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For graphical representation of "Deconstructing Controversial Design":

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/19/world/asia/reactordesign.html

> Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:18:24 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Status of "design" re Japanese nuclear crisis? Reply to Norman
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> Clive et al,
> My comments are embedded below.  Clive's post was shortened; hopefully
> I didn't remove so much as to weaken his own arguments.
> 
> On 17 March 2011 08:23, Clive Dilnot <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > [...]
> > My original post asked two questions. The first was open—what does the
> > word “design” mean when it is used in connection with the design of  (or
> > what I would call the configuration) of the Japanese nuclear plants?
> > What is “design” here? What is that in the nuclear plant or as a quality
> > of the plant, that causes commentators to talk of its ‘design”?
> 
> There's 2 questions here.
> 1. What did "design" mean to those who designed & built the reactor
> (commissioned in '71, I believe, the design probably dates to the
> mid-1960's).  Things were different then.  Answering this question
> will help understand the context in which the reactor was originally
> developed.  We cannot expect modern thinking and sensibilities to
> apply to a time that long ago.
> 2. What does the "design" of the reactor facility mean to us today and
> how does that modern viewpoint help bring out shortcomings of the
> thinking 50 years ago?
> 
> I cannot answer either of these questions in any general sense, for
> lack of information.  But I'd be very interested to read
> well-documented accounts that do (try to) answer them.
> 
> In my *personal* view, "to design a nuclear power reactor" means to
> develop the plan for a facility that uses nuclear fission to generate
> a constant supply of electricity safely and within economic
> contraints.  I guess the devil is in the details.
> 
> >
> > The second question, which asked "to what extent does the failure of the
> > Fukushima plant throw up the generic failure of purely technological
> > models of design with respect to the construction, operation and
> > implication(s) of complex systems?" was both a provocation and a deeply
> > serious question. This was not aimed at individual engineers, for whom I
> > have enormous sympathy, but at certain view of “how to design.” So the
> > intent of the second question was not to skewer some poor bastard for
> > not anticipating a 10-metre Tsunami (though let us say this is a nuclear
> > plant in a zone prone to earthquakes, one that has experienced no less
> > than 308 separate quakes within 200 miles in the last 11 days alone).
> > Above all, it was not to suggest that the ‘design profession could have
> > done it better.’ They would not.
> 
> My understanding was that they designed those particular reactors in
> light of the best earthquake information they had at the time - which
> is as much as one could ever possibly expect.  They accounted for the
> modes of vibration they'd recorded in previous earthquakes, and as far
> as that went, the reactors could have withstood them.
> 
> I need to wax technological here for a moment, because it is the
> foundation of the argument.  The reactors survived the earthquake, and
> were properly SCRAMed (shut down in a hurry).  They were not
> undergoing the kind of nuclear reactions that occur during operation.
> The natural decay of the fuel, however, continued.  That's what
> required them to keep cooling the core.  But tsunami knocked out
> multiple redundant systems to ensure that they could keep the cooling
> systems running.  What's more, the tsunami effectively isolated the
> plant, so they couldn't run new power lines into the facility.  I
> think this was the straw that broke the camel's back.  If the tsunami
> had *only* knocked out all the electrical systems, I believe they
> could have easily run new power before the 6-hr battery supply
> expired.  It was the isolation caused by the tsunami that caused the
> real problems.
> 
> All this is to indicate that what happened was a "perfect storm" the
> odds of which are quite astronomical.  The practicalities of
> developing any product are such that at some point one must say: we
> can't design for *every* eventuality, so we'll design for those of
> some suitable combination of most-probably and most-severe.
> 
> I don't think *anyone* could have done it better.  Not against the
> earthquake/tsunami/isolation combo.
> 
> Whether such a 3-pack of phenomena could have reasonably been
> predicted and designed for, only time will tell.  I'm sure there'll be
> plenty of investigation and analysis in months to come.  Hopefully
> we'll all get to see it.
> 
> >
> > But we are, in all likelihood, facing a nuclear crisis.
> 
> I disagree.  Could you please indicate the evidence you have for this?
> 
> > [...] The real crisis
> > then is the political one.
> 
> It usually is.
> 
> >
> > But in relation to Fukushima we also have a technical crisis—a failure
> > of technical back-up systems and of management and organization that has
> > put on the table the prospect of a nuclear meltdown.
> 
> Here, we disagree.  Every system - natural or artificial - will fail
> eventually, given sufficient stress.  I really can't see how *any*
> system could have withstood the power of the events, and I don't even
> see how they could have been predicted to any degree.
> 
> Again, I don't discount the possibility that there was a human failure
> of some sort.  But I think, under the circumstances, the failure of
> the technical systems was totally normal given the severity of the
> events.
> 
> >
> > It is irrelevant that, even in worse case scenarios, “only” the local
> > population may be affected. Such scientific common-sense is useful to
> > put the situation in context; it allays the apocalyptic—at least for the
> > moment. But it also misses the point: the “meaning” of Fukushima is not
> > in the number of eventual casualties but in the sense that here is a
> > crisis that should not be occurring; and it should not be occurring (the
> > public in this case intelligently perceives) because if you are dealing
> > with technologies which have potential for disaster on the scale of the
> > nuclear then you had damn well better make sure that you think through
> > the consequences and implications of deploying this technology.
> 
> I'm not sure I get the use of "should" in this paragraph.  There are
> lots of things that shouldn't - in the sense of wishing/hoping that
> they don't - happen.  I get the sense, at the end of the paragraph,
> that Clive is suggesting particular care should be paid to nuclear
> energy due to its inherent dangers.  Surely, nuclear power is not
> anything to take lightly.  But there's plenty of other things
> currently doing very real damage to people and the environment - WAY
> more damage that nuclear power has caused so far, or can reasonably be
> expected to cause, based on the performance of facilities around the
> world so far.
> 
> >
> > In the case of Fukushima, disaster is the making not because of an
> > “unexpected event” (earthquakes and thus Tsunami in this part of
> > Japan are no more “unexpected” than icebergs were in the North Atlantic
> > in April 1912) but because of a lack of resilience in the total system
> > of which Fukushima is only one small part.
> 
> You'll get no argument from me that the "system" that includes
> Fukushima was insufficiently resilient to take the combo of the
> earthquake, the tsunami, and the resulting isolation of the plant.
> 
> The problem is that I don't accept that a sufficiently resilient
> system is at all possible.
> 
> >
> > The objective engineering response to this situation is not to lament
> > the impossibility of the individual engineer thinking through every
> > possibility—nor to advocate bigger walls.
> 
> For what it's worth, there are very few engineers in my acquaintance
> who lament thus.
> 
> > It is to ask a question about
> > the system that, in effect, short-changed (doubtless on economic
> > grounds) the conceptual procedure of thinking through the resilience of
> > the system. (And which on another level short-changed also the capacity
> > of local management to respond well to theshort-changing that lead them to concoct ad-hoc solutions (hoses of
> > seawater as coolant) rather than, from the first moment, focusing also
> > on re-connecting power, the loss of which is the real or at least the
> > immediate “culprit” in this scenario. It is this failure that has seen
> > today pathetic (and failing attempts) to drop water by helicopter over
> > the plant, 90% of which cannot possibly reach its intended target, and
> > which (as I write) is about to see attempts by water cannon to spray
> > water on the reactors! Such ad-hoc responses are perhaps courageous, in
> > a Heath-Robinson kind of way, but they are also evidence of severe
> > systemic failure.
> 
> Again, I do not believe it is possible to "think through the
> resilience" of the system sufficiently to have predicted and avoided
> this failure.  This particular chain of events was astronomically
> unlikely.  There are I'm sure thousands of other equally astronomical
> yet devastating chains of events.  It's intractable to solve for them
> all.
> 
> One way to deal with such problems is to re-conceptualize it.  One
> re-conceptualization of this matter is to stop using nuclear power.  I
> would argue strenuously against that position for all kinds of reasons
> that don't pertain here & now.
> 
> Another re-conceptualization is based on recognizing that the usual
> uranium-based reactor is NOT the only way to go; indeed, it's probably
> not even the best way to go.  I personally really like thorium-based
> reactors because they produce far less nuclear waste, thorium is
> something like 1000x more plentiful than uranium, the waste of thorium
> reactors cannot be weaponized, and in fact many of the waste products
> of thorium fission are extremely valuable "medical isotopes" that are
> already in very short supply.
> 
> And don't underestimate the fire-hose approach.  See, for instance,
> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/latest-reactor-status-at-japan-s-stricken-fukushima-nuclear-plant-table.html.
> 
> > [...]
> > One issues here is political. Should private companies be allowed to run
> > such plants—when as we’ve seen spectacularly this year with the BP
> > case—the companies instinct is both to cut costs to the bone and to
> > abandon as rapidly as possible the site of its disasters? The point here
> > is that such questions today demand to be brought into the total “design”
> > process. Yet part of what we are talking about here is that while we are
> > certainly talking in some ways here about “design” (this word referring
> > to a configurational choice amongst alternatives) “design” is itself a
> > completely inadequate term (with all the wrong associations) for the
> > kind of process which needs to be undertaken. So we come back again to
> > the question: what does it mean to “design” such plants? And what does
> > the answer to that question tell us about the responsibilities and work
> > of “design” as a whole?
> 
> Refer to my personal sense of what it means to design a nuclear
> facility.  It works for me just fine.
> 
> Having said that, I do agree that designerly thinking would be
> beneficial to the development of the larger systems of which nuclear
> facilities are components.
> 
> I think of the ultimate goal of designing as the achievement of
> balance.  A nuclear facility plays a role in the larger system that
> contains it by shifting the "way things are" in that system in many
> different ways.  Understanding the "forces" that exist within a
> system, and that are altered by the introduction of something like a
> nuclear facility, seems like a pretty important first step.
> 
> >
> > Clive
> >
> >
> > Clive Dilnot
> > Professor of Design Studies
> > School of Art Design History and Theory
> > Parsons School of Design,
> > New School University.
> > Room #731
> > 2 E 16th St
> > New York NY 10011
> > e [log in to unmask]
> >
> 
> Cheers.
> Fil
> 
> -- 
> Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
> Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
> Ryerson University
> 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
> M5B 2K3, Canada
> Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
> Fax: 416/979-5265
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/