The Lousiana oil rig failure...

[Seth8530]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead Nuke

Sure there are. You can poison the core by the introduction of chemicals..

You can drive the reactor subcritical by heating it up. You use Alpha-T to your advantage. Heck, you can DRAIN the plant and shut the reaction down. This would work in a PWR/BWR reactor, granted decay heat would then make other problems for you.

Depending on the nature of the causality and the backup systems, there are multiple ways to shut it down.

BTW: the nuclear reaction at Chernobyl is DEAD. Without water to moderate the reaction, the nuclear chain essentially stopped. Granted, the BWR have a very positive alpha-T (sorry techies, there is no characters for the symbol used) and the steam void coefficient plays hell with your reactivity coefficients, but with NO water you have no reaction. What you have is a hell of a lot of decay heat and no way to remove it.

One other thing to remember is this. The core requires a VERY specific configuration to reach and substain a chain reaction. If you melt, explode, deform, or otherwise CHANGE this configuration the reaction pretty much STOPS. We are talking MILLIMETER tolerances. Yes, you may have some limited local zone chain reaction, but those will damp out quickly due to neutron depletion and transuranic production.



Actually, it was a hydrogen explosion. The hydrogen was created by the disassociation of water due to the extreme heat generated by the power transient and the low coolant flow condition. The low flow condition created a power spike that caused pressure in the core to increase rapidly. The resulting hydraulic effect flexed the closure head and depressurized the core. The remaining water in the core then flashed to steam in the sudden depressurization and the resulting void co-efficient created a MASSIVE up power transient and subsequent increase in core temp. The self ignition temp of the fixed graphic control rods was reached and they flashed setting off the hydrogen that was in the core. The resulting explosion then removed the closure head from the top of the reactor physically pulling the remaining control rods from the core. At that point the nuclear chain reaction was stopped by the physical disruption the core geometry. You still have the transuranic burnoff and decay heat that has to be dealt with. You also have the physical FIRE and the result smoke and ash that will create 'fallout' downwind.

It was not the plutonium that was the issue, it was the BILLIONS of curies that created the problems.. Plutonium was a VERY small byproduct. There are more long live transuranics that I would be worried about.



ALL USN reactors from the ship recycling program are stored aboveground at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.

Bellona.net is full of it. No us naval reactor has EVER been dumped at sea. The USS Thesher and the USS Scorpion are the ONLY US naval reactors sitting in the ocean. They did not exactly have a choice. They are monitored for escaping material all the time.

Wanna sightsee??

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/...iew/?service=0

It is a decent sat shot.

Thank you for the insight. Just curious where did you learn this stuff and what career are you involved in?

-- Catfish---

Thank you for your insight on the oilrigs, i believe that you are mistaken about the reactors but i will listen to what you have to say about drilling. one theory on what caused all the failsafes to misbehave involves some of the crystalline methane melting and turning into a gas. Assume you have 2 liters of Methane gas at 1000 feet down. every 33 ft is one atmosphere, therefore there is a 333 atmosphere difference. according to the gas laws p1 x v1 = p2 x v2...... so we have 333 atmosphere x 2 liters= 1 atmosphere x v2..

666 liters= 1 atmosphere x v2

666/1 atmoshere=v2
666L = the amount 2 liters of methane coming up from a bottom depth of 1000 ft would turn into by the time it reached the oil rig. The theory is that as the methane expanded in the oil line it ruined the failsafes and other such equipment in the line. You would prob have a better idea what to do with these numbers than i would tho.