good article.

A simplified explanation about what is going on can be found here. The site has an obvious pro-nuclear bias, but given the catastrophising in the general media it may provide a bit of balance.

The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is)[/quote]
BURN

edit: that article is a good read. Definitely makes you feel a lot more secure about nuclear power in general.

It is worth noticing that, if memory serves, satellite-grade nuclear:
- is solid state, based on Stirling or Peltier cells working in inverse.
- According to WP:en, the Cassini reactor is 300 We. The affected reactors are rated at 760-1067 MWe depending on unit.
So it's actually a very different beast we're talking about.

Pumping water in nuclear plants is not a new idea. It has been done in the past and essentially means "we have nothing else to lose". So much for multiple redundancy and all...

[quote name='benryves' timestamp='1300163644' post='4785918']
A simplified explanation about what is going on can be found here. The site has an obvious pro-nuclear bias, but given the catastrophising in the general media it may provide a bit of balance.

The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is)[/quote]
BURN

edit: that article is a good read. Definitely makes you feel a lot more secure about nuclear power in general.
[/quote]

Not to me. 3 units went byebye (one of which has increased the amount of radioactivity it's releasing to the atmosphere) . The damages weren't caused by the earthquake but because of lack of cooling for the fuel. All the earthquake caused was shutting down the plant.

What I got from this article is that if the plant goes down and the generators fail => radioactivity IN YOUR FACE!

Not to me. 3 units went byebye (one of which has increased the amount of radioactivity it's releasing to the atmosphere) . The damages weren't caused by the earthquake but because of lack of cooling for the fuel. All the earthquake caused was shutting down the plant.

What I got from this article is that if the plant goes down and the generators fail => radioactivity IN YOUR FACE!

Did we read the same article? The damages were almost entirely caused by the earthquake. The lack of power for the first cooling system, and the washing away of the generators by the tsunami. The explosion to the housing building, which serves no purpose to the safety of the reactor, was caused by venting steam inside the building rather than outside, but caused no damage to the reactor.

The steam being released gives you less radioactivity than an international flight, and the plant could literally have a meltdown and be completely contained.

And this is with the plant going down, the entire grid going down, the generators being hit by a tsunami, the batteries running for 8 hours without getting backup generators, and being hit by an earth quake 7 times more powerful than the plant is designed to take in the first place. This is quite literally a worst case scenario, and the worst that is going to happen is everybody will feel like they stood in front of a microwave for a while. That's pretty good for a worst case scenario. Compare that to the worst case scenario for an oil refinery where you have an explosion larger than the largest bombs in most military arsenals.

Why cant they continually fly over and drop ocean water on top of it from helicopters though?

The throughput of primary cooling system is measured in tons per second or 10,000s tons per hour.

The reason you don't want to pour water on reactor casing is because it gets into crevices and cracks. Once there, it heats up and expands. Pouring water on radioactive material is also undesirable since it evaporates and goes straight into the air.

The cooling they have/had are pipes going straight into reactor housing and through the reactor.

I guess I just dont see why they only tried putting water into the thing for what seemed like an hour until their water pumps ran out of fuel. Japans a tech country, they should build a giant one of these: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835103055 and drop it in w/ some thermal paste.[/quote]They have those. It's the "thermal paste" that is broken.

The area that heats up is deep inside the housing, surface isn't hot, it's just concrete building.

For scale - the CANDU-design I know off uses two engines from diesel locomotives for backup generators. These are not your portable generators you start with battery.

I did read though that they're considering setting up 'spraying' equipment inside the building to shower the outside of the reactor in water.[/quote]It's more likely to contain aerosol emissions. Like spraying a dust road.

What I got from this article is that if the plant goes down and the generators fail => radioactivity IN YOUR FACE![/quote]
True, but again, scale.

This reactor generates ~3,000,000,000 Watts (3GW) of thermal power under normal operation, about a third of which is converted into electricity by a steam engine. No matter how you look at it, this is huge. And when hit by earthquake and tsunami combined, there will some side effects.

Meanwhile, the refinery is still burning => benzen in your lungs. Of course, nobody bothers to report that.

Pour water on the sun and see what happens.

NOTHING!

50 employees stay behind to stave off disaster.

This is going to be a movie or an anime. 100% guaranteed. Here's hoping that all 50 make it out alive with very little if any side-effects.

This is going to be a movie or an anime.

Here's one. It's close enough. Has an emo kid, mecha and (literally) runaway reactor.

the public should be safe as long as the containment building remains intact.

Ok... I spoke too soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Tokyo Electric Power said Tuesday that after the explosion at the No. 2 reactor, pressure had dropped in the “suppression pool” — a section at the bottom of the reactor that converts steam to water and is part of the critical function of keeping the nuclear fuel protected. After that occurred, radiation levels outside No. 2 were reported to have risen sharply.

“We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”[/quote]Starting to look like a containment failure.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
Japanese authorities also today informed the IAEA at 04:50 CET that the spent fuel storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is on fire and radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere.[/quote]The used up fuel isn't contained in the same area as the reactor (it's up in the roof of the containment building IIRC). One of the exposions seems to have exposed this pond, which evaporated, or something... Anyway, I'm guessing that burning fuel rods without containment is very, very bad.