Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the tsunami generated by last month’s earthquake was as high as 15 meters at its crippled nuclear station, which has been leaking radiation since the surge knocked out backup power systems.15 meters is 49 feet high. That makes for some very challenging engineering for the location of the backup power. Engineers have another painful lesson to take into account for when doing design work in coastal seismically-active areas.
The utility provided its first assessment of the height of the tsunami since the March 11 quake, after criticism from the government and evacuees that it was slow in responding to the disaster. The base of the station is about 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level.
“Most of the area around the reactor buildings and turbine housings was swamped,” the utility known as Tepco said in a statement late yesterday.
Almost one month on from the disaster, Tepco is still using emergency equipment to try to cool reactors damaged at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station north of Tokyo after mains electricity was knocked out. The company is trying to prevent further explosions after blasts damaged containment structures, releasing radiation into the air and sea.
On another note, Washington's Blog (h/t Ritholtz) blames the global elite for the repeated disasters at Fukushima, Deep Water Horizon, and the financial crisis. His point is that the top 1% are too busy looting from society to notice that they are taking extremely dangerous gambles. I think it might be a little bit of a reach, but he is right that nobody is willing to take the blame they deserve for these screwups.
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