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7.3 magnitude quake hits north Japan, tsunami alert issued
- mikece 5y ago"The region is part of northern Japan that was devastated by a deadly 9.0 quake and tsunami 11 years ago that also caused nuclear plant meltdowns." The meltdowns happened due to a primary cooling loop failure which in turn was caused by a loss of power to the primary coolant loop (because the backup diesel generators weren't located high enough above sea level to avoid being swamped by the tsunami). Given the rhetoric about right now about the possibility of a nuclear exchange I wonder how many commercial nuclear plants would also melt down in the event of an EMP attack. I've always thought that nuclear as we have it is safe as long as the operators don't do anything aggressively dangerous but I'm thinking that any reactor that cannot passively keep itself below meltdown temperature is inherently unsafe and replacing them all with SMRs should be a public safety priority.
- News-Dog 5y agoSCRAM - an emergency-shutdown of a nuclear-reactor <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram> Edit: > the operators can inject solutions containing neutron poisons directly into the reactor coolant. Neutron poison solutions are water-based solutions that contain chemicals that absorb neutrons, such as common household borax, sodium polyborate, boric acid, or gadolinium nitrate, causing a decrease in neutron multiplication, and thus shutting down the reactor without use of the control rods.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mikece 5y agoWouldn't neutron poisoning "brick" the reactor? In the scenario cited that's better than a meltdown... just curious if neutron poisoning can be reversed.
- News-Dog 5y agoI think a "bricked" reactor is better than the 'Fukushima' outcome. I admit that when they were able to power the pumps, that the only water they had was salt-water. A very bad option!