What Was Japan's Backup Plan?

Japan had plans in place in case of earthquakes or tsunamis. What was japans plan for keep power to the nuclear power plants after a major earthquake or tsunamis so that the pumps could keep cooling the nuclear rods. Seems like right after all hell broke lose and they started dumping sea water in to cool them. I assume there number 1 priority ater a major event like this was to keep power to the plant and those pumps. Make me wonder if the united states is prepared to handle a nuclear event...

No we just pay FEMA to look cool. (We probably really do)

I'm sure they had back up plans... but doubt anyone forsaw the island moving 8 - 12 feet....

Its so crazy they must of know in a event like this they would lose all power to their plants. Even if off site they had massive portable genrentors ready to fly in in the event of something like this happening to prevent a nuclear meltdown to powe the pumpsp or something

The Plants were built to withstand earthquakes around 8.4 on the scale, unfortunatly, 8.9 is about... 4-5 times stronger than an 8.4 and completely unforeseen - nobody would of expected something that strong. It can't be helped, they're doing all they can to remedy the situation, also, they tried to cool it with many other water types/solutions before resorting to seawater, seawater has it's on share of issues when used for cooling, check the Japan Earthquake/Tsunami thread for more information. Dasva, Catastrophe and Jaerik have been contributing good information, as well as several BBC updates have been posted in there.

Also, no, the US would not be prepared if a 8.9 Earthquake and then a stupid huge Tsunami tore up the land.

Also, the Fukushima plant is relatively old. Can't have helped things.

The problem wasn't the actual Earthquake. They planned for that. When the earthquake took out the power to the main systems, their back ups all kicked on. All was good... Until... The Tsunami hit and took out their back up generators.

I mean, come on, even the most pessimistic people in the world aren't going to sit there and plan, "Well guys, say we have an absolutely catastrophic earthquake, and then while we're recovering from that, we have a fatal tsunami that wipes whole cities and towns in our country hit, how do we counter that?"

That would take a lot of what ifs to plan for.

how *** dumb can u be to not know earth quake in water = tsunami

Not all quakes occur in the water.

about as dumb as you need to be to aim for a 3 hit build.

when did i say not all earth quakes occur in water?

my 3 hit build would have anticipated a *** tsunami into plans for an nuclear reactor

Do you even realize how big the Tsunami was? There are *** entire cities and towns missing... And if it's common sense that earthquakes in water = tsunami... Japan's had 100s of aftershocks, why haven't there been more tsunami's on this scale?

Use common sense, it's not really that hard.

lulz

why do i have to be a troll? why can't i be upset that in the year 2011
poeple still care about money so much and the cost of building all these defenses that it is worth losing lives over? so many "advanced" gov'ts yet people die over some dumb ***like this >.> poeple all over the world starving from hunger and the united states alone produces enough food to feed them all. it's just sad!! enough man power and egnineering to build tsunami proof houses and cars but all people care about is the cost. ***if the planet didnt revolve around money we would all be safe. but i gues that just comes 2nd.

First off. When they built the plant then new the risk involved by putting the plant next to the water. So if this how it went down. A bunch of guys sitting around a table one goes we should build this plant to withstand a 8.9 earthquake and 10 foot tsunami. And everyone goes cool sounds great. Then the guy in the corner goes hey what if the quake is bigger or the wave higher? The rest of the group shrugs and goes were *** and could poison millions of poeple. If they had a failsafe they should of had a failsafe for that failsafe and ect ect. Same with backup power backup power should of had a backup and on and on. Wher dealing with nuclear materials here. There already saying they did not have enough failsafes in place. They should of plannedfor the upmost worse case. Living on a island like that earthquake and tsunami go hand in hand

First of all this reactor is very old. Second there is a cost evaluation associated with backups for backups for backups etc. You can't make a completely impervious system, and getting close is immensely expensive.
Third this was a giant event, 9.0 and higher quakes occur about once every 20 years.
And finally there are some events that you simply cannot prepare for. If some group decide to use a 15 kiloton weapon on an American city, ANY American city, there would be no way to treat everyone that needs medical treatment.

Keep in mind that's a 15 kiloton weapon, the same as what his Hiroshima. There are weapons over 1000 times that power out there, in great numbers.

And to be honest, a 9.0 quake with a 33ft wall of water terrorizes an island nation, and the death toll will probably stay under 10,000? That is amazing preparation and response.
The 1976 Tangshan earthquake of somewhere in the 8.2 range (around 1/10th the power of this bad boy) killed over a quarter of a million people. And a 33ft wave smashing into a 40 year old reactor, wiping out all systems, and still the radiation leak so far is less that .5SV per hour at worse?
Amazing.

I agree. I am saying you have to take everything into account.

You cannot take everything into account, you can only do the best you can with the budget you have. If you go all out and plan for everything, you'll lose money on the whole thing and be better of not making anything ever.

u guys are all defending this ***and saying great *** work when its not. a 40 year old nuclear reactor should not be online anymore. in the past 5 years alone they have completely rewrote the book on saftey for these types of machines/structures. im just saying they could have done better, alot better and the people responsible are the ones with the most money to do so.

don't u guys think everything revolves around money? "money makes the world go round" i hate that ***every time i hear it!!

Well I pray everything works out. When it comes to nuclear safety i dont beleive you can put a price tag on it. Who knows may be if those nuclear plants were more inland they would still have power and the pumps still be running. I still beleive that more thoughts could of gone into the loaction of the plants given the risks. They knew the dangers and still built then there. Kinda like my friend who lives in fla on the coast he has lost his house 3 times but still rebuilds it in the same place..

Easy dont build a nuclear plant on the coast when you know the region is prone to earthquakes. rofl

by building 700 feet thick walls 100 feet high off the coast with gates to allow ships through like that shits hard

The US has 104 operating Nuclear power plants.

No new nuclear power plants have been built since the 1979 three mile island event.

They provide 20% of the nations electricity.

The cost billions of dollars to build, but are VERY cheap to run, on a dollar to megawatt basis.

If we were to demolish all of them every 10 years and rebuild, it would cost the owners and the federally backed loans somewhere in the 1.2 TRILLION dollars a decade.

Go troll somewhere else.

Hey that could make a theme park out of it, have a roller coaster go around the cooling towers, call it "The atomic Bullet!"