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EE Times: Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329126
Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima
Junko Yoshida
3/8/2016 00:01 AM EST
<snip>
Now, five years later, we've followed up on the issue by scouring the Japanese media and government reports issued in recent months.
We also talked to Prof. Rodney Ewing, earth scientist at Stanford University, and chair of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. In addition to the lessons we’ve learned from the disaster, we asked him specifically, where the so-called experts have gone wrong (and if they could still go wrong) when it comes to risk or safety assessments in the science and engineering world.
<snip>
Failed safety analysis
Meanwhile, last week, Stanford University issued a news report on the lessons from the Fukushima disaster, which focused on testimony by Rodney Ewing, a professor of geological sciences in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
Ewing has emphasized that the Fukushima tragedy was not an ‘accident.’ He specifically cited the lack of protection Tepco provided for backup power at Fukushima. Placed low along the coast, the backup power systems — the diesel generators for reactors 1 through 5 — were swiftly flooded and could not cool the reactors. They could have been located farther back and higher, like they were at reactor 6. Ewing believes that these were “clearly failures in design, not an accident.”
The late Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist known for his “risk society” theory, last year anticipated Ewing’s position. The argument that the catastrophe was caused by a natural disaster “is ... categorically a mistake,” Beck told Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper. “The decision to build an atomic industry in the area of an earthquake is a political decision.”
<snip>
First, Ewing noted that the assessment has failed to capture the real impact of the Fukushima disaster. Because the Japanese government’s assessment focuses only on deaths — the quantity of lives lost — “it has missed the point,” he said.
<snip>
The Fukushima disaster triggered the displacement of more than 100,000 people. “They are still displaced,” Ewing said. That element of the disaster is “not captured in the risk assessment.” For those Japanese people who lived in small villages, Ewing said, “My understanding is that losing homes and being placed somewhere else is not a small inconvenience. It has serious consequences.”
Keeping a “narrow view” only on the number of people killed must be “called into a question,” he said.
<snip>
Instead of a typical risk assessment that usually only considers the fate of a single reactor at a specific location, "You could ask, 'What if I have a string of reactors along the eastern coast of Japan? What is the risk of a tsunami hitting one of those reactors over their lifetime, say, 100 years?'" he said. "In this case, the probability of a reactor experiencing a tsunami is increased, particularly if one considers the geologic record for evidence of tsunamis."
Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima
Junko Yoshida
3/8/2016 00:01 AM EST
<snip>
Now, five years later, we've followed up on the issue by scouring the Japanese media and government reports issued in recent months.
We also talked to Prof. Rodney Ewing, earth scientist at Stanford University, and chair of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. In addition to the lessons we’ve learned from the disaster, we asked him specifically, where the so-called experts have gone wrong (and if they could still go wrong) when it comes to risk or safety assessments in the science and engineering world.
<snip>
Failed safety analysis
Meanwhile, last week, Stanford University issued a news report on the lessons from the Fukushima disaster, which focused on testimony by Rodney Ewing, a professor of geological sciences in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
Ewing has emphasized that the Fukushima tragedy was not an ‘accident.’ He specifically cited the lack of protection Tepco provided for backup power at Fukushima. Placed low along the coast, the backup power systems — the diesel generators for reactors 1 through 5 — were swiftly flooded and could not cool the reactors. They could have been located farther back and higher, like they were at reactor 6. Ewing believes that these were “clearly failures in design, not an accident.”
The late Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist known for his “risk society” theory, last year anticipated Ewing’s position. The argument that the catastrophe was caused by a natural disaster “is ... categorically a mistake,” Beck told Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper. “The decision to build an atomic industry in the area of an earthquake is a political decision.”
<snip>
First, Ewing noted that the assessment has failed to capture the real impact of the Fukushima disaster. Because the Japanese government’s assessment focuses only on deaths — the quantity of lives lost — “it has missed the point,” he said.
<snip>
The Fukushima disaster triggered the displacement of more than 100,000 people. “They are still displaced,” Ewing said. That element of the disaster is “not captured in the risk assessment.” For those Japanese people who lived in small villages, Ewing said, “My understanding is that losing homes and being placed somewhere else is not a small inconvenience. It has serious consequences.”
Keeping a “narrow view” only on the number of people killed must be “called into a question,” he said.
<snip>
Instead of a typical risk assessment that usually only considers the fate of a single reactor at a specific location, "You could ask, 'What if I have a string of reactors along the eastern coast of Japan? What is the risk of a tsunami hitting one of those reactors over their lifetime, say, 100 years?'" he said. "In this case, the probability of a reactor experiencing a tsunami is increased, particularly if one considers the geologic record for evidence of tsunamis."
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