Machinery Safety 101

In a recent post on his Forbes blog, Edison 2.0, Osha Gray Davidson con­nects read­ers to a live web­cam installed by TEPCO at the Fukushima Dai Ichi nuclear plant. The ongo­ing cri­sis at the plant has made a fas­ci­nat­ing, slow-​​motion hor­ror story for the world to watch. The addi­tion of the live web cam, along with news reports deal­ing with the con­tin­u­ing attempts to bring the four stricken reac­tors under con­trol, make a great study in emer­gency plan­ning and cri­sis control.

New infor­ma­tion being released by TEPCO shows that the reac­tor cores melted down ear­lier than orig­i­nally believed, and in at least one case, the con­cern is now focused on the pen­e­tra­tion of the exter­nal shield build­ing by the molten core. If the core has actu­ally “left the build­ing” as some experts believe, the poten­tial for envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion on an enor­mous scale exists.

In the mean time, TEPCO work­ers and con­trac­tors con­tinue to try to clean up the site, remov­ing piles of debris left from the explo­sions back in March. IEEE Spectrum reports that a tele­op­er­ated (remote-​​controlled) exca­va­tor acci­den­tally blew up an oxy­gen cylin­der that was hid­den in a pile of debris. TEPCO claims that no dam­age was done, and that the machine is still in operation.

The result of this nuclear acci­dent is a global turn-​​around in what was a resur­gence in inter­est in nuclear power. Reports indi­cate that Germany will be tak­ing all their nuclear power plants off-​​line and decom­mis­sioned by 2023. An uncon­firmed report says that Japan is plan­ning to decom­mis­sion all 54 nuclear plants on the islands in the near future. A report on the Ahram Online blog indi­cates that the Swiss are also respond­ing to pub­lic pres­sure to decom­mis­sion that country’s reac­tors, with the first going offline in 2019 and the last by 2054. As usual, the prag­matic Swiss approach is to allow the reac­tors to live out their design life­times and decom­mis­sion rather than refur­bish them at that time.

The Japanese nuclear indus­try, once con­sid­ered  a model of safety by the inter­na­tional nuclear com­mu­nity, has had its dirty laun­dry exposed. In March, just six days after the earth­quakes and tsunamis, Yuri Kageyama wrote an exposé of the industry’s scan­dals on MSNBC’s World Business blog. His arti­cle cited a cul­ture of secrecy in the indus­try that pre­vents improve­ments and encour­ages cover-​​ups and corner-​​cutting.

The oppor­tu­ni­ties that Fukushima is giv­ing us are man­i­fold. First, the nuclear indus­try gets an oppor­tu­nity to learn from the cat­a­stro­phe at the plant, and to see some of the ways that the orig­i­nal boil­ing water reac­tors can fail. This may result in design improve­ments to sim­i­lar plants that remain oper­a­tional in other coun­tries, help­ing to reduce the like­li­hood of this kind of dis­as­ter re-​​occurring in the future. Second, it allows emer­gency response spe­cial­ists to learn from the suc­cesses and fail­ures that occurred at the plant, improv­ing the emer­gency response plans at other nuclear and non-​​nuclear facil­i­ties where a dis­as­ter could have broad envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic impacts. Third, it has given gov­ern­ments, reg­u­la­tors and the International bod­ies a wake-​​up call about the nuclear indus­try. This is a tech­nol­ogy that can be safe and effi­cient if man­aged prop­erly, but when cor­ners are cut and prob­lems are cov­ered up, the caged nuclear drag­ons can escape and wreak havoc.

Our world is enter­ing an amaz­ing, scary, exhil­a­rat­ing, time of change. Nuclear power, once seen as the Golden Fleece that would light the world for hun­dreds of years, has shown its dark side again. Alternate forms of energy gen­er­a­tion are start­ing to come online, with wind farms and solar farms spring­ing up around the world. Even these more benign forms of gen­er­a­tion have their down­sides, and there isn’t enough installed base to sup­port our energy needs — yet.

So, while we watch the grainy video stream­ing from Fukushima, we need to con­sider our way for­ward, and learn the lessons paid for by the peo­ple of Japan.

+DougNix is Managing Director and Principal Consultant at Compliance InSight Consulting, Inc. (http://​www​.com​pli​an​cein​sight​.ca) in Kitchener, Ontario, and is Lead Author and Managing Editor of the Machinery Safety 101 blog.

Doug’s work includes teach­ing machin­ery risk assess­ment tech­niques pri­vately and through Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Kitchener, Ontario, as well as pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal ser­vices and train­ing pro­grams to clients related to risk assess­ment, indus­trial machin­ery safety, safety-​​related con­trol sys­tem inte­gra­tion and reli­a­bil­ity, laser safety and reg­u­la­tory conformity.

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