As I suggested last night. When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. And that looks like a defectively designed reactor under the Reasonable Alternative design test of the Products Liability Restatement, Section 2. Turns out others made that observation 40 years ago. Like I said the mistakes creating the accident are always simple. It's the complications that ensue that are complex. - gwc
The warnings were stark and issued repeatedly as far back as 1972: If the cooling systems ever failed at a Mark 1 nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would probably burst as the fuel rods inside overheated. Dangerous radiation would spew into the environment.
Now, with one Mark 1 containment vessel damaged at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and other vessels there under severe strain, the weaknesses of the design — developed in the 1960s by General Electric — could be contributing to the unfolding catastrophe.
HERE is the Times report
Design defects
Accidents have simple origins. The shuttle's rubber O rings became brittle in the cold. BP's cut-off valve had no back-up - unlike newer ones. The Japanese reactors' cooling pumps were diesel engines - which the tsunami flooded when it overflowed the seawall. What happens next is unpredictable. - gwc
David Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists
