mheslep said:
I grant that discussion of alternative action is often ill informed (and is in my case). But I disagree that discussions of alternatives are necessarily indulgence in fantasy. The better comparison to a decisive personality, if there must be be one, is Captain Sullenberger and the landing in the Hudson. The Hudson River is not another numbered FAA runway. If Sullenberger had instead stubbornly headed back to the (out of glide range) runway with no engine power because of FAA regulations I'd have little time for those saying he was only following the rules, that nothing else could be done, or that pilot training and aviation operation are adequate, and that bird strikes and Tsunamis just happen.
Some things to think about:
When an accident happens, you are forced to respond to the conditions you are presented with.
To quote the BWR Emergency Operating Procedures:
"The EOPs impose various limits within which continued safe operation of the
plant is ensured and beyond which certain actions may be required. While conservative,
these limits have been derived using best-estimate engineering analyses rather than
licensing models. Consequently, these limits are generally not as conservative as the
limits specified in the Technical Specifications and conformance with these
guidelines does not necessarily ensure strict conformance with Technical Specifications
or other licensing bases. This does not imply, however, that operation beyond Technical
Specification limits is recommended. Rather, such operation may be required, and is now
permitted, to mitigate certain degraded conditions."
In other words, you should not just violate your license or regulations simply because you are in an emergency, but you may be forced to operate there. This is essentially what happened with the flight that landed in the Hudson.
Also remember that both the FAA and the US NRC allow violation of license/regulations as necessary to safeguard the plant and public. Japan had no such provision to the best of my knowledge.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part050/part050-0054.html
"(x) A licensee may take reasonable action that departs from a license condition or a technical specification (contained in a license issued under this part) in an emergency when this action is immediately needed to protect the public health and safety and no action consistent with license conditions and technical specifications that can provide adequate or equivalent protection is immediately apparent.
(y) Licensee action permitted by paragraph (x) of this section shall be approved, as a minimum, by a licensed senior operator, or, at a nuclear power reactor facility for which the certifications required under § 50.82(a)(1) have been submitted, by either a licensed senior operator or a certified fuel handler, prior to taking the action."
When transients happen at a nuclear plant, if anything didn't happen exactly per procedure or per plant design, the operators on shift will all go before a body consisting of regulatory personnel, senators/congressmen, company officials, to answer questions and be held accountable for actions they took. If you followed all the words on your EOPs as they were designed to be followed the likelihood of being prosecuted for an accident is slim to none, UNLESS you had some definitive knowledge that following the EOPs would result in a further accident.
In other words, trying to suggest the operators intentionally violate their license, government regulations, and the EOPs is insane and somewhat dangerous. The EOPs, tech specs, and other accident management documents were made with large amounts of engineering, to minimize the potential for fission product barrier loss, extend the coping time for events, and anytime you knowingly violate those you are making an on the spot decision with far less info about why those documents were made that way in the first place during a high stress situation. It carries a very high potential for a human performance failure. Something to think about
Also, to this day, I can't see any reasonable action that would have ensured safety unit 1.
Side note:
Do we need to have a talk about BWR EOPs??