Simple design flaw in backup generators led to Japan’s nuclear problem

Survived quake and should have survived Tsunami if fuel tanks were underground but environmentalist’s wackos will scream for ban on nuclear power plants

What Caused the Nuclear Problem in Japan

I received the following e-mail that sheds some interesting light on the problem in Japan:

I am surprised that none of the so-called media have found out yet. They’ve all reported that the emergency generators have failed. True, so far as it goes..

Critical installations are set up so that, if power is lost, diesel powered generators come on automatically to provide standby power. This is necessary, in a nuclear installation, to keep cooling water circulating. The generators apparently survived the 9.0 earthquake and the tsunami.

But the Japanese made a tiny boo boo.

You see in the photos of before and after, two big white things which have disappeared. Those are the fuel tanks for the diesels. The tsunami swept them away. Note how they were carelessly installed right on the beach and above ground. In the USA, we install our day tanks under the ground. They don’t get swept away. So…this is not a nuclear problem per se. It is a myopic bit of engineering whereby someone carefully calculated how to make fuel tanks withstand earthquakes but never considered tsunamis, not even after the one in SE Asia that killed 200,000 people in 2004.

So now the enviroweenies will all scream about the danger of nukes, and your energy costs will go up, simply because of an oversight that does not exist in the USA.