Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima - Tapa blanda

Sagan, Scott; Blandford, Edward

 
9780804797351: Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima
Tapa blanda
ISBN 10: 0804797358 ISBN 13: 9780804797351
Editorial: Stanford Security Studies, 2016

Sinopsis

This book-the culmination of a truly collaborative international and highly interdisciplinary effort-brings together Japanese and American political scientists, nuclear engineers, historians, and physicists to examine the Fukushima accident from a new and broad perspective. It explains the complex interactions between nuclear safety risks (the causes and consequences of accidents) and nuclear security risks (the causes and consequences of sabotage or terrorist attacks), exposing the possible vulnerabilities all countries may have if they fail to learn from this accident. The book further analyzes the lessons of Fukushima in comparative perspective, focusing on the politics of safety and emergency preparedness. It first compares the different policies and procedures adopted by various nuclear facilities in Japan and then discusses the lessons learned-and not learned-after major nuclear accidents and incidents in other countries in the past. The book's editors conclude that learning lessons across nations has proven to be very difficult, and they propose new policies to improve global learning after nuclear accidents or attacks.

"Sinopsis" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.

Acerca del autor

Edward D. Blandford is Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of New Mexico. He was formerly a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University.

Fragmento. © Reproducción autorizada. Todos los derechos reservados.

Learning from a Disaster

Improving Nuclear Safety and Security After Fukushima

By Edward D. Blandford, Scott D. Sagan

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9735-1

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Contributors, 
PART I: THE FUKUSHIMA ACCIDENT, 
Introduction: Learning from a Man-made Disaster Scott D. Sagan, 
1. Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: An Overview Kenji E. Kushida, 
PART II: LEARNING LESSONS FROM FUKUSHIMA, 
2. The Accident That Could Never Happen: Deluded by a Design Basis Gregory D. Wyss, 
3. Security Implications of the Fukushima Accident Kaoru Naito, 
4. Political Leadership in Nuclear Emergency: Institutional and Structural Constraints Nobumasa Akiyama, 
5. Radiation Protection by Numbers: Another "Man-made" Disaster Toshihiro Higuchi, 
6. Encouraging Transnational Organizational Learning Kazuto Suzuki, 
PART III: LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT LESSONS LEARNED, 
7. Were Japan's Nuclear Plants Uniquely Vulnerable? Phillip Lipscy, Kenji E. Kushida, and Trevor Incerti, 
8. Beyond Fukushima: Enhancing Nuclear Safety and Security in the Twenty-first Century Edward D. Blandford and Michael M. May, 
Index,


CHAPTER 1

Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: An Overview

Kenji E. Kushida


The Tohoku earthquake that struck off the northeastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, had a magnitude of 9.0, the world's fourth largest in modern recorded history. The island of Honshu moved 2.4 meters to the east. A massive tsunami followed shortly thereafter, reaching an estimated height of over 30 meters in some places. A 500-kilometer section of Japan's northeastern coast was devastated, with a death toll of more than 15,000 people. Damage from the earthquake and tsunami led to one of the world's most serious nuclear disasters, at the Fukushima Daiichi (number one) Nuclear Power Station on Japan's eastern coast, owned and operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

The Fukushima Daiichi plant had six nuclear reactors, three of which were in operation at the time of the earthquake and tsunami, with the rest undergoing routine maintenance. As the earthquake hit, the active reactors were successfully scrammed (that is, placed under emergency shutdown). All off-site power from the external power grid was lost as a result of severed power lines and earthquake damage to transformer stations, but the on-site emergency backup power sources, consisting of diesel generators and batteries, immediately came online to operate the cooling pumps and other functions.

The tsunami hit the plant approximately forty minutes later, reaching a height of over 12 meters. It well exceeded the maximum safety design of 5.7 meters and obliterated the 10-meter-high seawall. The tsunami destroyed almost all on-site backup power sources, as well as most of the pumps necessary to cool the reactors. Over the next three days, despite desperate attempts on the ground to restore cooling, the three reactors that had been active before the earthquake experienced fuel core meltdowns, and hydrogen explosions blew away the roofs, walls, and upper floors of three reactor buildings.

Although the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi emitted at least 168 times the amount of radioactive cesium 137 as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, there were no direct deaths from radiation exposure. A mandatory evacuation zone with a radius of 10 kilometers was imposed in the early hours of March 12, expanded to 20 kilometers later that day, displacing more than

"Sobre este título" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.

Editorial
Stanford Security Studies
Año de publicación
2016
Idioma
Inglés
ISBN 10 
0804797358
ISBN 13 
9780804797351
Encuadernación
Tapa blanda
Número de páginas
232
Contacto del fabricante
no disponible
Persona responsable
no disponible

Otras ediciones populares con el mismo título

9780804795616: Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima

Edición Destacada

ISBN 10:  0804795614 ISBN 13:  9780804795616
Editorial: Stanford Security Studies, 2016
Tapa dura