Inside the nuclear plant hit by earthquake

[bananas]

"The long, straight ridge and crevice that now runs alarmingly through the middle of the Kashiwazaki plant..."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2224640.ece

August 9, 2007
Inside the nuclear plant hit by earthquake

<snip>

The roads within the plant are puckered and twisted like rumpled carpets – many were patched-up hastily to allow heavy industrial vehicles to reach the worst-affected parts of the plant. Flights of stairs no longer meet their intended floors at either end, and steel lamp-posts lie strewn on the ground.

Some corridors within the reactor buildings themselves, are split by 12-inch cracks along the floor. Near one of the reactors the surrounding area has subsided by more than a yard.

<snip>

The admission that most stunned Japan, however, was that the site, which Tepco had insisted in the High Court was nowhere near an active faultline, was in fact built directly above one. The long, straight ridge and crevice that now runs alarmingly through the middle of the Kashiwazaki plant, said one of Japan’s most respected seismologists, clearly proves that.

That faultline now threatens the future of Kashiwazaki. Katsuhiko Ishi-bashi, the Seismology Professor of Kobe University who resigned from the Government’s nuclear safety advisory panel because he doubted its independence, believes that it must be closed forever. “Even by the Government’s own guidelines, the land on which Kashiwazaki stands is completely disqualified as a suitable place to build a power plant,” he said.

<snip>

[gasperc]

1. what a clusterfuck

but are there 2 square miles in japan that aren't vunerable to earthquakes?

[razzleberry]

2. does a 'shut-down' reactor need a constant flow of water...

does a 'shut-down' reactor need a constant flow of water
for cooling?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Perhaps we should build them to float, or just build smaller ones that

if affected would be less to deal with. Scotty had the right idea, warp drives the size of a walnut.