[NVDave]

I’m not talking merely running the diesels. I’m talking making like Farmer Fred and tearing into them to get them running if necessary. The best guess I can make of why the Fukushima diesels failed is fuel contamination. That’s the usual reason why diesels fail after getting water into the area.

Was there no one who could dive in there and get the fuel system cleaned out? I’ve had water and slime in diesel fuel and it has taken me anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours to get a smaller (200HP) engine up and running again. It isn’t rocket science, but if you haven’t any training as a diesel mechanic, I’m guessing that an operator isn’t going to go tearing apart the fuel system and injectors to get it going again. They’re going to keep hammering on the starting system until they’ve exhausted the batteries or compressed air. What’s needed is a guy who is about like a senior chief in a submarine here - a guy with a lot of practical experience, a large vocabulary of curses who knows how to use them to make stuff happen “right now.”

[chimera]

These diesels are a bit bigger, so my guess is the job for an on-site mechanic would be more extensive. Basically the entire internal structure of the diesel was saturated with salt water. But what really crippled the Fukushima generators was the tsunami tore out the whole fuel supply system, tanks, pumps, piping, valves, etc. Not much an on-site mechanic could do under those circumstances. Damage to the country's infrastructure (highways, bridges) made delivery of replacement generators pretty difficult.

It was basically an unprecedented event that would have been difficult or impossible to plan ahead for, given the available data. It did not result from operator error, or design flaws, or incompetence, it was just an act of misadventure resulting from a natural occurrence. In those cases about the best you can do is pick up the pieces and try to cobble things back together as best you can, circumstances allowing.