The scope of the NRC investigation shows another “white wash” of the real lesson to be learned by the Fukushima incident. Rather than trying to evaluate whether U.S. reactors are susceptible to similar natural disasters, the NRC should be evaluating the fault tree to determine how to prevent this chain of events from being irrevocably set into motion from natural disasters, human error AND INTENTIONAL SABOTAGE. A careful analysis of this fault tree would show that only a few negligent or intentional actions that shut off pumping power for a few hours are necessary to start the sequence of fuel melting that compounds itself with hydrogen explosions and radiation leaks which substantially impair the ability to regain control of heat in the reactors and spent fuel pools. The NRC must empower a “Red Team” to ferret out how these fault trees could be exploited by persons of ill will and develop countermeasures that would prevent initiation of these fault trees by any possible set of negligent and/or intentional acts. My initial assessment would be that it would take very few, relatively lightly armed assailants to do exactly what the tsunami did, cut off power several hours. If you think that you could intentionally initiate the same fault tree with similar minimal organized effort, please tell the NRC that they have several hundred dirty bombs, (commercial and research reactors), just waiting for a few average zealots to exploit.
All really good points. The average US citizen would expect such analysis to have been ordered from the Department of Homeland Security back in 2003 when the dept. was created. But, no, there was a lot of yellow and orange alerts and phony stuff to make it look like people were really protecting the country. This kind of phony balony and creating the insurgency in Iraq (targets for terrorists) is how the prior administration “kept us safe” for 8 years. The current crew in power does not seem to grasp that the dangers created by zealots are real, just like natural perils.
The scope of the NRC investigation shows another “white wash” of the real lesson to be learned by the Fukushima incident. Rather than trying to evaluate whether U.S. reactors are susceptible to similar natural disasters, the NRC should be evaluating the fault tree to determine how to prevent this chain of events from being irrevocably set into motion from natural disasters, human error AND INTENTIONAL SABOTAGE. A careful analysis of this fault tree would show that only a few negligent or intentional actions that shut off pumping power for a few hours are necessary to start the sequence of fuel melting that compounds itself with hydrogen explosions and radiation leaks which substantially impair the ability to regain control of heat in the reactors and spent fuel pools. The NRC must empower a “Red Team” to ferret out how these fault trees could be exploited by persons of ill will and develop countermeasures that would prevent initiation of these fault trees by any possible set of negligent and/or intentional acts. My initial assessment would be that it would take very few, relatively lightly armed assailants to do exactly what the tsunami did, cut off power several hours. If you think that you could intentionally initiate the same fault tree with similar minimal organized effort, please tell the NRC that they have several hundred dirty bombs, (commercial and research reactors), just waiting for a few average zealots to exploit.
All really good points. The average US citizen would expect such analysis to have been ordered from the Department of Homeland Security back in 2003 when the dept. was created. But, no, there was a lot of yellow and orange alerts and phony stuff to make it look like people were really protecting the country. This kind of phony balony and creating the insurgency in Iraq (targets for terrorists) is how the prior administration “kept us safe” for 8 years. The current crew in power does not seem to grasp that the dangers created by zealots are real, just like natural perils.