10/12 early: AWACS coverage

[That Guy]

Actually, wouldn't you just have to damage the intake for the cooling ponds? Maybe just dump some quick-dry cement in there and wait for the siren? I wouldn't think you'd have to damage the core directly. Then again, I've never put much thought into it...

[Slight]

orginally posted by MaggieL
Was that before or after Three Mile Island? :-)

I doubt it would be necessary to breech the reactor vessel to cause a boatload of trouble...just the containment building, especially if you managed to damage much of the coolant loops (especially the primary) in the process.

Ok make Slight do research, fine! Construction on Washington Nuclear Plant-1 was discontinued in 1983. The three mile island incident occured in 1979 a year after the plant opened. So maybe they fixed the problems with the three mile island incident but wtf do I know, construction on WNP-1, 2, 3 and 4 was started in 1970 so they might have had time to fix what was wrong with TMI.

I would assume that you keep the primary loop inside the dome, but I don't know for sure. If you did take out the external secondary loop there is still enough (alot of it!) water inside to cool the reactors and you would drop the control rods. TMI lost water because of a leaky valve and that probably wouldn't happen in this case. And as be-low-meet-the-he-clown suggest taking out the external cooling loop would have the same effect as taking out the secondary loop.

I would like to correct myself; there is an operating plant near the Hanford site. It is Washington Nuclear Plant 2. That makes that site an even better target.

And I have now realized that even if the AP had not released this map, the info is still availible on other sites.

[leif]

Originally posted by lisa
Of course, it seems like the best course of action, if you want to avoid being hit by a terrorist attack, is to live in the middle of nowhere -- but most people don't want that kind of life. That's why we all live on top of each other.

Or you could live in a country that doesn't have a habbit of meddling with volatile forign conflicts for their own economic interests, and making YOU and ME targets for terrorists.

[Whit]

Such countries exist? That's odd I can't think of any country that doesn't meddle for profit. Think of how many countries bug the U.S. for financial aid. Don't you think everyone of them is bullying smaller countries for cash as well? That's life.

What the terrorists did was jump the biggest dog in the pack. (Of countries that tend to dispense aid) Make no mistake they'd love to nail EVERY UN/NATO allied country.

On a side note, Juju drives slower than my Grandma. I live about eighty miles from the nuke plant in Russelville, and he lives less than seventy miles from me tops.

It's an impressive structure that I enjoy seeing from the highway when I drive through that area. It's amazing that mankind can make something like that and still kill each other in droves. You'd think we'd be over that by now...

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Slight
Ok make Slight do research, fine! Construction on Washington Nuclear Plant-1 was discontinued in 1983. The three mile island incident occured in 1979 a year after the plant opened. So maybe they fixed the problems with the three mile island incident but wtf do I know

I hadn't really thought there'd been much signficant nuke construction after TMI, and the incident was a watershed in a lot of people thinkining about nuclear safety. It was probably the first time that popular culture realized that a fission reactor might be something that you couldn't simply "turn off" if it became unruly. Chernobyl was still seven years in the future.

Nor was it my intent to make y'all do research; I just *remeber* when the TMI Unit 2 incident went down and how scary it was to those of us living somewhat nearby. Not that Limmerick isn't a hell of a lot closer.

[Undertoad]

Scary for you? We were pretty close! They announced over the PA system at school (high school, where I was at the time) that we were not to go outside between classes and not to linger outside at the end of the day waiting for the bus. Science teachers brought out their geiger counters and explained radiation and why it was hard to measure simple background radiation.

I remember two kids running outside across the campus between classes, and everyone saying how dumb they were. Despite the usual generational love of fear and danger, extreme peer pressures, etc. Almost everyone understood that this was different.

[russotto]

Originally posted by Undertoad
Even in case of meltdown, you have about 5 hours to get away from the most serious danger zones. In that space of time, I would be able to walk far enough away, even if I had no vehicle.

You'd need to. The evacuation plan for Limerick is Rt 422 East. If shit happens at Limerick, that road is going to become a glow in the dark parking lot.

(my personal plan is to head to 422 West, at full speed. IIRC under normal wind conditions the plume would go mostly UP first, then head southeast. Thus, counterintuitively, heading straight for the plant to get to the northwest side might be the best bet)

[Undertoad]

There wouldn't be a plume though. A nuclear plant can't act like a nuclear bomb; I forget why. But the worst case is the meltdown, where the rods that control chain reactions can't be inserted back into the core. In such a case the generated heat gets so hot that it melts everything until it sinks right into the ground.

That's what someone told me, anyway. So the major radioactivity leak happens after it's melted out of its containment. That's the time period you've got to get away.

Saw a bit of one of the night's TV news magazines where they demonstrated what would probably happen if a jet collided with the containment hull. The jet would turn into dust, basically, and wouldn't penetrate the hull.

Nevertheless there was a suggestion that anti-aircraft guns be located near the plants as a last resort. And another suggestion that it's Tom Ridge's call.

[jaguar]

Depends, chenobyl blew its cap off and was a plum that covered 3/4 of europe. On the otherside that was not properly designed.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Undertoad
There wouldn't be a plume though. A nuclear plant can't act like a nuclear bomb; I forget why. But the worst case is the meltdown, where the rods that control chain reactions can't be inserted back into the core.

Fission plants aren't designed in a way that makes it at all feasible to bring the fissile material together fast enough to cause a nuclear explosion. Fissile material tends to resist being packed densely enough to explode by getting hot and losing density due to the expansion of vapor and gas. The rate of the nuclear reaction and the level of released energy is dependant on the density of the reacting materials. That's why a nuclear bomb is basically constructed by setting up the fissile material in two or more pieces and arranging to bring them together rapidly with an chemical implosion.

So a "meltdown".--which is slang for uncontrollable runaway fission--is probably the nastiest thing that can happen with just a reactor. The "down" part of the term evokes an image of creating a pile of hot slag, in the "China Syndrome" type of scenario. But when such an event breaches the containment. it can also result in the release of radioactive steam and smoke, which certainly can result in a plume.

Enough conventional explosives close to a reactor could concievably scatter radioactive debris in an even nastier way, and if the reactor vessel *was* breached maybe even the fuel itself. It's not a fission explosion as such, but it's certainly still nothing you'd wanna be downwind of.

I recall an article on the topic of using nuke plants to amplify the destructive power of conventional weapons in Scientific American some years ago.

[tw]

To correct some misconceptions.

TMI 2 resulted from a loss of coolant, a complete cutoff of the emergency cooling system, and control room actions that repeatedly thwarted automatic controls to recover. IOW much the same would happen if a jumbo hit the control room rather than the containment building.

What was to fix after TMI? The problem was top management - GPU - who knew nothing about nuclear power and whose cost control mentality was so ingrained that they would not replace that leaky valve during the maintenace shutdown. That maintenance period has just been completed the previous month, but because the valve cost too much money, then top management decided to not replace it.

TMI1 was not permitted to restart until all GPU management was replaced. TMI1 restart was delayed because the president of GPU refused to resign. The day after he finally did resign is the day that TMI1 got its license renewed for operation. That is the reason for TMI2's failure. Top management whose cost control mentalities were so dominant that TMI2 operators could not get any phone lines (they only had two) and could not place outgoing calls (all circuits were busy).

What would it take to get a high priority phone line into TMI2? A call from GPU top management to Bell of PA. GPU corporate would not even do that. Jimmy Carter finally solved TMI's phone problems by making Bell connect all TMI phone lines directly to the White House switchboard. Yes - it was GPU top management that caused the TMI2 meltdown.

A new core design was recently developed so that a reactor core could shut itself down automatically if it overheated. But that new design is not (as of yet I think) installed in any reactors.

A PWR containment dome is one of the hardest structures on the earth. But the explosion inside TMI2 was almost large enought to burst that structure.

For those of you in the TMI area - did you know that TMI operators were in such a panic over a possible second explosion that they planned to setup monitoring cameras and abandon the site. Therefore Jimmy Carter and wife appearred for a visit - to calm some very scared people. In fact, Carter was on-site being briefed by Denton during the hours that a second explosion was predicted.

Also for those in the TMI area - those emergency cooling pumps should not have survived pumping against closed valves. Eventually one pump failed. Had the second pump failed any time in the one year period after the meltdown, then China Syndrome would have restarted. Yes, the dirty little secret we know today - TMI2 was in that much trouble for up to a year after the event.

Nuclear reactors do not have fuel high enough in U-235 content to become a bomb. To make Uranium into bomb grade material, well, that is what they found in Iraq. It is an expensive, technically challenging, and energy consuming task to convert low grade power reactor fuel into weapons grade uranium. Converting weapons grade fuel back to low grade is easy which is why there is no uranium fuel shortage in todays markets.

Chernobyl is of completely different design. There is no containment dome. The Nuclear reactor is air cooled - much like a British nuclear reactor, long before TMI, that failed and spread radioactivity in a large agricultural area. Also Chernobyl type reactors use graphite as a moderator. But graphite is flammable only making a Chernobyl type design that much more dangerous. Chernobyl did not explode so much as it caught fire. The entire core disappeared - was spread out downwind in the countryside and into the plants basement.

One type of reactor that can make fuel is a breeder reactor. Fermi 1 was to be a breeder reactor that created electricity and more nuclear fuel. Breeders are unstable which is why Detriot was also almost lost to contamination by this major nuclear accident - before TMI.

The Europeans also tried to develop a breeder and failed - after the US gave up. Currently Japan is trying to develop a breeder which is why more than 50% of the world's Plutonium is currently in Japan.

How do you find nuclear power plants? They are marked on automobile road maps. Their existance and location is well documented in newspaper and magazine archives. Locating 100+ nuclear plants in the US is common knowledge.

[jaguar]

sad fact number 207:
ExGPUMBA: I am sucha tightass i'd rather cause a nuclear meltdown than spend real money!
CorperateAmerica: You start tomorrow!

[juju]

Originally posted by Whit

What the terrorists did was jump the biggest dog in the pack. (Of countries that tend to dispense aid) Make no mistake they'd love to nail EVERY UN/NATO allied country.

Ya know, ever since George Bush floated that dumb "make no mistake" saying, everyone is using it! What is with this saying? I keep imagining millions of people running around this country with serious looks on their faces citing, "make no mistake! make no mistake!". Does everyone love our president now or what?
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On a side note, Juju drives slower than my Grandma. I live about eighty miles from the nuke plant in Russelville, and he lives less than seventy miles from me tops.

Actually, I don't think i've ever driven there.. i just woke Kathy up and asked her how far it was. :] But she was half-asleep so I guess I should've expected the number to be a little off.
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And I don't drive slow. Just....cautiously. <g>
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It's an impressive structure that I enjoy seeing from the highway when I drive through that area. It's amazing that mankind can make something like that and still kill each other in droves. You'd think we'd be over that by now...

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60 Minutes did a pretty cool show last night on nuclear power plants and how government is trying to terrorist-proof them. It actually said that the reactor walls were 6 feet thick. There was a video clip of a fighter-plane on some sort of track slamming into the side of one of those walls, and completely disintigrating on impact. Apparently it didn't even get 1 inch into the wall.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by juju2112

Ya know, ever since George Bush floated that dumb "make no mistake" saying, everyone is using it! What is with this saying? I keep imagining millions of people running around this country with serious looks on their faces citing, "make no mistake! make no mistake!". Does everyone love our president now or what?
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That "make no mistake" riff is a Nixonism...he of "I am not a crook" fame. I guess enough of the electorate is too young to remeber that that it doesn't matter anymore.

[leif]

Originally posted by Whit
Such countries exist? That's odd I can't think of any country that doesn't meddle for profit. Think of how many countries bug the U.S. for financial aid. Don't you think everyone of them is bullying smaller countries for cash as well? That's life.

What the terrorists did was jump the biggest dog in the pack. (Of countries that tend to dispense aid) Make no mistake they'd love to nail EVERY UN/NATO allied country.

No, we were not attacked because "were the biggest dog in the pack", or because we're a "beacon of freedom", or any oher such silly nonsense. We were the target because we are the country leading the military occupation of the Middle East. Yes, even the smallest countries ask for aid. But the "asking for aid" kind of meddling pisses off far fewer extremists than the "supply military support" kind of meddling. We've got alternate energy otpions, and everyone with a good head on them realizes the only reason we're there is Oil. Maybe we should spend some of the millions that are being thown away to bomb a wartorn country further into the stoneage on something productive like developng our alternative energy options. The oil isn't gonna last forever anyway!

It's an impressive structure that I enjoy seeing from the highway when I drive through that area. It's amazing that mankind can make something like that and still kill each other in droves. You'd think we'd be over that by now...

Maybe if bin Laden could only see a few of our power plants he wouldn't hate us so much, huh?