8.9 Earthquake hits Japan

[Trip]

Originally Posted by derf

Hey I have another dumb question, keeping in mind that I'm not a nuclear scientist or anything like that, but if the big problem was running electrical lines, why isnt there a set of ready to hook up lines buried somewhere, where they can pull a couple of super industrial sized generators right up there and hook up, start running power, and go from there?

I mean I know that they cant fix every problem that may ever occur, but that kinda seems obvious.

These are high voltage power lines. 161kV+

They did bring in mobile diesel generators, it's just they don't supply enough amperage to run much and eat fuel like a mother fucker.

One 161kV line can power a fuck load of shit and requires no refueling onsite. The grid will keep the juice flowing and they can focus on stabilizing the plant instead of worrying about getting fuel out there.

Originally Posted by Papa_Complex

As I understand it, they had exactly that. It was already hooked up to a set of super industrial sized generators, that got trashed in the tsunami. What you're talking about is just too big for it to be trucked in at a whim, even if the roads and infrastructure was still intact (which it wasn't), except maybe in a Godzilla movie.

Those are the emergency diesel generators. They are there to allow time to restore offsite power. You don't want to run on only them if you can help it. They are there to buy you time to restore offsite power.

Tsunami took them out. They were designed to survive a Tsunami a few meters lower.