In this weekend I saw the movie from Fukushima accident and I cannot believe what the Japanese did in this project. First, they decided to install a nuclear plant in a country where everyone knows that there is earthquake followed by tsunami. There were no barriers, protection against flooding to the cooling reactor water pump, to electrical generator, to instrument air compressor.

When the electricity failed the decision to put the metal bar to stop the reaction was by an operator and they did, but this decision must be by a SIL 3 PLC, at least.

When the H2 leaked into the atmosphere, an explosion happened and we know that to have an explosion we need the flammable, the oxygen, an explosive atmosphere and the ignition source. Where was the hazardous area classification to eliminate the electrical ignition? If you have the possibility to have H2 in the environment where the process is running, you need to have a special ignition source assessment to see another ignition like steam tube not well insulated, mechanical sparks and so on. We have 13 types of ignition sources and when we say H2 we need only 0,01 mJ to ignite.

The emergency evacuation was done properly, but as they did not predict the tsunami, most of the solutions to help in this phase were not available and they suffer a lot.

Finally, we can say with 100% of sure that the Japanese did not make a proper risk analysis to have this type of plant running with safety.

DO HAZOPS GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!