Today a magnitude 7.1 quake that registered an upper 6 on the Japanese scale near the epicentre in Miyagi prefecture exposed how vulnerable nuclear sites other than the wrecked plant Fukushima 1 still are.<\/p>\n
The nuclear reprocessing plant and high level waste storage site in Rokkasho village, Aomori prefecture was without external power – again. Luckily its diesel backup generators are providing emergency power, as they already did after the site lost grid power on March 11.<\/p>\n
Two of the three grid connections at Onagawa nuclear power station north of Fukushima are down. Backup diesels are working.<\/p>\n
The Higashidori nuclear power station is also running on diesel power right now.<\/p>\n
Luckily none of these sites got hit by tsunamis this time, but after the core damage and massive radiation release at Fukushima 1 following a loss of grid power and failed backup generators, any incident in which nuclear sites are only one or two failed diesel engines away from disaster will make a lot of people very nervous, especially as Fukushima 1 is still not secured almost four weeks later.<\/p>\n
UPDATE 2011-04-08:<\/p>\n
Grid power was restored at Higashidori at 03:30 JST on Friday, 2011-04-08. Grid power was restored at Onagawa the same morning. <\/p>\n
Due to the loss of grid power the spent fuel pool cooling system failed for 20-80 minutes at Onagawa and Higashidori, which was not long enough for temperature to rise significantly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today a magnitude 7.1 quake that registered an upper 6 on the Japanese scale near the epicentre in Miyagi prefecture exposed how vulnerable nuclear sites other than the wrecked plant Fukushima 1 still are. The nuclear reprocessing plant and high … Continue reading