What will happen to the nuclear power plants when the sh.. does really hit the fan

I've always wondered about that. We all know what happened to Fukushima and in Russia, but America has to face reality that at sometime in the future an enemy is surly going to put America in a state of confusion. So what do you think will really happen.

Yes, I'm thinking about it during every post-apocalyptic movie.

So in case everyone suddenly disappear this is best case scenario:

Almost every NP is dependent on grid as source of power for its machinery: pumps, control systems, air-conditioning, etc. As state of grid will deteriorate, sooner or later will kick in backup power source which is set of diesel el. generators. They usually have fuel supply for 1 week. If everything goes OK, NP should start automatic procedure of cold shutdown, i.e. nuclear fuel rods are separated so fission reaction can not continue.

But active rods and spent fuel usually stored in NP needs to be cooled for years. So after diesel generators run out of fuel, cooling water will boil out, nuclear fuel rods will overheat setting its zirconium encasings on fire effectively producing nasty dirty bomb. What will remain in place will melt down to a blob few thousands degree hot eating it way to Earth core and spewing fission by products to air and groundwater. In some case criticality will occur producing full scale nuclear explosion combined with massive dirty bomb effect (really bad fallout).

In few years it will lead to collapse of many ecosystems and higher forms of life will be almost extinct.

This scenario will take place also in situation of major long time societal upheaval as there will be not enough coordination and resources to keep plants in shape and running. Imagine if some NP fall in hand of punks like ISIS.

a reply to: musicismagic

Fortunately some of the finest minds have already worked it out.

a reply to: musicismagic
It is happening right now with Fukushima.
Once the news coverage slowed people forgot, but it's still there

a reply to: ZeussusZ

Incredible that even scientifically minded people think it's 'under control'.

BTW Earth will change to amazing bio-lab: Demise of many life forms would have profound effect on ecosystems and climatic conditions - Earth may overheat or be frozen, who knows. New life forms will have to overcome reality of some 200 new isotopes, some of them are toxic to bases of life as we know it and all of them produce ionizing radiation or charged particles during their variable lifespan. All in on this will set in motion unbelievable theater of life emerging and dying of in rapidly changing environment. That all boosted by ever present, mutation supporting, radiation.

Those are goals! Heavy metals are usually toxic so new life forms have to change its molecular makeup to overcome current troubles on chemical level or learn how to expel new heavy metals from body. In both cases organism have to cope with constant bombardment of alpha AND/OR beta AND/OR gamma radiation along way the particle sit in or travel through body.

What is sure, there will be no man to study it.

a reply to: musicismagic

The technical answer to what would happen is cooling systems would kick in for probably about two weeks until generators died. In other worrds the plant would continue to orocide power for about two weeks and continue ti run tgr pumps.Then when the plant lost enough water it would start a safety injection to cool the core. After this the core would have cooled down alot but its water supply would be gone. Meaning the core would still be hot however not hot enough to melt through its vessel and it would just sit there cooling. This is basically an emergency shut down. As the plants generators began to fail. The threat would be 10s of thousands of years in the future as the containment vessel deteriorated.

a reply to: musicismagic

What will happen to the nuclear power plants when the sh.. does really hit the fan?

I recently read on the jimstone site that he claims that he had a conversation with a scientists that designed some of the nuc stations and the scientists reckoned that they could have built the technology to use up all the nuclear fuel in the fuel rod. Seems this would have been done by successively small and slightly different reactors. All the end of the process the fuel rods would have been spent completely.

According to jimstone the scientist said that it was a political decision to do things as they currently are. TPTB wanted these stockpiles to continue to build up so that if there was a SHTF level of geological activity it would kill most people in the US within a few years.

Incidentally and perversely, I found this claim by Jimstone a little reassuring because every decade or so there is talk in Australia of Australia becoming the worlds nuclear dump. It seems that its on again now as I have heard talk of having another go at making Australia the nuc dump of the world.

a reply to: dragonridr

Is this truth also for spent fuel pools?

originally posted by: JanAmosComenius
a reply to: dragonridr

Is this truth also for spent fuel pools?

Yes In order to prevent the spent fuel from going critical, the spent fuel assemblies are placed in metal boxes whose walls contain neutron-absorbing boron. So eventually water would boil away the boron prevents a nuclear reaction. But the heat would eventually melt these boxes exposing the fuel. They can't go critical and as long as the containment walls remain intact would cool the same as the core. What could happen is after this occurs an earthquake damages the containment unit allowing radiation to leak out. But even thus would effect o my close to the plant. As long as all the water evapaorated of it hasn't the steam would send radioactive particles for miles.

So in other words it depends on how soon the longer the containment walls remain intact the better. Fukushima for example the threat is the radioactive water in the plant if the water wasn't there the radiation wouldn't be a threat to the environment. What Japan is doing instead of sealing the core they want to be able to use the land again so they continued to use water and pumps to bleed off heat from the fuel Colling it. Their goal was cleanup but the process of cooling created another problem.

Now as far as Fukushima the threat is that water they used for cooling the plant is shut down the reactors are cooled. The problem is all that water they used is contaminated. And now needs to be disposed of had Japan just used the Russian approach and sealed it this would be done already. But Japan was stubborn and they believe they can clean it up they have made progress but the amount of water they contaminated will be tough to dispose of.

a reply to: JanAmosComenius

That was my understanding as well. That is to say that the spent-fuel cooling pools would eventually boil away or evaporate, thus exposing the radioactive material, eventually causing a catastrophic fire and widespread radiation contamination.

-dex

originally posted by: Azureblue
a reply to: musicismagic
Incidentally and perversely, I found this claim by Jimstone a little reassuring because every decade or so there is talk in Australia of Australia becoming the worlds nuclear dump. It seems that its on again now as I have heard talk of having another go at making Australia the nuc dump of the world.

Basically. Gotta love South Australians and their agreeableness.
Nuclear Winner!
Why we should do it!

originally posted by: ZeussusZ
a reply to: musicismagic
It is happening right now with Fukushima.
Once the news coverage slowed people forgot, but it's still there

I know, I live here in Japan.

originally posted by: dragonridr

originally posted by: JanAmosComenius
a reply to: dragonridr

Is this truth also for spent fuel pools?

Yes In order to prevent the spent fuel from going critical, the spent fuel assemblies are placed in metal boxes whose walls contain neutron-absorbing boron. So eventually water would boil away the boron prevents a nuclear reaction. But the heat would eventually melt these boxes exposing the fuel.

Not all spent fuel pool rack designs use boron shielded layer. In fact many are plain steel cages as in Fukushima.

Lots of people wonder what would happen if the sh.. hit the fan. It would all really depend on how and why it hit the fan. If we wipe out the people who can run the systems and repair them. They most likely melt down in six months. If that happens I don't really care cause I'd be lumped in with the already dead. So if the sh.. does hit the fan, might be a good idea not to randomly kill and loot everyone you see, just saying.

Basically. The greatness with humans is that if you take us all out, well we left these little care packages called nuclear power plants behind. Basically when we go bye bye, the rest of the world has 6 months tops until it faces enough nuclear fallout to greatly deteriorate the entirety of life on it.

Wonderful creatures we turned out to be.

Agree with the poster above. So long as the operators have enough time to put the reactors into safe modes, they should remain safe until the housings start to deteriorate. Wouldn't like to put a time frame on that, but I'd guess a couple of hundred years.

And after that. Well. Wouldn't want to be living terribly close to one. But, not the end of the world.

Honestly I'd be more concerned about the fate of nuclear warheads, those things and their ICBMs need a lot of continual maintenance. And I don't know what their failsafe mechanisms are like.