3-meter tsunami reached nuclear plant after powerful Japan quake

Thank goodness. Dodged the bullet that time.

Almost another Fukushima, Japan can't afford another one.

Question is: where are the backup generators located???? Plant operators were advised the design of the Fukushima plant was outdated and not ideal, but they did nothing to mitigate the design flaws. They did not move the generators even after being advised to do so several years before.

Exactly JDoe , we were lead to believe that the Fukushima disaster wouldn't have happened if the cooling systems hadn't been taken out . Hence it was down to human error and nuclear power is not at all dangerous !

The operator initially said that a gauge had shown no major change in water levels.

As it is reported here, this seems a serious problem. Either the instruments in place to warn about dangers to the plant are not working as they should or people are reporting things without confirming them first. Both things can lead to disastrous consequences.

Since the Fukushima disaster, I always wandered about the location of the back-up generators at ground level, easy to be flooded and damaged by tsunami flood water. I would appreciate if the press would report on this in all nuclear power stations.

Partial outside power failure continues, no safety risk

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240105_42/

Wouldn't Fukushima Daiichi have been okay, or the accident been far smaller, had it been built "11 meters" above sea level?

While the idea of another tsunami at an NPP is very concerning, I'm sure Ishikawa would have plenty of other problems if an 11 meter high tsunami hit the prefecture. 11 meters at the NPP probably means 40m or higher in coves and natural bays, as we saw at places like Ishimaki and Kesennuma in 2011.

For people who've been to Noto, the Shika plant is about 10km north of the Chirihama beach you can drive your car on.

During the 2011 quake the waves or Tsunami was measured at almost 40 meters high according the certified data, how could anyone prepare for this? Yes 15 or even 20 meters high concrete deflectors could help but Tsunami as high as this I doubt if any nation can even prepare for this.

We need to keep searching for a better and safer source of energy and or may be move these plants to a much higher grounds.

Paul Spira

wallaceToday 09:20 am JST

> Partial outside power failure continues, no safety risk

> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240105_42/

> NHK is not a reliable source of information especially on nuclear power plants. You might recall the debacle of reporting on the Fukushima Disaster.

Other news sources are publishing the same story.

The height of the tsunami which hit the Fukushima plant was about 15 m.

@Mark

There was plenty of historical evidence of high tsunamis in the area, even as late as Meiji, but this was ignored, in fact the land was lowered before the Daichi plant was built.

Reported information is vague? Description conflicts:

Seawall = 4M

Plant= 11M

Tsunami= 3M?

Gage showed no changes. What gage?

Sorry I'm not a basic math kinda guy. Help me out JT.

No to Nuke Power.

There were other things too, but again the news is let out in drips and drops. After the evidence of this three-meter tsunami, for example, they also discovered a lean in the seawall when they checked it.

"Broken gauge" usually means they could not or would not measure anything. See this from the Japan Times, quoted for educational purposes:

Hokuriku Electric officials said Monday they were assessing the damage but that there was no change in the readings of the plant’s monitoring posts, and that no external radiation had been detected. However, of the 101 radiation monitoring posts in the plant's vicinity, 13 are no longer operational.

@Paul Spira

Other news sources are publishing the same story.

Japanese news, maybe but not non-Japanese news. Before Johnny Scandal went public by BBC, none of big news companies in Japan willing to put it on their news. That same with Fukushima too.

Check this

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271881284_Media_Coverage_of_Fukushima_Nuclear_Power_Station_Accident_2011_A_Case_Study_of_NHK_and_BBC_WORLD_TV_Stations

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/01/08/general/fukushima-lays-bare-japanese-medias-ties-to-top/

The height of the tsunami which hit the Fukushima plant was about 15 m.

How we know that Tsunami won't go above 15 m or 3 m in Ishikawa, we just got lucky this time.

A tsunami measuring about 3 meters high

We need to keep searching for a better and safer source of energy and or may be move these plants to a much higher grounds.

Of all the forms of energy out there, nuclear has the best track record when it comes to safety and energy output, followed by petroleum and coal. That's not to mention that it's almost infinitely recyclable as they keep finding new inventive ways to re-use the "waste" produced.

The problem that arises, however, is the lack of choice. Electric companies have a "natural monopoly" that is only subjected to one regulator, the government. And you can see the result when TEPCO plants failed government inspections, but were still given the green light to continue operating. So, what are the alternatives? The first alternative is to advocate for there to be multiple unrelated electric companies in each area that compete with each other. This would solve the problem of both increasing safety standards and high prices because companies would be incentivized to have the safest plants that produce the most energy at the least amount of cost for customers. However good luck pursuing that. You can guess the government's response to allowing competition in a market they control. Even here in the U.S., only 15 states allow for alternative electricity suppliers.

So, what's another option? Well, you cut your house off from the grid and find a way to supply energy yourself. As much as I think solar is a farce, having your roof covered in panels and complementing it with a gas-power generator should provide more then enough energy for your average needs (Unless your house is covered in Christmas decorations). Still may want to cut down on a couple things, like your Xbox/PS being on standby all the time when you're not using it. And as much as that may sound like you're being shunted back to the "stone age", here in the U.S., majority of the country never actually had stable uninterrupted access to electricity until the 70's. A lot of this stuff is still relatively brand new.

How we know that Tsunami won't go above 15 m or 3 m in Ishikawa, we just got lucky this time.

i’m pro nuclear because I care about future generations and I think we have to expect tsunamis of 15 m every 300 years or so. What does that have to do with nuclear? The Fukushima meltdown was caused by human error; venting hydrogen inside the reactor. How many people died? Zero. Modern reactors have automatic shut down systems. There’s no place I’d rather be in an earthquake than in a nuclear reactor

How we know that Tsunami won't go above 15 m or 3 m in Ishikawa, we just got lucky this time.

If it does go over 15m, there will be huge problems that exceed a nuclear accident. Thousands are likely to die and the number of homeless will be in the 100,000s. The city of Kanazawa has half a million people. If 15m is a remote possibility, no-one should live anywhere near the coast.

https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/10/136.8072/36.5934/?theme=water_level&map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&refresh=true&water_level=10.0&water_unit=m

Once again, just dumb luck the situation was not worse. Some day it will be, and these fools in charge will claim the never knew it could happen.

I have some difficulty understanding the significance of the height measurements. Is the volume of water not also important? If only a small volume of water reaches 15m, is it such a problem? And is a massive volume of water reaching 2m not more destructive? I remember videos of the Tohoku tsunami where water poured over coastal walls, about 1-2m above normal sea level. The damage was massive because the raised sea level covered a huge area and so poured over the land for a long period. Can anyone can point me to a clear explanation of tsunami measurements?

The important thing that everyone is missing is that this nuclear power plant has not been in operation since 2011.

The spent but still potentially active fuel rods have to be kept cooled in their pools. Only one of two electricity supplies is still working, and they haven't fixed the broken one, so now there is no redundancy.

NHK TV has just showed photos of the NPP grounds, with cracked and heaving slabs of concrete and asphalt, shown during a safety committee meeting. These suggest that the plant may be built over a fault, they said, which will need investigating, and the reply of Hokuriku Electric Power was 'sotei gai', the quake must have 'topped their original construction specifications'.

Also they mentioned that the number of broken radiation sensors in the region was not 13 out of 101, but actually 18. (Close to 20%)

Finally they said that with many of the local roads unpassable, it would be difficult for people to flee in case of a sudden real emergency.

Edit, showed = shown.

After every failure at nuclear power plants and every potential failure, they still cannot use their experience with the accidents to be able to stop from being negligent with their failures to provide the public with safe and honest readings from tsunami buoys. The blackouts will continue.