Completely agree with this. On the other hand, all their safety mechanisms so far have failed. Electric, diesel based and the automatic steam based. Which is why they now manually try to pump in sea water (according to what I have understood from the news). I'm not against science, but still, it seems that the situation is surrounded by a fair amount of uncertainty. So, to my way of thinking the most wise is to treat it as an uncertainty, until we know more from official sources.
>On the other hand, all their safety mechanisms so far have failed. Electric, diesel based and the automatic steam based.
Wrong and wrong. Some backup cooling mechanisms have failed, not all safety mechanisms.
The electric backup worked as designed. The diesel backup did not, as I understand it, because it was affected by the tsunami (which is inexcusable in my opinion). And the backup diesel generators brought in from off-site, from what I've read, could not be attached due to incompatible connectors (which if true, is also inexcusable).
No, that is the reason they where suppose to fall back on diesel based pumps. The electrical outage after the quake made the electric pumps fail. The diesel based pumps also failed as we agree upon. After that there was a mechanism simply based on preasure which supposed to push out hot steam, cool it off and feed it back as water. However this mechanism led a decreased level of water (from what I have heard). Which is why they now resort to pumping it in manually. I think it's safe to say that two major explosions at the plant (even though it wasn't the reactor it self apparently) is a sign of failed safety mechanisms.
Well the batteries are exactly the "electric backup" that was mentioned, although you're also right in that it was never designed to solve the entire casualty, only to last long enough to get other sources of power online.
