Reply #61: lessons learned

[divvy]

I am sure there will be cap exp required to address the lessons learned from this disaster. I don't think this is a death blow to nuclear power.xxxxxxxxxxx I think that it is worth noting that every nuclear plant in Japan survived the earthquake. It was the tsunami knocking out the ite emergency generators that put the Japanese plants in great peril. (None of EXC plants have any tsunami risks.) There are lessons learned for all plants, though. Just a couple - 1) you need procedures and standby equipment to deal with 100% loss of AC... that is a big issue for all commercial nuclear plants -- no nuclear plant that I know of can run indefinitely without AC power 2) emergency response facilities, both on and off site, need to be hardened against earthquakes. And I am sure there are more. My response that all of Japan might have to evacuate was a response to - what is the worst case for Japan? It wasn't a prediction that it would happen. Unfortunately, so far... this accident has been pretty much a worst case event. The fuel pool, in it's original state, could have been cooled with bleed and feed of fire water. If a pool has gone dry like the US government is claiming (I would think that there are satellites that give a pretty definitive answer to that), then there could be metal fires, large scale hydrogen production, etc. You couldn't now cool it with a fire hose. It is way too late for that. Large quantities of water is probably the answer, but at least some of these pools are a radiological disaster now. Some can probably be saved by just restoring water level with a hose. All could have been, if action had taken place within hours after the accident, instead of days.