Technology Futures

We will probably not know the full story of the nuclear reactor problems in Japan for many months, but one news story I read over the weekend suggests that the the Japanese are re-learning the lessons of the Katrina disaster. Apparently the Japanese reactors survived the initial earthquake and tsunami without much damage--but whatever was damaged caused the primary cooling pumps to fail. No big deal, as nuclear power plants have extensive back up and redundant secondary cooling systems designed to take over if the primary cooling system fails.

If the primary cooling system fails, the reactor is usually shutdown immediately, meaning no electric power. Even when the control rods are in, heat can continue to be generated for some time, hence the need for secondary cooling. So here is the scenario. Primary cooling fails. The reactor is shut down, and secondary backup cooling systems are activated. Apparently all this happened just as it was supposed to immediately after the earthquake and tsunami. The secondary cooling pumps are powered by large diesel generators, which apparently ran for about an hour, then shut down.

Why did they shut down? The fuel was contaminated by seawater.

So what was the lesson of Katrina the Japanese missed? In the New Orleans area, many telecom, radio, TV, and computer installations were thoughtfully built on upper floors of buildings so that they would be immune from flooding. But the generators and fuel tanks that were supposed to power all those systems in the event of a power outage were all installed at ground level, because it costs more money to put heavy, loud generators and diesel fuel on an upper floor. So the hurricane winds blew down power poles and the power went out first. No problem. Emergency generators started up, and everything kept running. Until the water came and flooded and the fuel tanks and generators.

One small ISP in downtown New Orleans stayed up and running throughout the entire flood because they had installed a generator on an upper floor. They managed to truck in 55 gallon barrels of diesel fuel once their initial supply ran out.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

How is your community's disaster recovery plans? Many areas of the U.S. are flood prone, but everywhere I go, I see generators now--which were very rare ten years ago. But those generators are all on the ground. Is that okay for your area? What about a ten year flood? What about a 100 year flood?

I don't what is in the water in North Carolina, but some legislators seem determined to cripple the prosperity of towns and cities in the state. A bill to outlaw community-owned networks is working its way through the legislature, and the City of Asheville notes that the bill is so poorly worded that it would prevent the City from accepting money from the Google Fiber initiative and from Federal broadband grant programs like the the Department of Commerce broadband stimulus initiative. Muni Networks has more on the fight.

Does anyone watch TV any more? Now that Charlie Sheen (...Winning!) has caused the cancellation of Two and a Half Men, the world as we know has come to an end. Just for the record, I have never watched a single minute of that show, but others obviously have. As I have noted in the past, content is king, so content owners will remain standing after content distributors and their analog world business models have collapsed (read TV channels here). The Internet and the iPod killed the music distribution business. The Internet and devices like the iPad and the Kindle are busy killing the book distribution business, and the Internet and the home computer are busy killing video stores and movie theaters.

Warner Brothers are now renting movies on Facebook for three bucks. That beats going to the movies. And it remains to be seen if this play will affect Netflix much. It really depends on what movies Warner Bros. offers (new releases, older movies, etc.) and whether they release some or all of them to Netflix.

Warner Bros. is probably trying to get more money directly from consumers rather than smaller amounts from the iTunes store and ventures like Netflix. But I'm inclined to think most of these "direct to the buyer" trials will fail, as competitors like iTunes and Netflix offer movie watchers a better browsing experience with more variety.

Via Jason Kottke, a rumor that the Kindle book reader will eventually be free. Amazon is doing better than I expected with the Kindle, both because the price has dropped sharply, which I viewed as an obstacle, but also because the Kindle itself has been improved. If Amazon eventually gives the Kindle away, a lot of paperback and hardback books will only appear in digital format.