The Fukushima 50 And General Electric

The tragic events in Japan during the last week have been mind numbing. An earthquake of a magnitude of 9.0 and its associated tsunami have devastated the country. 

Tens of thousands are dead or injured and the damage is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Meanwhile, the damage to several of the nuclear reactors in Japan is a story that is still unfolding.  Fire, explosions and high doses of leaked radiation show that a meltdown of the nuclear core at one or more of the plants is in process.

The plant that is currently at the forefront of this environmental battle is called Fukushima and 50 brave men and women are staying at the plant to try and prevent a nuclear meltdown at a growing risk to their own safety. 

However, another story is unfolding and it is not a positive one for the builder of the plant.  GE began making the Mark 1 boiling-water reactors in the 1960s, marketing them as cheaper and easier to build   because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.

The warnings against this design were issued repeatedly as far back as 1972: If the cooling systems ever failed at a Mark 1 nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would probably burst as the fuel rods inside overheated. Dangerous radiation would spew into the environment.

In 1972, Stephen Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Later that same year, Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a successor agency to the atomic commission, said the idea of a ban on such systems was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry and regulatory officials, he said, that “reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power.’’

Now, with one Mark 1 containment vessel damaged at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and other vessels there under severe strain, the weaknesses of the design  developed in the 1960s by General Electric could be contributing to the catastrophe in Japan.

When the ability to cool a reactor is compromised, the containment vessel is the last line of defense. Typically made of steel and concrete, it is designed to prevent, for a time, melting fuel rods from spewing radiation into the environment if cooling efforts fail.

In some reactors, known as pressurized water reactors, the system is sealed inside a thick steel-and-cement tomb. Most nuclear reactors around the world are made of this type.

But the type of containment vessel and pressure suppression system used in the failing reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is physically less robust, and it has long been thought to be more susceptible to failure in an emergency than competing designs. In the United States, 23 reactors at 16 locations use the Mark 1 design, including Pilgrim 1 in Plymouth, Mass.; Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vt., and the Oyster Creek plant in central New Jersey.

There are two nuclear stories unfolding in Japan today.  One is a story of an international corporation building a power plant with "a less expensive" containment structure in a country especially vulnerable to major earthquakes. Japan is sitting on the world's "Ring of Fire" and ultimate safety should have been the primary goal. 

The other story is about 50 brave men and women trying to save other lives by risking their own.  The Fukushima 50 and General Electric are examples of human heroism and illogical corporate greed.

Its the best and worst of the human condition.

http://www.eworldvu.com