleys.
WOW this is good stuff. THANKS for putting everything into a factual perspective.
you are such a good teacher. as one myself, I am very inspired....
The biggest problem with the Daiichi NPP was that it was an American reactor built in Japan. The engineers had asked for a higher seawall and for the placement of the backup diesel generators higher in the building, but they were denied. Not because it wasn't necessary, but because TEPCO didn't want to change the original specs, ignoring the fact that the GE BWR-3/4 reactors were designed for the US, where tsunamis are physically impossible since in the West coast the tectonic faults are underneath the continental US and in the East coast the mid-Atlantic fault is too far away from land. But Japan is not the US. And yet management decided to ignore the engineers because, yet again, the bureaucrats thought they knew better than the experts.
So much wrong to unpack there.
First, there were multiple modification requests made - by the US design team. The seawall was requested by a Japanese team and US team, ignored for cost. The containment building was requested to be modified to US standards for hydrogen venting, a lesson learned from two and a quarter mile island, denied for cost.
Tsunamis are indeed possible in the US, if there's an ocean, a tsunami is possible. That's physics 101, for crying out loud! You've gotten nothing but lousy information.
Two primary errors were not raising and bolstering seawater containment, preventing the flooding that disabled the offline cooling systems and not modifying the containment building to vent the hydrogen through scrubbers.
But, Japan seems to like being lax with their nuclear safety, complete with two major criticality incidents in a processing plant - where criticality shouldn't even enter conversation. Complacency or sinecure positions? Like many things, people are the base ingredient for a disaster, as nothing is ever foolproof - fools are too damned ingenious.
That's something I did not hear about. Thanks for the info and I'll read up more on that.
THIS is why I love science and scientists (I married a scientist) - they are able to put things in the correct perspective.
Sorta feel like the bucket demo was....absolutely pivotal to my understanding of a wave!!
So clear and concise. Thank you
I wish he would do programming tutorials for python and JavaScript. Would make concentrating much easier
He is a superb teacher imho
The design and precautions seem very reasonable, but unfortunately, that was an extreme disaster. It was a tragic loss of life, but the efforts taken before and after at Fukushima minimized further harm. Just another example of Japanese excellence. You have this American's admiration once again.
@EFEZZE6280 It was stupidity and cost saving.
Let me guess, you voted for trump.
@@adjeboog3646 Me vote for Trump? Oh, hell no!
I love your teaching style. Very few opinions, just things like "that's bad" and almost exclusively facts.
Great teacher. I was Impressed.
"The earthquake and tsunami in 2001 which hit Japan" you missed a 1 in 2011 (;
Love your vids.
What you forgot to mention is the reason why generators were flooded. Initially the generators were all stored together in the basement, then after MAGATE instituted new safety rules that required to separate generators for contingency they moved 1 generator to 1st floor, however they left control panel for it in the basement. Basement got flooded and even though 1 generator on 1st floor was fine, they still couldnt start it because control panel was in the basement and flooded. So, it is entirely on the company safety culture and cutting corners. If they had everything up to code, nothing would have happened (probably).
The 3 dots on the glass before projecting the map is a great trick.
Great video as always! One correction though, the town was called Okuma. Fukushima was the prefecture (prefectures are like provinces).
I really enjoy this retro-style production quality, its like this video was actually made in the 70s with eerie knowledge about future events and a 720p camera
It's like you've never seen an educational video from the 70s.
Starting at 11:20 about the spent fuel pools and running pumps to stay ahead from leaks, "In fact, we do have to worry about the core becoming unheated, too." Seems like he intended to say that we have to worry about the core becoming *uncooled,* or have to worry about maintaining pumps to cool the inactive core, etc. This verbal typo seems like it would change the meaning of the sentence, so maybe a screen annotation to retract / correct the misspoken info?
I think he meant to say "uncovered". It's not just cooling the vessel overall, but cooling every part of the pile.
This guy is a GREAT teacher 👍👍👍👍👍👍
Great video. Would be better if the jpgs and graphs were zoomed in / blown up to see better
With all this Nuclear is still the safest form of energy production, unless you are Russian.
Still absolutely the safest in Russia as well.
GO RUSSIA! Russia are the strongest and best. Rock solid cars and craftsmanship And Chernobyl almost work, didnt it. :)
The Russians modified their reactors after Chernobyl. They no longer have the same fatal flaws.
...or live in an earthquake prone area while having contingency plans that hinge on some natural event NOT happening.
Or have management that tries to cut corners to maximize profit while being too busy covering their own backsides.
How is solar power unsafer than nuclear?
use the toaster scene from Groundhog day to illustrate what happens when a tsunami floods a high-wattage system
Excellent information
They actually managed to keep the HPCI (High Pressure Coolant Injection) going for 70 hours, far longer than it was designed to last. But it still wasn't enough.
I've been following a number of these presentations which have been excellent so being a resident of Japan it was disappointing to hear some important mistakes in this one.
大熊町 (Okuma Town) and 双葉町 (Futaba Town) are the nearest town to the nuclear power plant, the plant is named for the prefecture and it's capital city.
Most importantly, the tsunami did not reach 40 meters at the power plant. It was more like 15 meters with the turbine halls being under 5 meters of water at some point. The Tsunami did reach run-up heights of around 40 meters but that only happened in valleys further north along the coastline but this should not be confused with actual wave height - it is like a wave in a bath tub that scales the side wall when it has to stop.
I'm not disputing you, but how did the water breach the 30 meter sea wall?
@@jayyyzeee6409 Which one, where? You are talking about hundreds of kilometers of coastline with multiple towns and fishing ports. Which one?
re: " disappointing to hear some important mistakes in this one."
Mistakes NOT germane to the subject under discussion. Just saying.
@@poruatokin I was referring to the sea wall protecting the Fukushima nuclear facility. Are there other sea walls that are relevant to this discussion?
@@jayyyzeee6409 Maybe he can't see the forest for the trees. Maybe he commented watching only the beginning of the presentation where the earthquake and tsunami were described and never reached the important part that talked about the sea wall protecting the diesel generators.
Anyway, as someone else pointed out, the details given by Paul are not that important to the presentation. The important thing is that the sea walls were not high enough and water did breach them.
I love that they designed a nuclear power plant anticipating that it will explode.
Why wouldn't you build it with the idea that it could explode? Hell out first experiments with nuclear power was in MAKING it explode.
@@popitrekker1543 *grumbles in the fact that reactors can't undergo a fission explosion
@@orthranus3352 What are you talking about? I watched HBO's Chernobyl which told us that a steam explosion would have resulted in a 2-4 megaton explosion.
Eureka! If only those thousands of scientists during the '50's and '60's had realized that instead of investing billions of dollars in enriching 235 to 95% and constructing neutron reflecting shells to maintain the reaction, you can reach megaton yields by dropping a slab of corium into a vat of water! Brilliant!
@@xxFortunadoxx Thanks for the laugh man.
@@orthranus3352 That said, I would be interested in seeing a bunch of scientists dump a giant slab of corium into a vat of water.
Very nice explanation
I liked the tsunami simulation, very educational :D
This wasn't the worst earthquake to hit japan: According to the IAEA report, management had been warned that the sea wall was too low because archeological evidence showed there had been higher Tsumanis in the past. However, management dragged their feet, and the result was a nuclear disaster. According the transcripts of Legasov's tapes (the ones made before his suicide), similarly, he concluded before Chernobyl that a large disaster at some Soviet reactor was inevitable because of pervasive mismanagement from the top. Similarly, Feynman's account of the space shuttle Challenger disaster made it clear that although the proximate cause was a cold O-ring, the true cause of the problem was mismanagement at NASA. You can hire all the smart technical people you want, but if you put an idiot from B-school or a politician at the top then you can doom the best efforts of technical people. When someone tries to estimate the chance of failure of a nuclear power plant or a space shuttle, they should not only include physics in the failure modes but also human idiocy at the management level.
Nice presentation ,but a bit "incomplete" . I believe a more detailed re visitation is warranted. That's 3 coriums you got there. The cleaning is going to be long and very costly.
...and never gonna happen.
re: " I believe a more detailed re visitation is warranted."
It is up to the "student" to do his or her own study/research from the point where the instructor left it ...
@@Dreamhelmet ,sigh ;(
Good stuff
Thanks doc
Nice mixing of feet and meters.
Both are used here in the US.
@@uploadJ Problem is he erroneously suggests 40 feet and 40 meters are the same.
I need some context - what is the context?
A simple unit error is not the EOtW.
@@uploadJ He made the tsunami 3 times higher. And as we are dealing with volumes here, you need to cube that. So that would make the mass and destructive force of the wave atleast 27 times bigger.
actually... now that I think of it, 40m wave could have been not as big an issue for the plant, as the water would have simply poured in over the wall and filled the structure. :)
"The earthquake and tsunami in 2001 which hit Japan"
2011
2021 maybe is time for another round
@@gorg9928 better not......
What an amazing teacher
Professor, how much of a factor did ground subsidence contribute to the over topping of the sea wall protection at Fukushima? The ground did settle 2-3 meters in place’s along the coast of Japan.
Watching these videos I understand how engineers like fission technology. It is much more entertaining than solar panels or windmills.
They are an engineering challenge. Placing windmills or solar panels and selling electricity is a boring business.
With accidents blind spots cease to be. But still, as in everything, there are blind spots.
A challenge for engineers is to do this without poisoning. I hope they succeed.
Safety is far more important than entertainment for engineers.
@@wendlerkurt I agree
Some of the professor's ties are radioactive.
I've watched quite a few of his vids now and his ties are about as radioactive as his engineers accent.
highly superior professor - any new info on current 'today's' status on fukushima?
It was an earthquake and a tidal wave, and no one in Japan imagined it could happen.
What you fail to mention, is why this was allowed to happen. The officials in Fukushima HAD been repeatedly warned that the emergency generators are not safe enough if a Tsunami hits, but they had intentionally decided to ignore it, since it would have looked bad for them politically.
Also the reactors weren't damaged in the initial quake, but the problem was that the earthquake detection system shut down the reactors, and thus couldn't operate the cooling systems when the emergency power got wiped out. Ironically, if the reactors hadn't been shut down for safety reasons, the whole accident would not have happened :(
@Frank Heuvelman You must not have, since you don't seem to understand what it means
@Frank Heuvelman You apparently can't read, if you think I somewhere suggested about restarting the reactors.
And you also, you seem to be full of shit
@Frank Heuvelman Yes you fail, because your brain obviously doesn't work normally.
Read and try understand the whole text, not just parts of it while inventing your own misconclusions.
Try one more time, if you get even close to what I actually wrote, I might still bother to reply, otherwise will just block you and report as harassment
@Frank Heuvelman ok, apparently it was too tough a mission for you. Goodbye mr. Troll
@Frank Heuvelman I see Santtu's point. The leaking of hydrogen happened because they transferred the reactor core elements.
Great presentation. I have a question, why did or does some of the media claim that the core melted through it's bottom containment and is leaking directly into the ocean?
Because it did and still is
@@steviebronco1 Yes, indeed, but I was hoping the presenter would reply as he seems to conclude with everything being contained.
@@RobBon12 I think this guy is bought and paid for. Fukushima is a bigger disaster than Chernobyl. And for him to be nonchalant about pouring sea water into a nuclear reactor is hilarious! It'll corrode the shit out of the place and has condemned the facility indefinitely. The nuclear waste they're dumping into the sea has destroyed the environment also but he still thinks it's all good! The place is a nuclear disaster site and what's worse they're now actually growing rice in the prefecture! They're trying to sell that into the world food chain! It's terrifying that no one in mainstream is talking about this!
@@steviebronco1 so true. He is a SHILL
@@steviebronco1 The environment is fine. The amount of radiation released is so minimal it's boring.. Chernobyl was much worse and even that wasn't that bad, like 60 dead?
The markers and the clicking of the marker cap make the presentation.
I’m legit impressed at how he can write and draw backwards 🤯
Joshua Sanchez, only one source even touched on Fukushima. Not one of these sources were talking about the enriched fuel you find in nuclear reactors. In the case of Fukushima, the fuel found its way out of the reactors. Those Nuclear Coriums as they are called are now in the aquifer under the reactors. The aquifer water keeps the coriums solidified and stable. That is the upside. The downside is the water and the minerals that are carried in it are moderately radiated, not enough to immediately kill the bottom of the food chain, but to concentrate the radioactive elements up the chain of life. One other point to make, At Fukushima No. 3 reactor at the time of the disaster was using a fuel combination called MOX. it is used to manufacture weapons grade fuel after a concentrated enrichment process. So there is also Plutonium in the mix. Now you are into 500,000 year half life of nuclear elements. You can agree to disagree, but you will never shut me up. It's time for you to do a little research on this disaster and be honest. I invite everyone else to too.
re: "in the aquifer under the reactors."
Down the side of a hill, on the coast, sloping TOWARDS THE OCEAN. Maybe you are NOT familiar with the topography there?
Completely false. Containment was never breached. Oh and try and remember super long half life equals low radioactivity.
You are the Bob Ross of science :D
Now I realize that Fukushima was not a disaster - just one happy little accident.
Great lecture, just one question. Why weren't the generators placed on the roof out of arms way of any tsunami?
They vibrate as hell
Prof...What do you think about the new smaller modular reactors?
Addressed in some of the other videos he appears in ...
Please stop referring to tsunami as tidal waves. Informative vuds though. Thanks for posting.
If the word 'tsunami' means 'harbor wave,' then aren't they both incorrect terms for this type of wave?
@@craiga2002 "tidal" means created by tidal forces. Look up the "Severn Bore" as a perfect example.
1st: It was a huge luck that the wind blew out the radioactivity to the ocean. Only that's why Tokio got nearly no radiation.
2nd: Drawing a "0" as victim number is just a joke, when considering the coming death from cancer.
3rd: From Chernobyl Video: "ALL western reactors have a containment building, which prevents radioactivity material from coming out." This system failed here. Yes the core itself was still contained but not the radioactive waste. So it IS NOT SAVE in all western containment buildings as he told in the Chernobyl video.
4th: It its ALWAYS something new what was never considered before like a 9.0 earthquake and a 40 meter water wave. The next time it will be something new again. And again. And again.
5th: He (or people like him) will talk the next big accident all right too. It's the job he gets paid for. He can not and will never say: "Ohh all the things I learned my whole life had been proven to be too dangerous. I was wrong with that". Because even if he understands that, he would get fired, if he tells that. No matter how clever he sounds to be, how good he can explain it. This technology was never and will never be under control. It has been proven two times. And it will be proven again. And people like him will tell the public again, that this was the one "thing" nobody could have thought about and can not happen at all other reactors, because they get payed to do so.
Use your own brain! If in physics something is called impossible, and it happened two times, it shows it is not impossible. No matter what further arguments are delivered. (Even a single example would have been enough to disprove the argument "impossible".)
6th: nuclear power is the safest of all the electricity generation methods we have.
You did a good job of convincing me it could have been far worst without the good safety mechanisms used. Of course, the generators weren't protected enough. The spent fuel pool could obviously have been improved but that falls under extraordinary circumstances possibly. Of course you stated the pool was built high up which wasn't a good thing obviously. They were actually close to preventing these meltdowns if they got good generators. An important thing would be to have the generators sent in by the military, and that the military have the generators ready and tested regularly, as well as setup tests.
If they had a procedure in place with the military for an emergency transfer of generators, maybe they could have stopped it.
The US military had a standing offer to help in any way--and they did help with rescues all over the island. The US military is all over Japan. They have thousands of helicopters and never go anywhere without generators. Not a single request for help from TEPCO.
In Navy Nuclear Power we were taught that SCRAM was the acronym of: Super-Critical Reactor Ax Man, after the one person, armed with an ax, that was charged with chopping the rope that held up the control rods of the (first) atomic pile if the reaction went super-critical.
It may have been apocryphal, but it seemed to fit the lesson being given and continues, in my mind, to be a great visual of what (should) happen if the reactor suffers an anomaly or power excursion.
@Dave Almighty Early '80s. Worked on 688s out of Pearl.
And yes, there was a great deal of arrogance, along with large doses of self-importance.
I've learned with experience, however, that those proclivities reside in almost all professions and industries.
He actually mentions this in another video, that originally it came from the first experiment in like '42 with the axe man there to cut that rope to insert the control rod in case of emergency. Later they started using the less ominous sounding Activation System.
@Dave Almighty No. Got out of the Navy when it turned into a "No Fun Zone" with every other dude on the pier getting busted for some kind of A) Alcohol Related Incident, or B) Sexual Harassment Incident.
Went into law-enforcement and retired after 20+ years of getting shot-at and puked-on.
Sitting on a mountain now, watching the world ignite into a massive fireball.........
Karl Brundage Safety Control Rod Activator Mechanism, which in the olden days might have been a guy with an axe on the rope.
Completely down plays the ongoing dangers of Fukushima, omits critical information, like MELT-THRUS, damaged main containment. Just mentions hydrogen explosion....omits the rest.
Jim Hofoss He puts into perspective the accident, and that’s all it was, an accident. It wasn’t a disaster like the earthquake or tsunami that caused it, or like what happened at Chernobyl. There is a difference between the words accident and disaster for a reason my uneducated friend.
MegaSherman15 It was no accident that they chose to build nuclear reactors over one of the most seismically active regions of the world, my uneducated friend.
No dangers. No damage to main containment. Nothing other than hydrogen explosions. Go back to proving the flat earth nutjob
Tim Rosencrans You are dangerously naive and ignorant....go play in the bags of topsoil collected from the surrounding area. They count in the millions. Then, have a swim in the ocean adjacent to the leaking tanks they bolted together to hold the contaminated water that they used to pour over the reactors for cooling. Geiger counters don’t lie. You are an imbecile.
Jim Hofoss your right they don’t lie... you could definitely swim in that water. You could swim in the tanks with no ill effect.
Watched a few by him now. Obvious Nuclear fanboy. No mentioning of melted cores. 40 years worth of cleaning. 50.000 times higher dose of cesium found in the surrounding waters. all save and sound. Harmless on top of it
massaka123 I haven’t found any articles on that, mind replying with what you searched for to get it (and if possible what VPN area you did it from)
It would be really cool to hear is take on the three mile island incident
Giant ship? It's a little tug boat. But thanks for your videos they are great.
9:00 Stopped watching there.
Yeah, to gimmicky, in context of this highly controversial topic. At least in the public discussion.
Hes teaching his students and making it easier to remember what was taught. You're kinda whats wrong with society. You feel that your opinion is better than a fact and then VIRTUE SIGNALLED and told on him like a petulant child. Don't brag you stopped watching cause you couldn't handle someone trying to teach. Grow up. #ChildPlease #BabyCry
Agreed, very poor classroom demonstrations - hard to take him seriously after that.
What!?! That part was humanizing. I can see if over half the video was like this why it would be a turnoff. But this was welcomed. I wish more content creators do things like this. (Some are so boring that whatever they were saying lost relevance)
Your assistant students are curiously attractive.
So did the reactor cores inside the reactors/containment buildings become uncovered, or was all of this a result of the spent fuel pools?
I remember the first thing the internet asked was "Are the anime characters OK?" "Did any anime artists die in the quake?"
This proves the lie zirconium cladding only decays to hydrogen inside the nuclear reactor primary containment i e the reactor vessel in the presence of steam under pressure so it cannot happen in a spent fuel pool only unit 4 was refuelling unit 3 was the largest explosion as outlined in this lecture a 3 foot thick concrete and steel containment structure separated the reactor vessel from the rest of the reactor building as boiling water reactors operate at 1100 PSI the only way the hydrogen can escape is if there is a breach of primary containment a breach of containment happens at the weakest point of the reactor vessel the lid when over pressurisation stretches the bolts then you do not get a hydrogen explosion you get an overpressure steam explosion the four damaged reactors between them let out about 5000 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation watch the video of unit 3 explosion it is straight up the lid of the reactor vessel became completely detached this would have only happened if the fuel had melted down into the emergency features the Taurus at the bottom is supposed to be the last defence as as in a meltdown situation the molten core under gravity Falls into the Taurus which is three quarters full of water unfortunately it's too small all on ge Mark 1 boiling water reactors so when this happened and it ended up boiling the water and increasing the pressure to the point of reactor pressure vessel failure there were no hydrogen explosions there were several ge mark one boiling water reactor containment failures both above and below ground as in Unit 2 this is where it gets a lot worse than Chernobyl as the core is now leaching highly radioactive fission products into the groundwater this did not happen at Chernobyl but if you don't believe me just look at fukishima site now they have run out of space for the tank Farm of highly contaminated radioactive water I have watched several of this guys videos is getting paid by the nuclear industry either that or he doesn't understand what he's talking about
Taurus, twice, by my count, s/b torus.
re: "as the core is now leaching highly radioactive fission products into the groundwater"
>> This term, 'ground water', as you use, makes it sound like it will SOON affect Japan further inland, when, in fact, the so-called 'ground water' would have to flow up hill AS the nuclear plant sites are situated near the ocean on the downward sloping coast ...
re: " I have watched several of this guys videos is getting paid by the nuclear industry "
>> As opposed to be being paid by the anti-progressives at Green Peace? What your 'side' often seems to proffer as a recommendation for supplying mankind's energy needs involves solar, wind and LOTS and lots of batteries ALL of which involve their OWN type of pollution during manufacture AND in disposal after some shorter (than nuclear) life.
@@uploadJ hello thanks for your reply the problem with the groundwater means you constantly have to suck the water out of the reactor buildings and store it on site not because it's going to affect Japan further as indeed you're right it is flowing out to sea the problem is decommissioning if you don't stop the radiation reaching out any groundworks on site would necessitate digging in to highly radioactive waste and any Ingress into the reactor building would be hampered buy a fine highly radioactive dust covering everything by the way it's the same problem we've got at Chernobyl which is why they over built the sarcophagus. I don't know why they have not curtain wall the site in concrete using a slurry trench method as the ground freezing method they're trying to use is a temporary method used in the construction industry where as if you curtain wall the site you could then reduce the water table and eliminate the problem.
@gck82s
>> You continually suggest there is 'tremendous' danger present here and furthermore are set on ONE and only course of resolution; these are signs of RIGID THINKING. Such a condition rarely results in useful ideas and/or discussion, therefore, like a wise shark on Shark Tank, "I'm out."
I wish I was in his class, he seems like a cool guy
One question when the water in a light water reactor eveporates the moderator is lost and the fission reaction stop. But could the decay heat melt the fuel rods after the water has evaporated like in fukushima.
Yes, the water is still needed to prevent a meltdown.
damn it , why am i binge watching all these videos
If the spent fuel rods are not in the moderator, why do you need to keep from over heating?
They did an incredible job of containment considering the circumstances. One of the worst natural disasters in history and they managed to keep the levels so low, that is an astounding achievement. That being said, with the use of sea water to cool the spent fuel pools, since they were cracked wouldn't that mean that "hot" water would leak into the water table, is that one of the problems they're dealing with now? I remember seeing an article that they're trying to contain it using chillers to keep the ground frozen so that the HLW doesn't leak into the sea. Have really been enjoying this series. thanks for the content
best video on youtube, good for aleady intelligent educated audience, unlike rest of the other videos explaining like im 5 years old lol
Interesting
One concern, and hopefully the only thing plant designers will have to change, is how the buildings are oriented. Think of how the buildings would have fared if the entire complex was rotated by ninety degrees.
the DGs would still be flooded - not clear what your point is.
I was thinking that the position of the buildings affects how much of the force of the incoming water is able to damage the structures. The plant being parallel to the shore leads to water colliding with a greater surface area of the buildings. If the plant was perpendicular to the coast, they would be less of an obstacle that the water would have to get past, so that could result in less damage to the buildings.
@@kevinshea7547 underwater is underwater, regardless of which way they face. The generator buildings taking a heavy smite was bad enough, but the wiring below ground was literally underwater after the tsunami. It'd have taken some serious pump action and a few cargo ships full of hair driers to make that wiring serviceable enough to run cooling systems again.
@13:02 - Is it feet or meters? I think you said the tidal wave was 40 meters tall. Was the wall 30 feet high or 30 meters high?
The tsunami was 128 feet, 39 meters. I don't know how high the walls are. I don't think the tsunami was at its maximum height at the plant.
Brad Hines - The plant itself was elevated. The walls did not have to be nearly 100 feet high. 😁
I didn't realise the reactors were built in the 70's, I wonder if newer designs would have survived better.
The 3rd generation has passive cooling mechanisms; they do not require the generators that got flooded. The spent fuel pools still would have had the same problem. There are not many 3rd gen reactors in the world now. I believe I heard the number is 40 or something.
To me, it seems the spent fuel pools are a weak point, as well as the placement of reactors on the shore of Japan.
Hi, I saw your video on Chernobyl which was a great explanation, however after watching this one there is something i dont fully understand. You mentioned that western plants are built using a Negative Void Coefficient, yet in Fukushima you mention that they had to keep water over the fuel rods to keep them cooled. I thought as water is the moderator and if the supply of water is interrupted the nuclear reaction just stops. Could you clarify this point for me please?
Hi Pierre this is just high level response but there is two items in play here residual heat after a reactor is turned off and sustained reactions. You want to always be able to control the reaction because as a runaway reactor could not only cause damage but cause a sustained damage if its allowed to continue creating fission. Heat is a by product of reactions and while reactions stop in negative void coefficient the residual heat is intense that the problem is you damage the components and the fuel and when that happens you get some very bad products. The reaction doesnt per say continue but the heat is so intense that meltdown occurs.