The article doesn't explain why the system is vulnerable in this way, but the situation reminds me of my research on the Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident, when operators were desperately trying to connect to grid electricity to cool the stricken plant before meltdown.
https://twitter.com/kellymnyc/status/1364944873397313538
I would like to understand why this is the case in the electricity network and whether it's possible to mitigate it, but in the case of FD1, I think many people believe the tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors directly. it didn't. The reactors scrammed correctly and stopped.
They needed to be cooled safely after that. But the earthquake had knocked out a grid connection, and the tsunami had (famously) damaged the emergency generators.
The operators tried desperately to find a way to get electricity to the generators (ironic, no?). The roads were broken up so they couldn't get electricity-generating vehicles there, and those vehicles were too heavy to airlift.
Also the transformers at the site were damaged. Even once they got vehicles in, connecting electricity to the plant was non-trivial. The workers were unrolling wires of different sizes, trying to find the right connections, all during aftershocks and leaking radiation.
We are very dependent on the electricity grid in all sorts of ways, many of which we rarely think about (pumping gas into cars, for example).
for people who don't dig into replies, here is a concise and understandable explanation of why the grid could have failed:
https://twitter.com/clarkamiller/status/1364969611255545863?s=20
There are a lot of other elements involved in FD1, some probably relevant to Texas as well, like being unable to determine what's going on in the system when there's no electricity for lights & gauges, and no one really understanding how the system works when it's not as usual...
Workers at Fukushima went into structurally unsafe buildings to search desperately for blueprints and try to figure out where to connect electricity and water in a jerry-rigged effort.
(it's good for me to review this since I'm giving a talk on it at @UniLeiden next week, and then speaking at a conference for the 10 year anniversary at the K-school belfercenter.org/event/nuclear-…)
If you're interested in learning more, here is the report I researched and co-authored for the French nuclear safety institute, @suretenucleaire irsn.fr/FR/expertise/r…
more on the grid:
https://twitter.com/garrett_wollman/status/1364982673081516034?s=20
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
