Japan Hit By Tsunami

[acolyte_to_jippity]

hey Aco, i always thought a SCRAM would instantly stop a meltdown from happening, is it because what my knowledge is based off of is nuc subs instead of giant reactors? and also, by SCRAMing it with the raw sea water, it'll be totally destroyed, right? as in that is a last ditch effort, once you expose it to sea water you'll never be able to use it again...yes?

meltdown does not mean explosion. that's called an explosion. meltdown means just that; the radioactive fuel becomes so hot they actually melt/burn through their containment structure (literally 'melting down') SCRAMing isn't done to reduce heat (though often they'll perform those opperations in conjunction) it's designed to halt the fission taking place. it's done by lowering the control rods into the core in the fastest possible manner. depending on the method of SCRAM used, reactors could be started up easily, or with very much difficulty. the most common SCRAM involves shoving the control rods all the way into the core at one time, halting fission completely. backups for this (and possible primary systems, but i hope not) amount to basically dumping buckets of neutron-absorbing material into the core.

since water (even ion-rich sea-water) doesn't attenuate radiation very well, SCRAMing w/ seawater is not feasible. what they were probably doing, was pumping seawater into the coolant pipes to keep temperatures down while they fixe the main coolant system

[Nemesis]

ah, well thank you. and the whole sea water thing is what i know of from nuc subs. bvasically if there's no other way to stop it from melting down they just open up the reactor to sea water, it fries everything but at least it wont destroy the sub. i assumed it worked the same way here.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

ah, well thank you. and the whole sea water thing is what i know of from nuc subs. bvasically if there's no other way to stop it from melting down they just open up the reactor to sea water, it fries everything but at least it wont destroy the sub. i assumed it worked the same way here.

yeah, that sounds like an emergency heat fix. it probably just requires a thorough cleaning, since seawater is not the purest stuff, and the boiling of it all will lead to alot of stuff building up on the inside of the core

[Holy-Sonic]

meltdown does not mean explosion. that's called an explosion. meltdown means just that; the radioactive fuel becomes so hot they actually melt/burn through their containment structure (literally 'melting down') SCRAMing isn't done to reduce heat (though often they'll perform those opperations in conjunction) it's designed to halt the fission taking place. it's done by lowering the control rods into the core in the fastest possible manner. depending on the method of SCRAM used, reactors could be started up easily, or with very much difficulty. the most common SCRAM involves shoving the control rods all the way into the core at one time, halting fission completely. backups for this (and possible primary systems, but i hope not) amount to basically dumping buckets of neutron-absorbing material into the core.

since water (even ion-rich sea-water) doesn't attenuate radiation very well, SCRAMing w/ seawater is not feasible. what they were probably doing, was pumping seawater into the coolant pipes to keep temperatures down while they fixe the main coolant system

Then what exactly happened at Chernobyl, is it the same thing Japan is experiencing.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

Then what exactly happened at Chernobyl, is it the same thing Japan is experiencing.

no. chernobyl had NO containment. japan is far, FAR better than chernobyl.

[maynard]

japan looks like a zoo with free cotton candy (blue flavor not pink) compared 2 what Chernobyl was lol

[uuntiltheendd]

i think it also has a lot to do with the majority of them being genuinely good people.

[๖ReS]

lol Chernobyl is still a wasteland.

[loka]

The level of the explosion of the reactor in Chernobyl doesn't compare to Japan. That reactor exploded and it was done. Smoke and fire from the explosion released deadly levels of fallout in the air. A Level 7 (the worse possible) when it comes to contamination. Japan is lucky in a sense because they already had water in their plant. Even if it's salt water, it's still dense enough to slow down any potentially hazardous contamination. Chernobyl was a little late in executing that idea. Of the three core meltdowns, their highest level of contamination is a 5, and still the radiation isn't severe enough to cause worry as much as Chernobyl did.