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Tepco Tore Down the Natural Seawall Which Would Have Protected Fukushima from the Tsunami
The Wall Street Journal noted in 2011:
When Tokyo Electric Power Co. broke ground on the now defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power station 44 years ago, the utility made a fateful construction decision that raised the plant’s vulnerability to the tsunami that ultimately crippled its reactors.
In 1967, Tepco chopped 25 meters off the 35-meter natural seawall where the reactors were to be located, according to documents filed at the time with Japanese authorities. That little-noticed action was taken to make it easier to ferry equipment to the site and pump seawater to the reactors. It was also seen as an efficient way to build the complex atop the solid base of bedrock needed to better protect the plant from earthquakes.
But the razing of the cliff also placed the reactors five meters below the level of 14- to 15-meter tsunami hitting the plant March 11, triggering a major nuclear disaster resulting in the meltdown of three reactor cores.
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At the time, a 35-meter seaside cliff running the length of the property was a prominent feature of the site.
But Tepco outlined its intention to clear away about two-thirds of the bluff in its official request for permission from the government to build its first nuclear plant, according to a copy of the application reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“While the tsunami countermeasures at Fukushima Daiichi were considered sufficient when the plant was constructed, the fact that those defenses were overwhelmed is something that we take very seriously,” said Kouichi Shiraga, a public-affairs official at Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
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The destruction of that natural tsunami barrier at the Fukushima Daiichi site contrasts starkly with later decisions in the 1970s to build the nearby Fukushima Daini and Onagawa nuclear-power plants at higher elevations. Despite being rocked by the massive March earthquake, both of those plants’ reactors achieved “cold shutdowns” shortly after the tsunami struck and thereby avoided the damage wreaked upon the crippled Daiichi plant.
Both of those plants, located along the same coastline as Daiichi, survived primarily because they were built at higher elevations, on top of floodwalls that came with the landscape. As a result, the tsunami didn’t result in an extended loss of power at those plants, allowing their operators to quickly cool active reactors and avoid meltdowns.
Tepco’s 1966 application for permission to start construction at Daiichi … did review tsunami history in a three-page list of seismic activity dating from 1273. In that chart, Tepco does reference a tsunami of unspecified height that struck the immediate area of Daiichi in 1677. It destroyed 1,000 homes and killed 300 people.
The application cites typhoons as the bigger threat, noting an 8-meter-tall wave generated in 1960. “Most large waves in this coastal area are the product of strong winds and low pressure weather patterns, such as Typhoon No. 28 in February of 1960, which produced peak waves measured at 7.94 meters,” it stated.
A former senior Tepco executive involved in the decision-making says there were two main reasons for removing the cliff. First, a lower escarpment made it easier to deliver heavy equipment used in the plant, such as the reactor vessels, turbines and diesel generators, all of which were transported to the site by sea. Second, the design of the plant required seawater to keep the reactor cool, which was facilitated by a shorter distance to the ocean.
“It would have been a very difficult and major engineering task to lift all that equipment up over the cliff,” says Masatoshi Toyota, 88 years old, the former top Tepco executive who helped oversee the building of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. “For similar reasons, we figured it would have been a major endeavor to pump up seawater from a plateau 35 meters above sea level,” he said in a telephone interview.
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“Of course there is no record of big tsunami damage there because there was a high cliff at the very same spot” to prevent it, said Mr. Oike, the seismologist on the investigation committee.
And Daiichi’s lower elevation contrasted with plants that were built in the following years along the same coast.
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The Onagawa site, 60 miles north of Daiichi, was selected in large part because of its height beyond the reach of any recorded tsunami, according to a former executive at a Japanese manufacturer involved in the work.
Many Other Negligent Or Criminal Errors
Tepco has made many other negligent or criminal errors:
- Engineers warned Tepco and the Japanese government many years before the accident that the reactors were seismically unsafe … and that an earthquake could wipe them out. For example, the team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could “completely and utterly fail” during an earthquake. But Tepco covered this up
- The Fukushima reactors were fatally damaged before the tsunami hit … the earthquake took them out even before the tidal wave hit
- Tepco admitted to repeatedly falsifying safety tests. Tepco covered up cracked reactor core containment vessel and other serious problems for decades
- An official Japanese government investigation concluded that the Fukushima accident was a “man-made” disaster, caused by “collusion” between government and Tepco and bad reactor design
- Tepco knew right after the 2011 accident that 3 nuclear reactors had lost containment, that the nuclear fuel had “gone missing”, and that there was in fact no real containment at all. Tepco has desperately been trying to cover this up for 2 and a half years … instead pretending that the reactors were in “cold shutdown”
- Tepco just admitted that it’s known for 2 years that massive amounts of radioactive water are leaking into the groundwater and Pacific Ocean
- Tepco – with no financial incentive to actually fix things – has only been pretending to clean it up. And see this
- Tepco has been directly hiring Yakuza gang members from criminal shell companies as a regular, ongoing practice
- Tepco’s recent attempts to solidify the ground under the reactors using chemicals has backfired horribly. And NBC News notes: “[Tepco] is considering freezing the ground around the plant. Essentially building a mile-long ice wall underground, something that’s never been tried before to keep the water out. One scientist I spoke to dismissed this idea as grasping at straws, just more evidence that the power company failed to anticipate this problem … and now cannot solve it.”
Letting Tepco remove the fuel rods is like letting a convicted murderer perform delicate brain surgery on a VIP.
Top scientists and government officials say that Tepco should be removed from all efforts to stabilize Fukushima. An international team of the smartest engineers and scientists should handle this difficult “surgery”.
Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear (who sent us the Wall Street Journal article) sums it up pretty well:
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Respect JPM? Why would you respect him. If you recall, he began funding Tesla's experiment in a stop-start haphazard fashion which held up the actual building of the laboratory/building - itself a solid building made sturdy enough to last 50 years and which was torn down within 10 years.
JPM jerked Tesla around to make it appear no funding would be needed - coy. This passive aggressive act cancelled out other potential sources of funding. After the years of nothing happening due to stalls of flow in income, which created mayhem when it came to purchasing supplies and paying the employees, JPM annouced in publically that it was Tesla who was the cause of the delay, adding a tone that colored the story with "incompetent fruit cake."
Tesla went bankrupt. He died a broken man at a rather young age.
Who was the oil man with Standard Oil - the one who had the money required to go buy up every single much-needed component gas station pumps needed to operate them, causing them to go out of business.
Destroying the competition with a well-made product is fine. Destroying them in covert ways is espionage and should be punishable by the harshest laws in a society where the rule of law is respected.
Failures is what JPM, Rockefellers, and the Rothschilds would be were it not for their grande schemes and cronyism. They bought judges, politicians and media to advance their way up the ladder, killing anyone who stood in their way. And now they run the country and plan on running the world. What the fuck...they are 3rd generation fraternity brats and they are unworthy of anything but jail time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G29e5L1oQL8#t=12
Tribute to Tesla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxD-bSFix4M
(I am a) Tesla Ambassador
ranger4564
i did not know the jp connection. thank you for the link.
Real question is why is a nuclear reactor built on a fault line still in use 44 years after it was built. Im sure the recommended life span of a nuclear reactor is under 44 years. Anyone read Atlas Shrugged? I love telling people about the locomotive that did not make it through the tunnel, but it wasn't a locomotive. It was a nuclear reactor and the consequences are far more severe. Yet I wonder if it was just due to incompetence and gross negligence..almost seems like this was intended, just had to wait 44 years...nah couldn't be...
The LA DWP us building a hydroelectric plant at the nexus of 5 earthquake faults, and they don't have a lake or river to power it, they're building it purely for political kickbacks.
http://www.henrymakow.com/theargumentfukushimasabotage.html
It's the same in the U.S.: Nuclear Regulatory Commission Is Using Obviously Faulty Models to Pretend Crumbling Nuclear Reactors Are Safe
The problem is that America’s nuclear reactors are old … and are falling apart piece by piece.
But – even after the Fukushima meltdown – regulators have reduced safety standards.
The Nuclear Regulator Commission say that the risk of a major meltdown at U.S. nuclear reactors is much higher than it was at Fukushima (and Fukushima is worse than ever.)
And an accident in the U.S. could be a lot larger than in Japan … partly because our nuclear plants hold a lot more radioactive material.
It is not that they are old and falling apart. It's mostly the defective back up systems which if needed would cause a meltdown. We have the same problems of quakes and water height at varoius location around the country as do the Japanese. But our leaders have been proved time and time again to be in denial about the defects in their systems so we wait and pray that it doesn't happen here. Look what we did to the gulf for the greed of oil.
I was just skimming the replies to make sure I wasn't duplicating the message. Absolutely right, the same problems / coverups / poor decisions are present in all of the nuclear facilities around the world. It's sickening. Every corporation is a liar.
Is it a wonder why we pursued this source of energy so recklessly and with such haste? To build them all across the world? To keep them in operation while they deteriorate to the point of insanity...they want you dead..sure, sounds crazy...sure I could be wrong but why else keep them around? The technology to replace them is there. Nuclear power makes up a very small percentage of the power consumption of the world yet it is the most expensive and the most dangerous. Yet it is still praised and pushed upon us by our dear leaders. Why is that? You can say it's big energy..you can say it's lobbyists or just plain old stupidity. Alas no, if only. It is much worse...I mean its all right there, WW1 and WW2...The path we have been on since then. The murder of those that have stood in it's way. Ugh...I feel insane talking about this shit..wish i was, wish i was.
GW, you are absolutely right. thank you for your diligence.
"having built four nuclear reactors there they then proceeded to build two more." I mean SIX TOTAL? REALLY? That is the very definition of "we just don't get it" period. Hopefully China has learned the lesson. "the number is two. two is the number. the number shall not be three nor one but two. Two only. Only two shall be the number. Thrice nay, nor thy...nor thou even...but twice...du, dos, ar, zwei...not "two more" not..."in addition to two" but...
And yet the fucking crooks had some nice profits as of late.
W
T
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This is the way all govt sponsored corporations are. Tepco just got caught with its pants down.
In other words, we're all fucked. I think we've all known this for a while now...
oh shit, fuckashima is so old news george. it'll all cool down in a couple thousand years, chill man...................
Essentially yes, and they are running around in circles.
You can not have put it more clear...
The Plankton are running around in one big Circle. And every time that they pass Fukushima they are dosed with Radioactive Pollutants. They tend to die off as a result.
The Plankton are responsible for the majority of World's Oxygen Supply through Photosynthesis. (It is not the Rain Forests. That contributes a minority.)
The Plankton are at the very botton of the Oceanic Food Chain. So that means that if they die off the Oceans die.
The Pacific Ocean currents cannot be stopped. The Currents are a conveyor belt, driven by the convection of Solar Warming. It feeds Plankton to the Kill Zone much like the Trains delivered the victims to the Ovens at Auchwitz and Dachau.
I have read reports out of Japan News that stated that Scientists were "baffled" about the levels of Cesium being elevated at stations distant from the Pollutant Zone.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/23/national/cesium-levels-in-water-plankton-baffle-scientists/#.UnZPyiDTnIW
I am not baffled at all. The Plankton that were in a closer proximity to the Plant had received Lethal Doses and had succumbed. Furthermore Fresh Plankton were brought into the zone by the Currents.
I kind of feel like that fictional character, Sol, in "Soylent Green". The Oceans are dying as a result of this disaster.
The Kill Zone will grow, slowly at first, and then accelerate Exponentially.
The Kill Rate of Plankton will grow, slowly at first, and then accelerate Exponentially.
The depletion of other Marine life will grow slowly at first and then accelerate Exponentially.
The Atmospheric Oxygen Depletion will grow slowly at first, and then accelerate Exponentially.
Look at the Exponential Curve formed at the end of my sentences in the previous paprgraph.
It is not really a bad way of dying. It could be worse. Anoxia can be quite pleasent. But I see no hope that your children, or Grandchildren, will live to see Old Age.
You cannot stop the Ocean Currents. This is an Extinction Event.
TT, you are absolutely right with your assumptions on the Extinction Event. Unfortunately, human greed will be the last to die. The Fukushima contaminated Pacific is dying a slow death as certainly as a Polonium laced cup of tea will kill a spy. Enjoy each day fully as they are numbered as we now know them.
"GE, We bring good things to life" What's a little bit of Cesium here, a little bit of Strontium there? Besides their bottom line profits, what were they thinking when they designed and constructed those Mark 5 reactors? At anytime, a Carrington event, like the one September 1, 1859, created by a solar geomagnetic storm that fries the grid and all the reactors melt down at once because all of their electronic controls and back up systems are also fried. The doomsday machines are in abundence, just waiting for the next known unknown to happen. And your government's infinite wisdom that has regulated the nuclear industry since it's infancy, now wants to regulate the healthcare industry. The herd animals have been too docile and soon to be without teeth as the second amendment comes to a close.
Not so Einstien, this has occurred before in the States, the very first time humans had the chance to create nuclear power, they found a way to mess it up. God then came, cleaned it up by removing the contamination, and turned back the clock so the next time we tried we had some more experienced fellows at the helm to reduce the chances of an accident. After that, we(sin) then exploded a nuclear underwater bomb to create an earthquake and tsuamni which cripped the same reactors we built all those years ago.
"This is an Extinction Event."
Howdy hey Tom.
We said that two years ago when this catastrophe happened, and no one believed it.
You say it today, and no one wants to believe it.
What will they say years from now?
Nothing. No one will be left to say anything.
Even the undergrounders will perish.
Wrong, it was proved in the 70's that you could bulid a pipeline to the bottom of the middle of the Pacific Ocean, pump any non-floatable substance to it and you would never hear from that substance again. This place is hugh and full of energy, it can outlast the sun's ability to heat it, then be moved closer (as in Mercury) until the flame of mostly butane goes out, gets towed to another flaming ball of butane, where the water from the last earth extinguishes it to form another Earth, and the old earth gets sent out to pasture and called Mars. Where the hell have you been educated and living to think such childish things could occur?
Correction to your last sentence, TT.
The hypotheticalists prefer to describe this as 'ELE'. They LOVE to couch words in cute little abbreviations...
EXTINCTION
LEVEL
EVENT
Tall Tom, are telling me that I have a damn good chance of dying before I get signed up for ObummerCare?
+1 right on, TT
But the guys who made that decision in the 1960's paid themselves huge bonuses for their forward-thinking and efficiency and extra profit. And like everyone these days at the top who fucks the little guy, they get to keep it.
Special thanks to the government for creating fictitious entities, know as corporations, to shield people from all accountability.
Dear George,
In all due respect.
I believe that even if the sea wall was in place, the tsunami had also gone upstream of the streams as well as the numerous canals in the area and while it was receding created a larger problem. The receding waters were proved to be more devastating and would have also been trapped and hindered by the sea wall creating the pool that drowned the diesel gen sets.
Short of having the gen-sets up on much higher ground in the original design, nothing would have prevented this catastrophy.
Just my observation while I was living near there at the time and watched on TV most of the coverage.
We are also just as reassurred by GE, (who built the reactors and the back up emergency generators, which also failed because of design) that their equipment was plenty protected and did not need any further saftey advantages. It was GE's equipment going thru those holes cut and they could have just as easily replaced all that sand with the necessary plumbing in place, they didn't do it because GE said everything would be fine the way it was. In this country, we are professionals at making enemies, and it's beginning to show.