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Honest question; there is a nuclear reactor about 10 miles from new york city; how is it protected against such sattelite smashing at the top of the dome? Would

Honest question; there is a nuclear reactor about 10 miles from new york city; how is it protected against such sattelite smashing at the top of the dome? Wouldnt that be Chernobyl times 1,000 ? And does new york city have a solid plan on evacuating 8 million people off the island in some reasonable amount of time?

psergeant 9y ago
What do you believe the chances of it hitting that reactor are? If we were to assume that falling satellites hit nuclear reactors with a frequency of once every 200 million years, how much money do you think should be spent preventing accidents of that type?
hanbura 9y ago
Satellites and space stations are neither aerodynamic nor dense. If anything survives reentry, drag will slow it down until it might still damage a regular building but will do nothing to an impact resistant concrete dome designed to resist plane crashes. A big meteor could punch through both the concrete dome and the underlying steel containment. If that happens, we will probably be glad it hit the reactor and not nearby New York City. As long the meteor doesn't replace the steel containment structure with a crater but merely damages it (after obliterating the dome), we have at worst a second Fukushima. What made Chernobyl so bad was that the cooling water caused a giant steam explosion, carrying radioactive material high into the atmosphere. That failure mode is impossible in any reactor operated today.
pjc50 9y ago
The domes are supposed to be resistant against impact from small planes. And there's an air defence system which could break it into smaller pieces. However, the chances of hitting it by accident are absurdly tiny. It would be pretty hard to hit from orbit deliberately; maybe the only people who could do that are SpaceX.
zupa-hu 9y ago
Why the downvotes? That's a totally legit question. Unexpected events happen all the time. Yes, the probability of this single event happening is small, but the sheer number of unexpected events that can happen around the world makes it likely that some of them will happen. I'd rather live in a place where asking these questions won't get you burned.
- burfog 9y ago
  Wasn't me, but I can take a guess: 1. absurdly low probability 2. power plants are built to withstand airliner crashes having far more energy 3. it'll be insignificant debris, broken smaller than pieces of that space shuttle 4. the comment smells like nuclear fearmongering It may be wrongly assumed that everybody here is nerdy enough to know all these things.
  - zupa-hu 9y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know power plants were built to withstand airplane crashes. If that's true, that would be a great answer. As for 1., sure, but still (probability x damage) makes it nevertheless reasonable to consider it, even if it is later dismissed. 4. - agree, and that's my problem. Sounds like [1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Objects re-entering generally hit the ground at around terminal velocity, which is only a few hundred kph usually. The reactor core is surrounded by a very sturdy reinforced concrete containment structure which should be able to survive an impact of orbital debris. Additionally, the chance of orbital debris striking any particular location on Earth is nearly zero, so it's a bit foolish to over prepare for something that is less likely than winning the lottery several times in a row.

psergeant 9y ago

What do you believe the chances of it hitting that reactor are? If we were to assume that falling satellites hit nuclear reactors with a frequency of once every 200 million years, how much money do you think should be spent preventing accidents of that type?

hanbura 9y ago

Satellites and space stations are neither aerodynamic nor dense. If anything survives reentry, drag will slow it down until it might still damage a regular building but will do nothing to an impact resistant concrete dome designed to resist plane crashes. A big meteor could punch through both the concrete dome and the underlying steel containment. If that happens, we will probably be glad it hit the reactor and not nearby New York City. As long the meteor doesn't replace the steel containment structure with a crater but merely damages it (after obliterating the dome), we have at worst a second Fukushima. What made Chernobyl so bad was that the cooling water caused a giant steam explosion, carrying radioactive material high into the atmosphere. That failure mode is impossible in any reactor operated today.

pjc50 9y ago

The domes are supposed to be resistant against impact from small planes. And there's an air defence system which could break it into smaller pieces. However, the chances of hitting it by accident are absurdly tiny. It would be pretty hard to hit from orbit deliberately; maybe the only people who could do that are SpaceX.

zupa-hu 9y ago

Why the downvotes? That's a totally legit question. Unexpected events happen all the time. Yes, the probability of this single event happening is small, but the sheer number of unexpected events that can happen around the world makes it likely that some of them will happen. I'd rather live in a place where asking these questions won't get you burned.

burfog 9y ago
Wasn't me, but I can take a guess: 1. absurdly low probability 2. power plants are built to withstand airliner crashes having far more energy 3. it'll be insignificant debris, broken smaller than pieces of that space shuttle 4. the comment smells like nuclear fearmongering It may be wrongly assumed that everybody here is nerdy enough to know all these things.
- zupa-hu 9y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know power plants were built to withstand airplane crashes. If that's true, that would be a great answer. As for 1., sure, but still (probability x damage) makes it nevertheless reasonable to consider it, even if it is later dismissed. 4. - agree, and that's my problem. Sounds like [1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Objects re-entering generally hit the ground at around terminal velocity, which is only a few hundred kph usually. The reactor core is surrounded by a very sturdy reinforced concrete containment structure which should be able to survive an impact of orbital debris. Additionally, the chance of orbital debris striking any particular location on Earth is nearly zero, so it's a bit foolish to over prepare for something that is less likely than winning the lottery several times in a row.