Tsunami damage at Fukushima nuclear plant...

[hunter]

Photos here (dialup warning):

http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm

It's no wonder the emergency power systems went down at the plant. Much of the infrastructure supporting the reactors was damaged by the tsunami.

[godai]

1. If anything electrical was next to the sea, that was criminal.

There's is an unknown story behind why the backup systems failed and, once this is resolved, investigations and prosecutions seem in order.

[PearliePoo2]

2. tsunami bait!

unbelievably stupid.
Can you see the sea from that location? Yes?
Could a tsunami wipe it out? Yes?
Then why the fuck would you put it there???

[FBaggins]

6. An understandable reaction... but does it only apply to reactors?

The other images show a bunch of other things that could "see the sea"... that are now entirely gone.

But yeah... one of my early thoughts was "why put them right on the coast?"

[PamW]

7. One has to remember...

unbelievably stupid.
Can you see the sea from that location? Yes?
Could a tsunami wipe it out? Yes?
Then why the fuck would you put it there???
=====================================

One has to remember that this was a mega-quake with a mega-tsunami.

The plants are designed to withstand quakes and tsunamis, but not of the magnitude
of this one.

It's true of any engineered machine made by Man.

Your airliner is designed to be able to withstand the buffeting of large storms.
Every so often, one hears the reports of how an airliner was tossed around in a
storm but landed safely.

However, there's the one-in-a-million storm, or one-in-ten-million storm that is so
severe that the airliner can not withstand it.

Do we abandon air travel because our airliners can't withstand the one-in-a-million storm?

PamW

[spin]

3. A tsunami is not a rare event in Japan.

• Tsunami (pronounced soo-NAH-mee) is a Japanese word. Tsunamis are fairly common in Japan and many thousands of Japanese have been killed by them in recent centuries.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1228_041228_tsunami.html

I'm not sure how you tsunami proof the backup systems on a nuclear reactor, but obviously better preparations should have been made.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Those pics are very handy, the way you can mouse over the before and after images.

Rec

[FBaggins]

5. What a clever way to display those images.

If only the subject matter weren't so distressing.