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9.0 Earthquake strikes Japan


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Koyodo reporting:

BREAKING NEWS: Fukushima nuke plant might be experiencing nuclear meltdown

http://english.kyodonews.jp/

Ok, so I'm fairly knowledgeable about weather, have a layman's understanding of earthquakes, and really could not know less about nuclear power plants. In a modern plant is there some sort of containment system for a meltdown or is it pretty much guaranteed to be a horrible situation?

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Ok, so I'm fairly knowledgeable about weather, have a layman's understanding of earthquakes, and really could not know less about nuclear power plants. In a modern plant is there some sort of containment system for a meltdown or is it pretty much guaranteed to be a horrible situation?

The containment vessel has 4'+ thick walls. They are designed to withstand a direct impact from a 747. But, with enough pressure, and vessel will breach eventually. These rods are 2000 degrees plus when meltdown occurs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_safety_systems

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Ok, so I'm fairly knowledgeable about weather, have a layman's understanding of earthquakes, and really could not know less about nuclear power plants. In a modern plant is there some sort of containment system for a meltdown or is it pretty much guaranteed to be a horrible situation?

The containment system was destroyed in the earthquake.

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Why aren't any of the US cable news channels breaking into this and talking about it?

Fox is talking about it now. Saying official has said even if there is a meltdown, it will not effect people beyond a 6 mile radius. Who knows where they are getting those numbers from.

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Ok, so I'm fairly knowledgeable about weather, have a layman's understanding of earthquakes, and really could not know less about nuclear power plants. In a modern plant is there some sort of containment system for a meltdown or is it pretty much guaranteed to be a horrible situation?

Based on the design and everything I have read. The meltdown should be contained in the containment vessel. However, not everything always goes as planned. :-\

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Not a nuclear engineer, but I did use to operate 550 Mw pressurized water reactors before I went to college.

In an area prone to massive earthquakes, they shopuld have had redundant backups to provide reactor cooling.

An almost failsafe system has the heat exhangers/steam generators positioned in such a way hot water leaves the reactor going in an upward direction, cools, and sinks back to the reactor establishling flow without pumps.

Natural circulation. Trident submarines can operate near half power without running reactor coolant pumps as a noise reducing feature.

Wiki...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_circulation

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You don't need a mods approval to start a new thread--but I don't think it needs one. This is just one of many parts of the whole earthquake disaster.

How about closing this thread and starting a new one. If the nuke plant meltdown is true, this thread is going to explode tomorrow.

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You don't need a mods approval to start a new thread--but I don't think it needs one. This is just one of many parts of the whole earthquake disaster.

While related to the earthquake the potential of an actual reactor melting down is rather significant and this thread would quickly take away from the impacts of the earthquake/tsunami.

Just a thought and at this point it's hard to really know the level of this so called 'meltdown' so it could be jumping the gun.

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Not a nuclear engineer, but I did use to operate 550 Mw pressurized water reactors before I went to college.

In an area prone to massive earthquakes, they shopuld have had redundant backups to provide reactor cooling.

An almost failsafe system has the heat exhangers/steam generators positioned in such a way hot water leaves the reactor going in an upward direction, cools, and sinks back to the reactor establishling flow without pumps.

Natural circulation. Trident submarines can operate near half power without running reactor coolant pumps as a noise reducing feature.

Wiki...

http://en.wikipedia....ral_circulation

My understanding (from media reports) is that they did, but they did not plan for the tsunami. Their back up power genrators were taken out by the water, they were placed above the level of the highest recorded wave they knew of.

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How about closing this thread and starting a new one. If the nuke plant meltdown is true, this thread is going to explode tomorrow.

That is unnecessary at this juncture. Meltdown doesn't mean nuclear apocalypse.

If anyone wants to start a new thread regarding the nuclear plant though--they are free to do so.

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