beige_alert | "Shark"

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has released a document reporting some of the effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini nuclear power stations. Daiichi is the one you've been hearing about, Daini was much less damaged by the tsunami. There are some amazing photos of the tsunami, flooding to depths of a whole bunch of meters. Possibly the oddest photo is on page 48, of the Daini plant, the one less damaged by less flooding. There is a photo of the "unit 1 emergency fan unit" with a gray object on the concrete in front of the big vent grill, helpfully labeled on the photo as "shark." Shark is not an acronym for some sort of piece of equipment. It's an actual shark, who was swimming around in the ocean looking for fish to eat when a tsunami washed it ashore and left it dead on the concrete pad by a building at a power plant.

I can only assume that in the near future the nuclear regulatory commission will be requiring operators of nuclear power plants to develop detailed plans for dealing with the possibility of shark attack, because you just can't be too prepared.