If you didn’t already know, a rather massive earthquake struck Japan this morning. We’re already seeing the waves hit California, with some damage. However, one of the larger headlines has been about one of the nuclear plants that operates in the region. Here’s the basics.
1. The nuclear reaction shutdown automatically like it was supposed it. Several other plants in the area did the same thing.
2. The regular power supply (The electricity grid) is not supplying power to the nuclear plant, and the backup power supply (The onsite diesel generators) has malfunctioned.
3. A nuclear reactor, even after shutdown, needs to be continuously cooled because there is a large amount of residual heat that takes a long time to dissipate.
4. Without electrical power, the cooling water pumps are running on temporary battery power, which only lasts for a “short” time. Not sure about the Japanese plants but I believe ours can go for about 6-8 hours.
5. Unless they get their diesel generators back up and running/get an alternate source of electricity they may end up with a damaged reactor core.
6. In that scenario any melted fuel would be contained within the several layers of concrete and steal that surround the reactor, and if the melting were to breach the first layer, which is the actual reactor vessel, then cooling becomes a whole lot easier…basically they just fill the entire building with water.
7. For a good look at a worst case scenario, I would advice looking at the Three Mile Island incident here.
8. Bottom line: I’m more worried about the public reaction than I am about any radiation release, and you should be too. If the public goes all super anti-nuclear over this, then get ready to breath in a lot more coal dust from the coal fired power plants we’re going to have to build.
I was wondering if you were going to weigh in on this.
So Japan has the same requirements as the US in terms of plant construction and redundancies?