Piping gone wrong, Tai Power's response: "Sorry, we are mentally challenged"

Awesome news for Nuclear Power plant 4, right off the scenic northeast shores of Taiwan, 37 km away from downtown Taipei. Apparently we are in great hands.

n.yam.com/chinatimes/healthy/201 … 48913.html

According to the news article above, Tai Power and the contractors and construction firms responsible for Nuclear power plant 4 are being corrected for installing the wrong kind of metal wire protectors in crucial areas. The NWC type metal wire protectors for waterproof and radiation resistant, meant for radiation critical areas, but water proof only ZHUA type metal protectors are used instead. However, non-radiation critical areas such as the sea water pump have NWC type metal wire protectors installed. The metal wire protector project costs 400 million NT, to correct the error would further cost upwards of a couple hundred million NT.

When confronted with why such errors are made, Tai Power and the contractors’ response is: “sorry, we are mentally challenged.” Very assuring. Officials overseeing the correction said Tai Power and the contractors lacks the English skill to understand GE’s design specifications and directions.

Northeast coast => lots of spiders. Poorly constructed nuclear plants => Radioactive spiders. Radioactive spiders + nuclear plant worker => Spiderman

I’d translate it as “our intelligence was insufficient”–not that that is any more comforting.

Spiderman will save us.

Seriously, though, Taipower are building a bloody nuclear power plant by-the-numbers, without any understanding of how it works and with no adult supervision? We’re doomed. Doomed, I tell you. I think the best we can hope for is that they’ll make such a complete pig’s ear of it, it won’t work at all when they fire it up.

And incidentally, Google translate renders it as “mentally retarded”. Nice to see some truthful reporting now and then.

[quote=“finley”]Spiderman will save us.

Seriously, though, Taipower are building a bloody nuclear power plant by-the-numbers, without any understanding of how it works and with no adult supervision? We’re doomed. Doomed, I tell you. I think the best we can hope for is that they’ll make such a complete pig’s ear of it, it won’t work at all when they fire it up.

And incidentally, Google translate renders it as “mentally retarded”. Nice to see some truthful reporting now and then.[/quote]

In context it really leans towards mentally retarded. I was just trying to tone it down :stuck_out_tongue:

A few years ago, when I was still in South Africa, they were servicing a generator at a nuclear plant. The geniuses left a wrench inside and fired it up.
Consequence, a totalled generator which had to be replaced at a few hundred million rand.

One would think there would be double and triple checks. Obviously not.

This is the basic reason I’m completely against nuclear power. There’s some clever new tech out there that’s supposedly failsafe, but humans are just so f-ing stupid they can make anything explode even if it’s technically impossible, given enough time and ingenuity. It’s like the infinite monkeys theory, in reverse.

Some things were just not meant for man, because man, as a species, is not smart enough to find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight, nevermind a wrench in a generator.

desperately trying to be optimistic about this story; at least they found the problem and even better admitted to the mistake rather than hushing it up.

I’d rather live in a society where people are at least sometimes honest about their fuck-wittedness rather than either denying it or covering it up…

[quote=“pungnan”]desperately trying to be optimistic about this story; at least they found the problem and even better admitted to the mistake rather than hushing it up.
I’d rather live in a society where people are at least sometimes honest about their fuck-wittedness rather than either denying it or covering it up…[/quote]

Let me bring you down again. Knowing how things work around here, how many similar stories like this do you think there are that we never hear about in the news? It has been argued that Apple Daily brought investigative journalism to Taiwan, but unless in involves celebrities and nudity I’m not sure they’d bother to look into it. And they’ve only been here a few years as well.

Finger in ears. Not listenting. Maintain optimisim…

You may well be right. This is true anywhere though. Governments/executive boards/organisations always like to release ‘bad news’ stories which show them in a good light (“we’re gonna clean up this mess damnit!”) rather than bad news stories that don’t (“we’ve ballsed up and their is NOTHING we can do about it”).

[quote=“finley”]
And incidentally, Google translate renders it as “mentally retarded”. Nice to see some truthful reporting now and then.[/quote]

I was curious, and threw it into google translate just to check it out, for some reason it cracked me up, and i couldn’t stop laughing at work…

It would seem wherever you live that “we’re all doomed, doomed I tell ya”…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19804817

my favourite bit is where the commission warns against using language that might undermine public confidence in nuclear power. Now we wouldn’t want that to happen would we…

[quote=“bigduke6”]A few years ago, when I was still in South Africa, they were servicing a generator at a nuclear plant. The geniuses left a wrench inside and fired it up.
Consequence, a totalled generator which had to be replaced at a few hundred million rand.

One would think there would be double and triple checks. Obviously not.[/quote]
There was an incident here in Sweden a year ago when someone forgot a vacuum cleaner after a cleanup… Fire in the hole! Not totaled but quite a bill for the repairs.