Japan Restarts World's Largest Nuclear Plant as Fukushima Memories Loom Large (bbc.com) 49
New submitter BeaverCleaver shares a report: Japan has restarted operations at the world's largest nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster forced the country to shut all of its reactors. The decision to restart reactor number 6 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa north-west of Tokyo was taken despite local residents' safety concerns. It was delayed by a day because of an alarm malfunction and is due to begin operating commercially next month.
Japan, which had always heavily relied on energy imports, was an early adopter of nuclear power. But in 2011 all 54 of its reactors had to be shut after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at Fukushima, causing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. This is the latest installment in Japan's nuclear power reboot, which still has a long way to go. The seventh reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is not expected to be brought back on until 2030, and the other five could be decommissioned. That leaves the plant with far less capacity than it once had when all seven reactors were operational: 8.2 gigawatts.
Japan, which had always heavily relied on energy imports, was an early adopter of nuclear power. But in 2011 all 54 of its reactors had to be shut after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at Fukushima, causing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. This is the latest installment in Japan's nuclear power reboot, which still has a long way to go. The seventh reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is not expected to be brought back on until 2030, and the other five could be decommissioned. That leaves the plant with far less capacity than it once had when all seven reactors were operational: 8.2 gigawatts.
do u want godzilla (Score:2, Insightful)
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If Donald is actually Christian, then I'm Clark Kent. MAGAs don't even read the New Testament, only listen to the parts Hannity cherry-picks.
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Just mostly evangelicals. Go figure.
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They've already swallowed major fantasy improbables based on what they're told, how to interpret their book, what local leaders say, and not their own assessment of reality.
So if anyone can believe the nonsense that the guy guilty of fraud, rape, money laundering, theft, constant lying, serial adultery, ignorant of church and church teachings, is actually a savior picked by God, it could be these guys.
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Logical Fallacy: Most liberals agree with ALL opinions of a particular Beatle. Should I likewise paint all MAGAs with the might-makes-right opinions of Stephen Miller?
Read a fucking logic book, Maganderthal!
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Addendum: I'm assuming you are (mis) quoting the lyrics of John Lennon's "Imagine". If not, then I have no idea what you are talking about.
To me "American values" are democracy, checks & balances on the powerful, freedom of political speech, freedom of and from religion; rewarding logic, honesty, and humility; and sincere learning from mistakes.
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My apologies, I misunderstood the context. It wasn't clear to me who the traits in the list were intended to apply to.
Re: do u want godzilla (Score:2, Insightful)
If the maggots are voting for more Nazi shit, yes. Fucking absolutely yes. Ignorance is no excuse for deliberately supporting terrible things.
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He's been pretty clear about not being Christian.
How do you explain this? https://godblesstheusabible.co... [godblesstheusabible.com]
Or this? https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/i... [cnn.com]
Well there I could agree with you. He has no problems grifting the religious right.
Back in reality... (Score:1)
One reason she lost was she and her party weren't willing to lie through the teeth nearly as much as the opposition, and gave too much credit to the electorate in their ability see through very transparent lies, and hold them accountable for those lies. To repeat an analogy I've used before, if nVidia wins on sales by cheating on the benchmarks and colluding with "influencers" to publish false performance metrics, it does not mean AMD was "terrible". You are drawing false inference from the election resul
Lamarkian evolution of religious lies (Score:2)
Feeding the trolls never works. Trusting TepCo may belong in the same category.
Don't get me wrong. I actually think nuclear power could have been a good thing. However I think the military motivations and resulting bad decisions drove the technology down the wrong road and now we've hit a dead end. "You can't get anywhere from here."
Not sure how the YOB got dragged into the story, even though he's sticking his YUGE orange buffoonish nose into everything these months, but I do have a possibly fresh thought o
Is there an article? (Score:5, Funny)
I appreciate the contribution and insight of the esteemed Slashdotter "BeaverCleaver", but typically there's an article link that comes along with a summary,
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To be fair, the /. editors often rearrange an original submission such that perhaps it's merely an editorial snafu.
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To be fair, the /. editors often rearrange an original submission such that perhaps it's merely an editorial snafu.
There was some editing (Which probably did improve my submission) but there was definitely a link in my original submission. When you submit to Slashdot there's a big box to paste the link into! I assumed the link would be displayed with the story... or, if not, that the human editor would drop it in there with all their other changes.
Next time I submit a story I'll make sure to stuff some link(s) into the main text of the submission too.
From BBC? (link) (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
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Thanks!
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'I appreciate the contribution ... of the esteemed Slashdotter "BeaverCleaver"...'
The serial killing you mean?
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I've noticed that on the occasional article. Eventually I found that a link is also in the title. In this case, the "bbc.com" linked directly to the story.
Japan Restarts World's Largest Nuclear Plant as Fukushima Memories Loom Large (bbc.com) 42
Woah (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Browns Ferry (one of the most dangerous reactors in the US honestly) finally got its 3rd unit fully operational a few years ago after being shutdown for decades (there's a great Smarter Every Day video about that).
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Japan seems to have repeated bad luck with nuclear technologies. While I don't condone superstitiousness, I can understand their population's hesitancy.
Re:Woah (Score:5, Informative)
First, in the Japanese cultural psyche nuclear power is a very prominent thing. Japan has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world to have been hit with nuclear weapons in anger, and the cultural shock of that paired with the utter destruction of their society after WW2 was very significant. You can see it in the subtext of their culture, for example the entire Godzilla franchise is heavily influenced by the fears of nuclear power and the devastation it can wreak on society. Even in anime, the various Macross franchises, they used the term "reaction engine" or "reaction warheads" as a coded word for "nuclear" because the word nuclear has a very strong cultural reaction to it, and nearly every Macross series you see has some angle of some super weapon that could, and often does, destroy entire worlds. It's deep in the cultural psyche there, so when there is a problem and the word "nuclear" is attached to it, the society there shifts around it.
After Fukushima, Japan shut down all 54 of their nuclear power plants in response. That of course made them a massive importer of fossil fuels, whcih they don't have natural access to. Fears and cultural issues with the term nuclear eventually were bested by pure economic factors; nuclear is cleaner than fossil fuels, provides more power, and has a less supply chain issues while giving Japan greater control over it's energy grid. Around 15 reactors have started back up under stricter safety guidelines.
To your point about plants having gravity fed cooling and multiple backups, that's not exactly true. Modern reactors, like the AP1000 [wikipedia.org] use gravity cooling, this is called a Gen III+ reactor. The issue though is that reactors are really expensive to set up, and often times it's more economical to extend the service life of an older reactor than build a new one. So while you are correct about new built reactors, most Gen 1 reactors are retired but many Gen 2 reactors are still active and do not have those features. In the specific case of Fukushima and Japan, Japan has a very unique challenge. You always want to build nuclear reactors near water so you have active sources of cooling. For Japan, that means the coast. The problem though is that Japan is also very seismically active. Fukushima was designed to withstand some severe earthquakes and had pumps that were fully automated that should be able to keep the reactor cool for 1-2 days in an emergency, which is often enough to bring in more permanent solutions. What happened with Fukushima it was hit by a greater than 9.0 earthquake off the coast which created a tsunami (it's notable we use the Japanese word for tsunamis because they're so common there). The massive tsunami came in and wiped out the generators that run the pumps, knocking out all of it's backup cooling stations. The plant, 40 years old, did what it was supposed to do, but was hit with something beyond it's design specs.
And that's the real issue. An AP1000 could have managed Fukushima due to it's passive cooling, but the vast majority of active reactors are Gen 2. Most Gen 2s are good, but they don't have those passive systems, they still rely on generators and pumps for the cooling. Japan built it's reactors knowing their seismic situation, but the earthquake that hit Fukushima was exceptionally large and beyond what it could do.
Backup Generators should not be at ground level. (Score:5, Informative)
For those who need a refresher as to how the failure of the Fukushima reactors, see this video:
Understanding the accident of Fukushima Daiichi (from 2012)
https://youtu.be/YBNFvZ6Vr2U [youtu.be]
Total time: 13:01. The key bit is at 4:49: "The waves went over the sea wall flooding the lower parts of buildings, and disabled the emergency diesel generators."
Had those generators and fuel tanks been higher up in the structure, things probably would have been fine, but with the reactors in control-rod shutdown and needing to dissipate the residual heat in the reaction chambers, the secondary cooling systems powered by those emergency diesel generators were absolutely crucial.
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How about multiple backups?
Re: Backup Generators should not be at ground leve (Score:1)
They had multiple generators. All were at the same height because they decided not to put them on pylons (obligatory build more...) because the people in the surrounding area said they didn't want to look at them. Or maybe that's just an excuse for saving money... And just look how much they saved in the end! Er, wait
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It would have cost money (Score:2)
Incidentally when all was said and done none of the CEOs got in trouble for ignoring the engineers and the public eventually blamed the engineers not the CEOs who refused to pay for the safety gear.
I've said it before but the problems with nuclear are social not technical. But they'r
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There were actually backups to those generators. The situation could have been salvaged. They did manage to get emergency pump vehicles in place and water flowing. Unfortunately a valve diverted the water into tanks instead of into the reactor, and they didn't notice because the monitoring equipment was damaged by the earthquake.
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Or to expand on that: Designers of safety mechanisms should not be excessively stupid.
Just a reminder (Score:2, Interesting)
that all nuclear accidents to date were from gen 1 reactors.
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So?
Let Elon Musk get involved, that will change quickly.
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Just a reminder that all nuclear accidents to date were from gen 1 reactors.
That is, if we're not using the U.S. Department of Energy's formal generational scheme, where gen 2 [wikipedia.org] includes e.g. Chernobyl's reactor that exploded. So, what you mean is that every serious accident happened in older-era reactors built before modern designs with passive safety features.
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Yes, that's what I mean. And chernobyl was a weird one because they were intentionally driving it into criticality.
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Chernobyl wasn't an accident. Deliberately operating the reactor outside design tolerances and having it explode doesn't mean the design is inherently unsafe during normal operations.
Nobody complains about the durability of a car engine if you drive it around with no oil in it.
Context (Score:5, Informative)
Worth noting: Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant wasn’t offline because it was unsafe to operate, but because Japan rewrote its nuclear rulebook after Fukushima. The post-2011 requirements are much stricter (earthquakes, tsunamis, backup power, security), and it’s taken years to get approvals. Reactor 6 got through first since it’s newer and already had upgrades.
The restart push is mostly about energy reality: Japan imports most of its fuel, LNG got expensive, and cutting emissions without nuclear is hard. Local opposition is still a factor though, especially given the seismic risks, which is why the rest of the plant is still years away from full operation — if it ever gets there.
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It was unsafe. At the time of the earthquake, most of it was offline because the operator, TEPCO, the same guys running Fukishima Daiichi, had falsified safety check data.
The design is fundamentally flawed. It is only rated for horizontal acceleration of 4.5m/s in an earthquake, and back in 2007 it experienced 6.8m/s, with some parts of the plant seeing over 20m/s. Some of the waste storage failed too.
They haven't fixed that, they just claim to have put measures in place to deal with the reactors getting sh
"all of its reactors had to be shut" (Score:3)
No, they decided to shut them down, partly for safety concerns, partly for political concerns
What do you mean, Doc? (Score:2)
All the best stuff is made in Japan.
The Accident that Keeps Giving: A Nuclear Accident (Score:1)
Half-Billion Dollar Cleanup Looms Large (Score:2)
In 2017, the Japan Center for Economic Research estimated the total cleanup costs to be between 50 and 70 trillion yen ($470 to $660 billion)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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