3/15/2011 PERMALINK
Mistakes made by Tokyo Electric engineers expose fuel rods to the air. When a catastrophe strikes, even well trained people can get raddled and make big mistakes.

The explosion followed an early-morning acknowledgment from Tokyo Electric Power that, because of human error, the fuel rods inside the Unit 2 reactor had been at least partly exposed to air for more than two hours during two separate incidents the previous evening, allowing them to heat up and causing a buildup of explosive hydrogen gas.
Engineers had begun using fire hoses to pump seawater into the Unit 2 reactor — the third at the plant to receive the last-ditch treatment — after the emergency cooling system failed. Company officials said workers were not paying sufficient attention to the process, however, and let the pump stall, allowing the fuel rods to become partially exposed to the air.
Once the pump was restarted and water flow was restored, another worker inadvertently closed a valve that was designed to vent steam from the containment vessel. As pressure built up inside the vessel, the pumps could no longer force water into it and the fuel rods were once again exposed.

But whenever environmentalists succeed in blocking a nuclear plant, a few windmills or solar panels may get put up, but most of the power lost winds up getting generated by increasing use of carbon dioxide spewing plants.
What are needed are intrinsically nuclear power designs, like the one being pushed by Bill Gates. There are a number of ways of generating nuclear power that won't melt down under any circumstances. But the world's regulators refuse to approve any new designs. Only the clunky old designs from a handful of multinational corporations that have long dominated the nuclear industry have any hope of approval. Interestingly, just as happens with the banking industry, there seems to be a revolving door these days, between the 'public service' regulatory jobs and cushy, high-paying jobs in the handful of multinationals that dominate the nuclear industry.