First things first, this was not an accident. Any media outlet calling it one is proving they do not have anything resembling a mastering of english. The modern marvel of Japanese construction, urban planning, and building codes was designed to withstand a roughly 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The Tsunami walls protecting their nuclear facilities were 25 feet high.
Simply stated, the engineered the living daylights out of their facilities. The deeply sad part of what is happening over there is that mother nature always bats last in this game. A magnitude 8.9 earthquake - the biggest ever actually recorded on the Richter scale and not by historical analysis - was just too close to where people live.
What does this mean for our understanding of nuclear safety?
Well, we now know that something that was built for a 7.0 earthquake doesn't really hold up for 8.9. That's not news. It's sad, it's frightening; but it's not news.
As unlikely as it was in the minds of the brave workers who are still on site trying to cool reactor cores, keep fuel rods from being exposed to the atmosphere, and generally attempt to hold together a crumbling infrastructure ravaged by a home run by mother nature; these folks understand that they are extinguishing their lives for the larger good. Let us all hope that this can be contained in a swift manner and that exposure and risk to human life is as limited as possible.
What went right?
The Japanese people did everything correct they could have done. They were prepared. They do drills to prepare for Tsunamis, and are in an earthquake zone. It is in their culture to expect disasters. It's still terrible that so many have died and such destruction has befallen them. But, all told, they were more ready for it than almost any other society on earth.
Further, the building codes were such that many fewer structures were close to the water than any other comparable place on the coast of the United States or other countries. Their towers were built with much stricter building codes than almost anything we have in the United States or the European Union. The containment facilities and engineering of their nuclear plants far exceed US and EU standards.
What can the rest of us learn?
The people of Japan have incorporated into their culture how to be prepared and how to respond. We all could take a good dose of that to heart. The infrastructure was braced and ready for a large event. Unfortunately, that infrastructure was tested by something with record force.
We should look at our building codes and compare them to those of the Japanese. We can learn a lot from them about how to do good urban planning. HUD, take note.
0 comments:
Post a Comment