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.

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Originally Posted by Seth8530

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

I was a nuclear trained machinist mate in the United States Navy. Back then it was the equivalent of 3 years of engineering crammed into 6 months of school with 6 months of on-hands training.

I went through the nuke pipeline back when they educated you instead of training you. I guess I am a relic of the Rickover era. We were taught the HOW & WHY it works. Unfortunately, they do not train people like they used to train us.

What do I do now? I fix cars. I am, admittedly, overtrained for the job but I enjoy my job.

[Seth8530]

Thats really fascinating. Im going to college next year for nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee. Ive always had an interest in being part of our countries nuclear future.

Mishap with the containment dome.

[Catfish]

Hello,

thanks Bubblehead - you know a lot more than me i'm sure about reactors and such - but then i wrote it was highly polemic
I do not really know where i read the Bering strait reactor thing, one of the sources is Bellona net, but they have an agenda, as the pro nuclear industry has, so both not really neutral or independent. I have also read about it in several newspapers ( i remember the Time magazine, and the german "Spiegel"), must have been around 2000 - so this is indeed wrong ?
Anyway the Soviet method of disposing some of its reactors in the Kara sea, is not a myth.

I think Rickover is, despite of all that might be said against him, the one who is responsible for the highest grade of standards regarding reactor management, failsafe security and no nuclear accidents happening in the US Navy of the time.

It is said that the Scorpion was not in a good shape when it made its last voyage, although i find this rather unlikely for a nuclear submarine of the time. Anyway its sinking was obviously not related to any reactor problem.

@Steamwake:
it was not only John Wayne who died of cancer, but a lot of others of the film team, after filming in this former test area and being exposed to the radiation. Remember the US military "tested" its own people while exposing them to nuclear surface tests.


Seth,
thanks for being patient with me, regarding reactors
you wrote

" ... one theory on what caused all the failsafes to misbehave involves some of the crystalline methane melting and turning into a gas. ..."

Yes, i already thought about such an occurrence, but i wondered what made the chrstylline structure "melt" -

There are only two possibilites imho, temperature and/or pressure. Usually a gas or oil reservoir is under pressure, so if you are lucky enough to hit a either resource, you are prepared. One thing is keeping the drilling fluid "heavy"/ballasted, the other is to temporarily shut the mud valves until you have ballasted and adapted the mud to the borehole pressure.

If you hit a reservoir vertically from above, there is an oil-gas cap above the oil, which is under pressure. You try to go through this cap without releasing pressure from the reservoir and enter the oil horizin below, since the cap pressure will help you to produce oil without pumping, until the pressure is so low that you will have to install a pump for further production.

sorry, have to leave, be back later
CF

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Hello,

I think Rickover is, despite of all that might be said against him, the one who is responsible for the highest grade of standards regarding reactor management, failsafe security and no nuclear accidents happening in the US Navy of the time.

Rickover made a difference because he set out to. I can guarantee you that ONE person in a industry or field can make a difference. Had someone like him been in charge of this drilling fiasco, we would not have this problem. Profits should ALWAYS take a second seat to safety. Maybe we can get someone with his uncompromising standards in place that will prevent this from happening again.

It is said that the Scorpion was not in a good shape when it made its last voyage, although i find this rather unlikely for a nuclear submarine of the time. Anyway its sinking was obviously not related to any reactor problem.

The FRONT of the boat may have been substandard, but I can guarantee you that the AFT end of the boat was fine. We nukes are OBSESSED with things running correctly. If something had been amiss, they would have flat said NO to a reactor startup. Back then all it took was a call to Rickover's office saying that the reactor was unsafe and he would have pulled the CO off that boat.

Originally Posted by Bubblehead Nuke

Profits should ALWAYS take a second seat to safety.

How totally un-American!

[Seth8530]

-- and everyone on the subsim general topic decided to be nice to each other and admit transgressions lol, i think were making the moderators proud.



So i take it that this Rickover fella is sorta of a legend in his own discipline?