Japan: Bid to 'Protect Assets' Slowed Reactor Fight

TOKYO—Crucial efforts to tame Japan's crippled nuclear plant were delayed by concerns over damaging valuable power assets and by initial passivity on the part of the government, people familiar with the situation said, offering new insight into the management of the crisis.

Meanwhile, a regulator who was inspecting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power complex when the quake hit offered The Wall Street Journal one of the first eyewitness accounts of the havoc at the site, describing how the temblor took down all communications in the area, greatly complicating the response.

The plant's operator—Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco—considered using seawater from the nearby coast to cool one of its six reactors at least as early as last Saturday morning, the day after the quake struck. But it didn't do so until that evening, after the prime minister ordered it following an explosion at the facility. Tepco didn't begin using seawater at other reactors until Sunday.

Tepco was reluctant to use seawater because it worried about hurting its long-term investment in the complex, say people involved with the efforts. Seawater, which can render a nuclear reactor permanently inoperable, now is at the center of efforts to keep the plant under control.

I disagree.

The TEPCO investment had long ago been paid by profits (all the affected reactors had more than 30 years in service) and injecting seawater needs depressurization, which is a risky task only recommended as last resort, once the reactor is overheating.

IMHO it is more shame on the Western media, which has revealed unable to tell anything rational since the crisis began.

Whether this was the right mix in decision-making remains to be seen, but I can’t see how it’s illegitimate to at least consider what courses of action, while still meeting important goals, preserve assets.

After all, Japan had just been devastated by an earthquake and a tsunami. In addition to the infrastructure and humanitarian costs that would need immediate resourcing, the country will desperately need to maintain its energy supplies.

So, the question is whether authorities appropriately balanced ALL competing national interests in how the reactor problem was addressed. Had Japan rushed in and “wasted” the reactor, that is, caused its destruction without actual need to do so, and then many people were harmed or even died for lack of power (I read that some people who survived the tsunami have already died from cold exposure — i.e., lack of energy to heat buildings), there would have been a different outcry.

I see Captain Hindsight is in high gear now.
Of COURSE they made efforts to do it the correct way, and they had a tiered set of actions based on implementation or feasibility of those preceding it.

One could also say that they should have immediately started pouring concrete on top of the whole thing so it would be 100ft underground by now.
The only thing that comes into question is how LONG do you hold out trying to leverage your best case solution? We don't know the story of the onsite struggle, NONE of us do.
Heck, they could have had 1/2 dozen engineers onsite saying "just hold on, we ALMOST have these swamped generators fixed, just a few more hours".

I get into these situations all the time. I work in a very large technical environment in the healthcare industry. One of my key functions is as lead engineer and troubleshooter. When something goes down, you triage the thing and come up with possible solutions to the problem. You ALWAYS stop, take the phone off the hook and THINK before you begin. Then you write out your list. The item on top of the list is the one that has the most positive outcome by taking the least amount of time without doing any permanent damage or costing any money. That first one almost never works, you then start stumbling down your list... the one on the bottom is the often repeated "hail Mary"... it's not going to make you any friends and it's going to bust the budget, but it will get things back online. They key to it all are the timelines attached as you go along. It's like being at an auction; you must pre-determine your maximum bid and if something isn't working, you pull the plug when the timer goes off and move on; you NEVER keep on bidding thinking it's "only" going to be another 10 bucks.

It has to be said as well... even the best of troubleshooters rarely know what the BEST solution was until the crisis is over and all the lessons have been learned. It is irresponsible to criticize the Japanese engineers without having been on the ground beside them as the variables unfolded in real-time.

This was something I could believe. When I first heard about the sea water, I thought about that moment in the movie Apollo 13 where the guy suggests shutting down the fuel cell, and everybody hesitates, because they aren’t ready to give up on the moon. It’s hard to make that decision that costs you millions, or guarantees the failure of a mission. You want to exhaust all other possibilities first.

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