Just blame it on an employee, that’s the ticket
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_04.html
Back-up cooling systems at Fukushima
failed
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has admitted that the reactors’ back-up cooling systems failed to function after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.
Tokyo Electric Power Company on Monday revealed the plant’s operation records for the period following the disaster on March 11th.
An emergency condenser system at the Number 1 reactor functioned for less than 10 minutes after the earthquake. The failure lasted for 3 hours.
The utility suspects that workers manually shut down the system as pressure inside the reactor became so low that they were afraid of damage.
Another type of back-up cooling system at the No. 1 and 2 reactors lost power when the tsunami engulfed batteries.
TEPCO is still analyzing the data to assess the failure’s impact on fuel rods.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 07:31 +0900 (JST)
U.S., Japan Debt Risk Underestimated by Credit Swap Markets, Rabobank Says
http://hansafx.net/blog/?p=855
“The most noteworthy observation is that debt-ridden Japan is the most vulnerable to a sovereign-debt crisis after Greece,” said Kamalodin, who is based in the Dutch city of Utrecht. “Interestingly, the large structural deficit of the U.S. puts it ahead of Spain and Italy and our index, which is not the case according to the CDS spreads.”
It would not be the first nuclear problem caused by operator malfunction. TMI was, in part, caused by operator error. Chernobyl absolutely was caused by operator stupidity. Idaho Lab’s SL-1 incident was caused by operator error.
The list of accidents involving operator error that resulted in problems in nukes is long. Just in the US nuclear program, there are dozens of instances.