Earthquake, not tsunami, may have damaged cooling system at No. 3 reactor

Earthquake, not tsunami, may have damaged cooling system at No. 3 reactor
2011/05/26


Data from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant indicates that the March 11 earthquake--not the tsunami--damaged piping for the emergency core cooling system at the No. 3 reactor, leading to a meltdown, experts said.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant's operator, has insisted that a tsunami far exceeding expectations led to the accident at the plant, and that shaking from the magnitude-9.0 earthquake did not cause serious damage to crucial equipment.

... data released on May 24 by TEPCO points to the possibility of quake damage to the high-pressure coolant injection system, which is part of the ECCS and critical in preventing crises at nuclear power plants, experts said.

Keiji Miyazaki, professor emeritus of nuclear reactor engineering at Osaka University, said the piping at the reactor was probably ruptured before the waves hit the plant....

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201105250133.html

Interesting tug of war on the cause, isn't it?

If it was an earthquake that caused the system to fail vs if it was the tsunami that caused the system to fail.

I see that as a question of particular interest to the nuclear industry since its most immediate relevance is that if nuclear is subject to catastrophic failure because of quakes, then few if any areas are exempt from concern. If it is found to be the tsunami, then obviously it is easier to build in protections.

What that misses is that the root cause of the problem is the use of a system that, when it fails, exacts such a huge cost. No system built by humans is going to avoid failure. Yes the industry learns from these accidents, but the costs of these ongoing real-world experiments is not justified in any sense by the non-unique benefits they (and nuclear fission itself) offer humanity.