Tsunami in Japanese harbors

[spartonboat1]

True Dilbert moment, several years ago. A major AT&T switching center lost it's grid AC, and the UPS's continued to carry the load. The Diesel Gensets failed to start because their 8D's were old and would not hold a charge. Now for true Dilbert...management was in a meeting discussing disaster recovery processes, while all this was happening...can't make that up!

You think maybe Cat/Cummins/MTU will shortly in doorways with Proposals for New Gensets, esp at nuke sites around the world?

[krush]

Japanese never had MacGyver.

[REBrueckner]

Here is a different perspective...on the Japanese nuclear reactor issues and reporting.....from MIT:

http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N13/yost.html

Maybe around this weekend, 3/20, there will be enough factual information to BEGIN to draw a FEW conclusions....Note that even this MIT EXPERT can't figure from (from inaccurate and perhaps biased reports) out what the situation is...

Once a reactor has been shut down, automatically due to significant earthquake movement, within hours, virtually all the heat comes NOT from fuel but by products of the fission...but radioactive contaimination concerns remeain REAL.....

[spartonboat1]

Recent web post via Drudge relates that a GE engineer, plus some associates, quit their project about 40 years ago, over concerns about the GE design they were developing and now in place at Fukushima. These are GE "Mark I" reactor designs, according to reports.

The engineering team that quit expressed at that time concerns that the containment vessels would be subject to rupture under severe conditions, which apparently what has happened. Further, the indications are that if the designs had been upgraded, then they vessels would have been able to withstand any amount of reactor internal pressure.

In short, per reports, it is possible that if the containment vessels had been upgraded to the engineering teams preference, they would not be experiencing the current ruptures. At any rate, that is the report.

[REBrueckner]

So far it seems the dumbest thing is not the Mark 1 containment vessel, but rather placing emergency diesel power where a Tsunami could drown it. You don't have to be a nuclear engineering wizard to realize that placing emergency power say 100 feet above sea level would be a wise precaution.

As you may have heard, all three nuclear working reactors were shut down immediately when tremors were felt. So within 3 minutes power was down to 10% or normal and within 6 minutes, to about 1%.....so cooling was always the real issue because it is required even after shutdown....