Originally Posted by undead
I am confused.
I agree.
If hooking up power lines to get the water pumps restarted is going to fix everything, then why didn't they bring in as many industrial diesel generators as they needed days ago to accomplish the very same thing?
They did. Generators were on site rather quickly considering that the area just had the FOURTH most powerful earthquake in history (9.1, last I heard) and a tsunami in excess of 33 feet, higher in some areas. The local area was devastated, probably killing many of the plant workers in addition to 10 or 20 thousand other people. How many plant workers died or had to decide to go to work or care for therir families? Ever consider how you move heavy equipment through 10 feet of mud? Ever DO it?
I made that statement many, many, many posts ago and why they did not go all out to get them there?!! Someone thats in control that should not be.
And that helped how? Did the Japanese hear you? Did anyone on the board learn something from it?
Do you have ANY IDEA of the size pumps that are involved? The electrical requirements of them? Do you know what size generators are needed? Think of a locomotive engine. They are THAT big. 2500000 watts - each. They weigh a good many TONS. The complex had 11 of those. I
doubt there was one or maybe two available in ALL of Japan. How about the wire to connect one? The stuff is as big around as your arm and many runs of THAT size. It ain't lamp cord!! Not 120 volts like your house, either. 2400 /4160 3 phase - at least. That is 4,160 volts which is NOT forgiving. Either do it right or some one dies; maybe some "unobtanium" gets destroyed. Everywhere they had to work was muddy, wet, slick and COLD. Tired people, worried about their lost home and dead families are NOT the most efficient workers. Emergency tie-ins to existing panels, if not damaged, is a labor intensive task. It is demanding, dirty, dangerous, hard work. That they have jury rigged enough to cool the 3 reactors at all amazes me. You don't hear much about the reactors themselves now do you? News media lost interest because they were no longer sensational as they have been slowly brought under at least some degree of control.
Ever consider that the damage to facilities of those plans was SO MASSIVE that a SMART GUY looked at the flooded motors, mud filled switch gear, broken piping, ruptured water tanks, destroyed controls etc, etc, etc, and said "oh my, this is going to take some time". Construction of ONE reactor takes YEARS. Fixing the EQ / tidal wave damage would have taken a year or two BEFORE TSHTF! Mister "Oh my" which I can assure you is NOT what he said, no doubt tried to prioritize his resources and get the most bang for the buck - and I DON'T mean money!
Ever consider that those reactors have a STEAM driven pump that can cool them for a LONG, LONG time with zero electrical power? That has only been pointed out on this thread at LEAST a half dozen times. So why did the STEAM pumps not work? An EQ maybe? TEPCO hasn't said. Maybe we can read about it in a year or two.
I suspect plant management was on the phone 3o min after the tsunami screaming for help, generators, wire, technical help and about a thousand other things I haven't thought of. Proabably got told "we'll get back to you".
Until you have been faced with the unthinkable, something that ain't in the books where your butt is on the line and you're scared stiff about what is going to happen and things are so bad that a clue would be a Godsend you might want to rethink being critical of what they gave their lives for.
Ya know, maybe possibly the folks who were in charge of the fukushima plants emergency response team were killed in the earth quake or tsunami.
And that is why the people who were in charge from Friday on at the fukushima plant did not have a clue on what to do like calling for big gennys to power the cooling pumps...
Something drastically wrong had to happen here because the people in charge were for sure amateurs.
Yes, maybe they were. God rest their souls. Now many more are going to be very sick and maybe die. I think they would like to at least be appreciated. Seems a small thing we can give them for their sacrifice.
You might want to cut them a little slack until you know what REALLY happened. I think they may just have accomplished more miracles than they made mistakes! They are doing it under UNBELIEVABLY difficult, possibly life threatening conditions, faced by a situation that a sci-fi writer would have considered too far-fetched to even consider.
It is all too easy for us to sit in our warm easy chair drinking a cold one eating a hot meal the little wife just fixed hammering away on a keyboard while bone tired, sick men are putting their lives on the line for other people. Men who have been wracking their brains and working their butts off for a week, eating cold rice balls and sleeping on a mat in freezing cold. You do as you please, I'm gonna cut them MORE than a little slack, I'm going to call them heros.
This was not suppost to happen!
SIRR1
That is spelled supposed, BTW.
Nope. Neither was an EQ of this magnitude and tsunami BOTH higher than all the university types said was EVER POSSIBLE. Like 9/11, Chernobyl, TMI, WWII, airplane crashes, car wrecks, divorces and a few million other events that should never have happened.
