Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicolas
I'm a ignorant of these things, someone explain me, seems the way is to get water in these reactors what the problem with that, there is not enough water pressure, not enough pumps? they can't transport pumps to the place?
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OK the way I understand it the pumps have a diesel backup power supply to keep them going if the reactor is shut down. When the Earthquake happened the reactors shut down automatically causing the diesels to kick in to keep the reactors cool but the tsunami damaged the backup generators (they have batteries as back up for that and those were put to use for a while). The tsunami also flooded the building(s) where the generators connect to the pumps. It was then decided to pump in sea water followed by boric acid to cool the reactor though the fire suppression piping (echos of K-19 here), this will ruin the reactor. Then an aftershock happened and they had to stop pumping in sea water, and then they ran out of sea water in their reservoirs.