#Japan #Earthquake: Nuclear Plants Designed to Withstand M.7.9

Main points from Yomiuri Shinbun article (original in Japanese) (3/12/2011):

• Fukushima I and II Nuclear Power Plants were designed to withstand Magnitude 7.9 earthquakes.
  This earthquake's magnitude (they continue to say 8.8) was simply too much.

• The ECCS (Emergency Core Cooling System) failed, along with the Emergency Electrical Systems. For Fukushima I, the pumps that circulate sea water into the reactors stopped, because ALL 13 emergency power generators failed within 1 hour of the earthquake.

• At Fukushima II, two of the three radiation monitors are not operational. The pump to pump sea water to the plant is not operational.

• TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is bringing in all of 51 power generator vehicles that it owns to the plants (? not sure which one) in order to cool the reactors

I sure hope Japan's Self Defense Force has Chinook helicopters (or equivalent) to air-lift those vehicles.

By the way, 7.9 happens to be the magnitude that the Japan Meteorological Agency was repeating for a while after the earthquake.

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