[sefarkas]

The Japanese screwed the pooch when they essentially housed the spent fuel buildings within ...

The Mark I Containment design is widely used in America, e.g. Browns Ferry, Enrico Fermi, Cooper, Hatch, Brunswick, Peach Bottom, Dresden, Duane Arnold, Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim. The design is by General Electric and accepted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If you condemn the practice of having the spent fuel pool in the same building with multiple redundant pump systems and multiple redundant methods of electric power for those systems, then you are uninformed and little qualified to critique the Japanese nuclear engineers who have to make the best out of a bad economic situation. Radiation from GE designed plants is guiltless when it comes to injuring the public, including the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Detecting radiation is not the equivalent of harm.

[bvw]

>>Buzzer<< Wrong. The Containment design is NOT the fuel pit design or location. And it is a problem worldwide that should be addressed, for exactly the type of failure seen at the TEPCO plants.

[meatloaf]

“Detecting radiation is not the equivalent of harm.” I agree! Isn’t Oyster Creek also a Mark 1 design?

I understand the redundant design used in a nuclear power plant. You left out the separation involved in routing cables for reduntant equipment via different cable trays.

The issue that caught the Japanese was the loss of power when the diesel generators lost their fuel supply. The point that the media missed is that the plants survived the earthquake and the tsunami with the exception of the fuel supply for the diesel generators except for that contained in the day tanks.

American nukes added hydrogen igniters after TMI to prevent explosions. The Japanese have their hands full. I’m confident they’re making progress. I’m sure the nuclear industry here will be examining the Japanese situation for lessons learned.

I’m wondering how many American nukes have a similar shelter for the spent fuel pools. The Mark 6 I’m familar with housed the spent fuel pool within a concrete building.