Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Nuclear Power Issues in Japan

Cooling problem shuts down Japanese nuclear reactor


Though the shutdown did not cause anyone any harm - nor is there risk of radiation leak - the fact remains that Japan is still vulnerable to another meltdown.

Following the events of the massive earthquake early this year, many reactors were severely damaged and have since been repaired. Now, the shutdown in Genkai has been traced back to human error. The irregular reliability of the plants is not a good sign for the future of nuclear energy in Japan or anywhere else for that matter. While the damage of this event is largely intangible, it could waiver people's trust in the energy source. This may be detrimental to Japan's economy as well as the global economy.

This is largely an issue of the engineering paradigm, mainly in prevention. This incident will likely bring to light that structural integrity of the plant is not the only problem and that sufficient training may be a solution.

Those who adhere to the behavioral paradigm may view this as another sign to work towards investing in another source of energy, one that is consistantly more stable.  This of course is not economically feasible during Japan's period of recovery.

Japan has undoubtably been reinforcing buildings and the like to prevent the extent of damage it recieved from the massive quake that struck, but as was mentioned before, in order to develop the plant they need to focus on human integrity rather than structural.

There are many factors that could have played into this and made things much worse than they could have been. When the shutdown occurred, the plant was only running five of the six reactors at the time. Had more been running, the meltdown could have escalated. This event has shifted blame from natural disaster to human error, which gives the power comapanies less credibility. A more cautious population could benefit the country in the long run by raising awareness about regulations and may help the country its road to recovery.