3 ms·
Usually they have fail safes that will more or less immediately shut them down. On any reactor designed in the last 50 years, they pretty much default to a safe
by redwall_hp 5y ago
Usually they have fail safes that will more or less immediately shut them down. On any reactor designed in the last 50 years, they pretty much default to a safe state, as they require power to keep the failsafes open.
Starting back up after is the slow part.
- necheffa 5y agoThe one snag is that even with the reactor shut down (just drop all the control rods in) you still have to deal with the decay heat. Which, in the case of a controlled manual shut down shouldn't be a problem.
- PeterisP 5y agoIt's not a problem if you can continue to run the cooling system for quite some time. If you bomb the plant or its connections to the outside, that might be a problem - just as in Fukushima, where a key cause of the disaster was that the cooling system could not be properly powered when required.
- eru 5y agoNo clue how old the Ukrainian reactor (and its design) is. Perhaps more than 50 years?