Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Waterline Stories" channel.

  1.  @itsmatt2105  What's crazy is that the TEPCO reactors, once shut down, scarcely needed all that much power to run the cooling pumps -- even though they were sized as if they had to pull full duty at full operational power. Think about it. TEPCO, Hitachi and GE all fxxked up. And this screw up lasted weeks -- in full view of the world.
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  2. Staffing was NEVER the issue here. It was the alarm sequencing - - they were paralleled -- which causes a general freakout. They also had an astounding number of critical equipment failures. Yet, this rig was in the open ocean where corrosion is always going to happen -- where everything needs to be easily inspected and testable. No crew could save this lousy design. It goes a long ways towards explaining the Italian economy. In the USN, it's expected that EVERYTHING is going to fail. Crews practically go out of their minds inspecting, testing, cleaning , maintaining. Yet, all of that must be done. Nature is out to kill you.
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  3. That's not it. What engineers don't figure on is compounded equipment failure. Plainly, no-one was checking on the critical valves. They were never engineered to be easy to service in the first place. To top it off, the critical valves didn't have ANY active monitoring. However, when the system really went awry, the SCADA system was over-loaded with alarms. They had never, ever, tested the consequence of compounded alarms. The crew just FREAKED OUT. A similar freak out occurred in 2011 in Japan. Instead of reacting logically, the entire crew freaked out into inactivity. No-one wanted to do the obvious thing: scram the reactors, shut everything down. Instead, 17 minutes rolled on. Even when the wave arrived -- demanded by the laws of physics -- the crew just stood paralyzed. Even the top man wouldn't take responsibility for shutting down the reactors. Even on the Tsunami coast, TEPCO had located its emergency systems within the (low) impact zone. (!!!!) What a design boner. In the entire nation of Japan, no-one had 4160V 60Hz generators mobile enough to rescue the cooling systems. So days rolled by with the atomic reactors never getting their cooling restored -- which is how everything broke down. As a side note, TEPCO could've back-fed the pumps with 50Hz power and at a reduced voltage by hauling common transformers up to the power plants. It just never occurred to them that good-enough beats perfection. No attempt was made to cobble something together. The freak-out had gone national. Even the GE experts failed TEPCO. ( It was a GE-Hitachi system. )
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  4. The Brazilian scheme merely echoed the American scheme. Oil firms LEASE said deposits. That's how it's done.
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  5. Their SCADA system didn't have an inherent time-track of the alarm cascade. Such a sequencing is VITAL for the operators. The consequence alarms needed to be shut of -- via the software. They had 'balance' alarms repeating the same injury from all over creation. That's no help. You need to see the FIRST alarms local to the problem. Instead, Petrobras had PARALLELED alarms. That's the LAST thing you want in any alarm scheme.
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  6. They should bought American. There is a LOT of political payoffs to Brasilia.
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  7. Folks totally misunderstand nature. Soaps, detergents, both fight nature's cleansing biota. They should NEVER be used. The entire effort is counter-productive. It's MUCH wiser to do absolutely nothing. There's a reason why oil flotsam goes away within two-weeks. Fungi simply eat it up... and they are not alone. The infamous Alaskan oil spill was so vast, America ran out of soap/ detergents. So, many stretches of coastline could not be treated in a timely manner. It was discovered -- years later -- that the untreated coastline totally recovered. Whereas the treated coastline remained screwed up even a decade after the event. It was the soap/detergents that killed off all wildlife. They are poisons to everything living. They ruin the barrier between the water outside a cell and the organics inside every living cell. Yet, here, we still see 'environmentalist' sentiment invoking the Big Grift of cleaning things up after an oil spill. Just stop it!
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  8. They POISON the biota. Detergents/soaps ruin all common cell walls. Your skin is the exception -- but even it takes a beating. Take a look the next time you hand wash dishes.
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  9. Petrobras violated so MANY required norms that the insurers had legal recourse. For such enormous commercial policies, the stipulations are quite massive. Try getting fire insurance for a lumber mill. Just try it. You're in for quite an experience.
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