Onagawa nuclear plant loses part of outside power

[FBaggins]

Japan's nuclear agency says the quake on Thursday night disabled 2 out of the 3 outside power lines used at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the plant has been using outside power lines to cool its nuclear fuel rods since the March 11th quake. The agency says after Thursday's quake, the plant is using only one remaining power line.

The agency says there is no change in radiation levels around the plant as of just after midnight Thursday. The agency is trying to confirm the current status at the plant.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/08_04.html

[damntexdem]

1. Japan Syndrome.

Forget the passe China Syndrome.

[Fledermaus]

2. How many minutes after the batteries run down? 600?...800?

No cooling. How many minutes? 600 is ten hours? How many tons of uranium?

[FBaggins]

3. Well... first they would have to lose power.

Which hasn't happened.

Then their generators would have to fail (and they aren't currently flooded).

THEN the batteries would have to run down... (I thought 4-8 hours was what has been reported)

Lastly... these reactors were shut down almost a month ago. There's very little heat to deal with. It would take many days without cooling before overheating would be a concern.

So it's a tiny bit premature to worry about how many tons of uranium there are.

[Fledermaus]

4. How many minutes? Any nuclear power plant. Cooling stops and the clock starts.

How many minutes to Fukushima?

[FBaggins]

5. Ten thousand? (Assuming several more things go wrong)

Maybe twice that much.

Cooling stops and the clock starts.

Cooling hasn't stopped (for more than the seconds it takes to bring up backup power) and there's no reason to think that it will... so why has YOUR clock started?


On edit - One other plant and one fuel reprocessing facility also switched to backup power without further incident.

[Fledermaus]

6. BS, Fukushima took ten thousand minutes? One day is 1440 minutes.

Any nuclear power plant on the planet. How many minutes to Fukushima? The cooling stops and the clock starts.

[FBaggins]

7. Fukushima had only shut down an hour earlier.

It was putting out 20 times as much heat when it first shut down as this one would be.

Have you not been paying attention all this time? Do you think that a pot on "simmer" comes to a boil as fast as one on "high" just because they're both called "pots"?

[BrightKnight]

8. THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!! OH MY GOD! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!

What is a generator?

[neverforget]

9. The sky fell on Fukushima when the generators failed after being

swamped by a tsunami.