There is no doubt anymore that there were several causes of the meltdown, rather than just construction errors, which were traced in both the station and the dam that failed to stop the 14-meter tsunami wave. But the main cause of the disaster was a human error and the violation of cornerstone safety regulations that are observed globally. The safeguards against possible fallout were to be hardwired in the very draft of the future power plant. And were those controls to fail, someone had to know how to manage the disaster.
“The staff of this particular NPP had little idea of disaster-management,” Rosenergoatom’s Deputy CEO Vladimir Asmolov said. “We can safely assume the following: the plant survived the earthquake but then a huge wave flooded the area for just ten minutes, and the plant was not ready for that. The worst happened later. We modelled the meltdown based on the worst-case scenario, and our assessment turned out to be accurate. The staff did nothing to prevent the catastrophe. There was another power plant just ten kilometers away. It was also hit by the tsunami wave, but they did not run away and did everything to stop the worst from happening.”
The main story has been established. The quake caused the NPP’s automatic control system to shut down reactors that still produced decay heat and needed to be cooled down. Pumps that provided cooling water switched to diesel generators, which were later taken out by the tsunami. New, mobile generators were rushed to the site across the devastated province, but they couldn’t connect them to the grid because all the wiring went underwater. The reactors overheated, the zirconium alloy cans containing fuel pellets came into reaction with vapor, releasing thousands of cubic meters of hydrogen that mixed with oxygen and exploded, tearing down control rooms. Meanwhile, the overheated reactors cracked and released radioactive waste into the environment.”