# Preppers, our plans will FAIL and here is why.



## wernesgruner

Hello everyone,

Let me start off by reassuring you; I'm not here to crush your hopes for survival, but merely to get you fellow survivalist men and women to avoid a potentially fatal mistake in your quest for survival in the post-civilized world. As many of you have and still do every day, I often try to find oversights in my survival strategy and my job has brought to my attention an immense danger that doesn't appear to be getting any kind of attention at the moment.

You see, I'm a software engineer and I've recently been hired to work on a management software for spent fuel pool pumping systems for a Canadian utility company which operates several CANDU type nuclear reactors. That said I'm not a nuclear engineer, but as I've been working in the power generation industry for about a year in the era of nuclear energy, I have acquired a few close friends which append to be nuclear engineers and the discussion we've been having recently have made me realize that the biggest threat for long term survival is far being from what I've imagined. That said, in order to be able to perform my duties, I've also had to go through a few weeks crash course on nuclear reactors operation, safety measures and most importantly, spent fuel management.

*First, what most of us already knew*​
So yea, the not so big news is that there is no such thing as a "walk away safe" nuclear reactor, which means that every single reactors currently used for power generation will eventually go through a full blown solid nuclear fuel rods meltdown if left unattended for more than a few days/weeks. So basically, that means that for every nuclear reactor on the planet, an area potentially greater than the state of Alabama will be contaminated with dangerously high levels of radiation equal or greater to the levels that were released in the exclusion zone of Chernobyl. And believe me, that's a pretty conservative estimation considering that there were people on the site of the incident to try and mitigate the consequences of the meltdowns and the same goes for the Fukushima Daiichi incident. That said, a full blown meltdown doesn't means that there will be a breach of containment 100% of the time especially if the reactor is equipment with proper passive cooling systems which are likely to as least prevent an hydrogen explosion in the containment building ( The kind both Chernobyl and some of Fukushima's reactors experienced ). That said, even in the event that the containment is not immediately breached, if civilization doesn't rebuild within one to five years, its very likely that large scale contamination will still occur as containment buildings need to be maintained.

So let me give you a quick time-lapse of what would happen to the reactors in most case;

*Day 1: *No one came to operate the reactors, most modern reactors will automatically shutdown ( stop the process of splitting atoms by inserting enough control bars to stop the reaction) just because they require to be constantly monitored in order to operate fission. At this point external power is most likely still reaching the reactor so the active cooling system are still running, but the reactors. Reactors that aren't critical anymore ( operating fission ) do not generate enough steam to keep the turbines running and therefore stops producing power.

*Day 2: *The grid is most likely down as the fossil fuel power plants are no longer operating, there might still be some juice in areas with active hydro-electric damns, solar plants or wind turbines, but for the most part, there is no longer any power from the grid reaching the nuclear power stations. At this point, the diesel generators will kick in and keep the active cooling system up and running for up to a week.

*Day 7-9: *No one came to refuel the diesel generators, active cooling system fails. Every single reactor not equipped with a passive cooling system will meltdown within 4 to 24 hours and the same goes for reactors equipped with PCS* that aren't automatically activating or were otherwise disabled.

*Day 10: *Many reactors that melt down will experience breach of containment and hydrogen explosion from the residual heat which is the result of radioactive decay.

*Day 11:* Many reactors will catch fire and emit massive clouds of radioactive particles.

*Day 12-15:*Many reactors equipped with PCS will have exhausted the water content required for it to work. ALL of these reactors will meltdown within 4 to 24 hours. No breach of containment will occur as it is unlikely that the containment building will experience a hydrogen explosion.

*Day 16 to year 1:*Most reactors will experience breach of containment because the nuclear magma will slowly make its way into ground and the underground waters.

*Year 1 to year 5*Many damaged containment buildings will collapse causing further contamination.

*The issue is, its far from being the worst part of the problem*​
So yeah, nuclear reactors are a pretty big issue, but wait up, there is more. Most of the world's dangerous nuclear material stockpile isn't inside active reactors. The amount of spent nuclear fuel still producing enough residual heat to boil away gigantic pools of water is far superior to the quantity of nuclear material present at any time in all active nuclear reactors in the world combined. And believe me, this spend fuel is way more dangerous than material liberated by, per se, nuclear bombs. The issue is that we have pretty much the same problem than with the nuclear reactors; Pools need to be actively cooled for a 30 years and the emergency diesel generator can only provide cooling for about three days to a week.

A pool containing spent fuel will start boil in less than 18 hours for the first 15 years of it being in containment and about 50 to 70 hours for another 5 to 10 years. The thing is, this pool will not only boil, it will dry up while of course releasing and dangerous mixture of hydrogen and air which, of course, will eventually explode when the fuel rods ignite. But yeah, the thing is, an average cooling pool contains A LOT of spent fuel. Some specialists estimated that that if the content of a generic fuel pool was to catch fire and explode, there would be several tons of radioactive material released in the environment ( The equivalent of 500 Hiroshima ). So yea, just the 75 active spent fuel storage facilities in the US would be enough to contaminate the entire north hemisphere. And yea, don't forget that there are also several hundred of these facilities around the world.

The winds would bring the contamination literally everywhere in North-America. The US and Canada would therefore become a huge radioactive wasteland in just a few months. And so will most of the northern hemisphere. And I'm talking huge areas of red forest, a COMPLETE contamination of the food chain, which also means that merely breathing hairs from big mammals will likely kill you. Plants will give you radiation sickness as the rain will concentrate the radiation in the ground and water masses. The ocean will probably not be "radioactive", but the radiation will still concentrate in the food chain, making it pretty much impossible to eat fish for humans.

So yea, there isn't much we can do, but I there would still likely be areas with "safer" levels of radiation, such as areas mostly untouched by the great winds and of course, a big part of *the southern hemisphere would probably be pretty much free of contamination.*

TL;DR : 




PS: Please note that being a Quebecer, English is my second language and it's far from being perfect. Please send me a PM if you find typos or poorly constructed sentences.
PPS: Feel free to correct me on any inconsistancy, as I said, I'm not a nuclear engineer.
*: Passive cooling system

*Q & A*


Prepadoodle said:


> Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a Japanese businessman who was in Hiroshima the day it was bombed. He survived and went home to Nagasaki in time to survive THAT bombing. He died in January of 2010. More than 150 people survived both bombings, but as far as I know, he was the last of the dual survivors.
> 
> I'm guessing it would be a high priority to keep the cooling ponds in operation. An armored division uses more than 500,000 gallons of diesel per day and manages to keep supplied, even when operating halfway around the world. They could keep the nuclear plant's generators supplied if they had to. (assuming they want to, of course)


Yeah, but a 1000 kW at ¾ load will consume about 52 gallons of fuel every hour. For each four reactors at the facility I visited, there were 8 of these emergency generators. So were talking about providing between 15k and 40k gallons of diesel every day for ten to 20 years and that's just for a single plant. You have to keep in mind that we'd still need to bring the fuel over to the generators, most likely using trucks. That said, if we averaged the consumption of a nuclear reactor active cooling system at around 10k gallons of diesel every day, it means that we would need about 1 040 000 gallons of diesel every day, and that's just to keep the reactors from melting down. We'd still need to truck it to every reactors in the US and we haven't even started to estimate how much more fuel it would require to keep the 75 spent fuel storage facilities from burning up either. Just to give you a quick idea, the US strategic petroleum reserve if estimated at around 700 million barrels, which is not merely enough to hold on for than two years.

But of course, keep in mind that this estimation is probably very inaccurate as all reactors aren't build the same and the majority of reactors in the US aren't CANDU.



roy said:


> The nearest reactor to me is 200 miles away. Take a look at Chernobyl. The world ended.


That is not merely far enough, at least for long term survival.



roy said:


> Spent fuel rods are a combination of U235 and U238. neither flamable. The pools are pools of water, not flamable. How will this catch fire?


First of all, spent fuel rods contain many different fission products, gasses, metals and oxides. Only about 3% of the total mass of the spent will consist of U235 and U238 and a very large proportion of the mass will be the original U238, another rough 3% of the mass will contain fission products, decaying elements and elements of all kinds. 
That said, the residual heat of decaying element will gradually bring the temperature of the rods to the melting point. At around 1800 °C (3300 °F), the zirconium alloy cladding with react with the uranium oxide contained in the fuel rod and form zirconium-uranium oxide which can do up to even higher temperatures, eventually igniting pretty much everything and most importantly the pressurized mix of hydrogen and air that is very likely to have accumulated in the containment building.



BigCheeseStick said:


> Nuclear power is steam power. The nuclear reaction produces heat in the cooling tanks, producing steam, that runs steam powered generators. Until the nuclear reaction is stopped COLD it's still producing it's own power and needs no backup generators. The backup generators are there in case of a system failure where the steam generators (being totally separate from the reactor) are shut down completely.
> 
> As I understand it (may be mistaken!), an "emergency" shutdown of the reactor would take only a few hours, or even only 45 minutes depending on they age and design of the reactor. Normal shutdown could take several weeks because their going to deplete all the stored energy in the rods rather than waste it.


A nuclear reactor that is not critical doesn't produce enough energy to keep its steam turbines running and therefore cannot keep its active cooling system running. A nuclear reactor can SHUTDOWN ( stop the process of splitting atoms ) in just a few minutes by inserting enough control rods to absorb enough neutrons to stop the chain reaction , but the residual heat from decaying materials will still eventually cause a meltdown, exactly like it happened in Fukushima. No reactor is walk away safe.

If there is no one to maintain the reactor when its in active state, IT WILL SHUTDOWN. Therefore it won't be producing energy anymore and as soon as the grid stops providing power, the generators will kick in.

*THIS TEXT WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR PREPPERFORUMS.NET BY WERNESGRUNER, FEEL FREE TO COPY IT AND SHARE IT, BUT PLEASE INCLUDE A LINK AND CREDIT TO THIS POST*


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## Fuzzee

Oh well, than I'll cook hotdogs off my burning flesh so at least I'll have a good last meal. I know the reactors are a large potential threat, we'll have to deal with it.


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## Meangreen

What a fragile existence we have.


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## Prepadoodle

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a Japanese businessman who was in Hiroshima the day it was bombed. He survived and went home to Nagasaki in time to survive THAT bombing. He died in January of 2010. More than 150 people survived both bombings, but as far as I know, he was the last of the dual survivors.

I'm guessing it would be a high priority to keep the cooling ponds in operation. An armored division uses more than 500,000 gallons of diesel per day and manages to keep supplied, even when operating halfway around the world. They could keep the nuclear plant's generators supplied if they had to. (assuming they want to, of course)


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## Smitty901

We will be ok. Just like the homy video that claims they will invade and take every thing. They do not understand a real man and women ability to survive.
We shall over come. I am not worried about a nuke plant.


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## Nathan Jefferson

I'm glad the OP came and posted this - spent fuel rods catching fire quite possibly could be the worst SHTF scenario possible. If they were to go up in flames there would be insanely huge amounts of radioactive material released it would easily destroy life for decades all around the world.

So we would have to do something along the lines of keeping the cooling ponds up and running for YEARS in a major SHTF scenario or even purposely pull out the 'hot rods' and let them burn while the cooler rods are left in containment. 

Dunno, but it is ****ing scary beyond anything. And from what I understand the final disposal location was shut down so ALL the US ponds are overfilling with used fuel rods. 

Not sure what to do to prepare for this... any help Mr(or Mrs.) OP?


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## Prepadoodle

Maybe we should store them in Iraq


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## split

*The Answer*

Over the years I have looked at purchasing unused missile silos that the gov was auctioning off. I even looked at an entire complex in North Dakota. In each case they all had the same big problem. The underground structures all filled with water when they shut the facility down. There was no one to run the pumps so it completely filled.

The answer to the above problem is to put the storage facilities underground, deep enough so that they will fill with water if SHTF without pumps or people.
Even if the water stopped(dried up), being underground naturally shields from radiation and explosion. If the core turned to molten it would burn down into the crust until the earths molten core was reached where it would not be a problem.

I have always wondered why they were not underground and I have always assumed it was all about $$$$$$


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## Nathan Jefferson

split said:


> Over the years I have looked at purchasing unused missile silos that the gov was auctioning off. I even looked at an entire complex in North Dakota. In each case they all had the same big problem. The underground structures all filled with water when they shut the facility down. There was no one to run the pumps so it completely filled.
> 
> The answer to the above problem is to put the storage facilities underground, deep enough so that they will fill with water if SHTF without pumps or people.
> Even if the water stopped(dried up), being underground naturally shields from radiation and explosion. If the core turned to molten it would burn down into the crust until the earths molten core was reached where it would not be a problem.
> 
> I have always wondered why they were not underground and I have always assumed it was all about $$$$$$


That's what Yucca mountain was supposed to do, but they stopped funding it a few years ago and the spent fuel ponds local to reactors continue to fill up more and more.

Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## BigCheeseStick

Uhmmmm, the whole theory here is _every_ nuclear power plant worker _on the planet_ walks off the job at the same time (_NOW THAT'S A UNION!_)?

Fail.

The closest thing to this possibly happening is the "rapture" in the Bible. Even then only those whom are _TRUE_ believers in The Lord will be going anywhere. Care to take a guess at what percentage of nuclear power plant employees qualify?   

Sorry to be a #$%@ and burst the fear bubble, but I'd bet on Zombies becoming a reality to be at least a BAZILLION times more likely of a SHTF scenario. And a Zombie Apocalypse is in my prayers every day for decades now!


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## roy

The nearest reactor to me is 200 miles away. Take a look at Chernobyl. The world ended.


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## Seneca

Truth is it's probably not going to be some huge spasgastic disaster that take the world down the rabbit hole...it could happen, yet more than likely it will be something more mundane like cancelling American idol...


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## retired guard

Let's see if the event were one of the EOTWAWKI scenarios EMP Nuke War Asteroid Impact or other event that increases atmospheric particulates bringing year(s) without summer this probably would happen. Otherwise I think we are going down the tubes through other means.


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## Denton

I'll not be copying and pasting anything that confuses "yea" with "yeah" and uses "per say" in lieu of _per se_ as well as improperly using it.

:mrgreen:

Sorry. Grammar Nazi strikes first thing in the morning. Hey, at least I haven't tripped on all the people who have been confusing marshal or marshall with martial!

Yes, multiple nuclear reactors going bad at the same time will be detrimental for our health. Yes, we do not need them contaminating the ground water (a good reason not to have them where they could do so, more so than the cost of building them underground). No doubt, the melt-down of them would contaminate the atmosphere, as we see Fukushima is doing to us, now. That is certainly no reason to to not prepare.

There are things that are beyond anyone's control, and people are going to die if the continent goes into survival mode for any reason. We already knew that.

Thanks for the drive-by posting, though. Even if it were only to push your article for recognition. You might want to proof read it once again, though.


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## Nathan Jefferson

BigCheeseStick said:


> Uhmmmm, the whole theory here is _every_ nuclear power plant worker _on the planet_ walks off the job at the same time (_NOW THAT'S A UNION!_)?





roy said:


> The nearest reactor to me is 200 miles away. Take a look at Chernobyl. The world ended.


The difference is the spent fuel pool - not the reactor. In Chernobyl the reactor melted down so all the rods in the core caught fire and spread high radiation for hundreds of miles.

In a spent fuel pool there are dozens (if not hundreds) times more radiative material stored there - if one pool goes up it is like dozens (if not hundreds) of Chernobyls. It only takes *1* of the fuel ponds to go, not all of them.

From what I've been able to find the backup generators would run for about 2 weeks before needing to be refilled, after that, a week later they will be on fire and would be VERY VERY hard to put out - a chemical fire that burns over burning well over 1000 degrees - wowza!


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## Chipper

So lets get rid of those nasty coal plants and build more nuclear. You know, to "save" the planet.


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## roy

Spent fuel rods are a combination of U235 and U238. neither flamable. The pools are pools of water, not flamable. How will this catch fire?


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## PrepperLite

BigCheeseStick said:


> Uhmmmm, the whole theory here is _every_ nuclear power plant worker _on the planet_ walks off the job at the same time (_NOW THAT'S A UNION!_)?
> 
> Fail.
> 
> The closest thing to this possibly happening is the "rapture" in the Bible. Even then only those whom are _TRUE_ believers in The Lord will be going anywhere. Care to take a guess at what percentage of nuclear power plant employees qualify?
> 
> Sorry to be a #$%@ and burst the fear bubble, but I'd bet on Zombies becoming a reality to be at least a BAZILLION times more likely of a SHTF scenario. And a Zombie Apocalypse is in my prayers every day for decades now!


How could a Pandemic not give that effect? Sweeping across the Us fast taking people out of work left and right. When I was in high school I worked with the volunteer fire/ems. There was an exercise that if terrorists gave smallpox to someone and put them in a plane at Richmond International every state would be infected within 48 hours.



roy said:


> Spent fuel rods are a combination of U235 and U238. neither flamable. The pools are pools of water, not flamable. How will this catch fire?


The heat from the fuel rods will boil off the water, it will evaporate eventually. Then they will catch fire to whatever they are stored inside? No idea just a guess.


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## roy

Chernobyl caught fire because it was a graphite moderated reactor. Nothing associated with fuel rods or their storage if flamable.


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## jimb1972

There are still people alive who worked the Chernobyl site after the melt down. I remember one guy who received many times a "fatal" dose of radiation, his skin turned black and peeled off yet he still survived years after the fact.


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## wernesgruner

Prepadoodle said:


> Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a Japanese businessman who was in Hiroshima the day it was bombed. He survived and went home to Nagasaki in time to survive THAT bombing. He died in January of 2010. More than 150 people survived both bombings, but as far as I know, he was the last of the dual survivors.
> 
> I'm guessing it would be a high priority to keep the cooling ponds in operation. An armored division uses more than 500,000 gallons of diesel per day and manages to keep supplied, even when operating halfway around the world. They could keep the nuclear plant's generators supplied if they had to. (assuming they want to, of course)


Yeah, but a 1000 kW at ¾ load will consume about 52 gallons of fuel every hour. For each four reactors at the facility I visited, there were 8 of these emergency generators. So were talking about providing between 15k and 40k gallons of diesel every day for ten to 20 years and that's just for a single plant. You have to keep in mind that we'd still need to bring the fuel over to the generators, most likely using trucks. That said, if we averaged the consumption of a nuclear reactor active cooling system at around 10k gallons of diesel every day, it means that we would need about 1 040 000 gallons of diesel every day, and that's just to keep the reactors from melting down. We'd still need to truck it to every reactors in the US and we haven't even started to estimate how much more fuel it would require to keep the 75 spent fuel storage facilities from burning up either. Just to give you a quick idea, the US strategic petroleum reserve if estimated at around 700 million barrels, which is not merely enough to hold on for than two years.

But of course, keep in mind that this estimation is probably very inaccurate as all reactors aren't build the same and the majority of reactors in the US aren't CANDU.



roy said:


> The nearest reactor to me is 200 miles away. Take a look at Chernobyl. The world ended.


That is not merely far enough, at least for long term survival.



roy said:


> Spent fuel rods are a combination of U235 and U238. neither flamable. The pools are pools of water, not flamable. How will this catch fire?


First of all, spent fuel rods contain many different fission products, gasses, metals and oxides. Only about 3% of the total mass of the spent will consist of U235 and U238 and a very large proportion of the mass will be the original U238, another rough 3% of the mass will contain fission products, decaying elements and elements of all kinds. 
That said, the residual heat of decaying element will gradually bring the temperature of the rods to the melting point. At around 1800 °C (3300 °F), the zirconium alloy cladding with react with the uranium oxide contained in the fuel rod and form zirconium-uranium oxide which can do up to even higher temperatures, eventually igniting pretty much everything and most importantly the pressurized mix of hydrogen and air that is very likely to have accumulated in the containment building.


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## Smitty901

Seems to me every time the talk about energy comes up this same report surfaces. Not buying it.
If we go nuke the world will melt down scare, scare scare people .


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## PrepperLite

Smitty901 said:


> Seems to me every time the talk about energy comes up this same report surfaces. Not buying it.
> If we go nuke the world will melt down scare, scare scare people .


I'm not sure how much fact or fiction are in the post for this thread but I don't think it would be good if one day all of the nuclear facility personnel just up and left/died. Surely every nuclear facility doesn't have an automated system that can shutdown and keep safe nuclear material indefinitely.


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## Sr40ken

The OP did a decent presentation. But all in all the amount of damage will have many varibles. One of the most important is the jet stream. That's why the wife and I have checking the jet stream direction should their be a nuclear disaster in our tasks. None of us know what tomorrow brings so don't be prepared for just one thing.


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## BigCheeseStick

Nathan Jefferson said:


> From what I've been able to find the backup generators would run for about 2 weeks before needing to be refilled, after that, a week later they will be on fire and would be VERY VERY hard to put out - a chemical fire that burns over burning well over 1000 degrees - wowza!


Nuclear power is steam power. The nuclear reaction produces heat in the cooling tanks, producing steam, that runs steam powered generators. Until the nuclear reaction is stopped COLD it's still producing it's own power and needs no backup generators. The backup generators are there in case of a system failure where the steam generators (being totally separate from the reactor) are shut down completely.

As I understand it (may be mistaken!), an "emergency" shutdown of the reactor would take only a few hours, or even only 45 minutes depending on they age and design of the reactor. Normal shutdown could take several weeks because their going to deplete all the stored energy in the rods rather than waste it.


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## BigCheeseStick

KillSwitch said:


> How could a Pandemic not give that effect? Sweeping across the Us fast taking people out of work left and right. When I was in high school I worked with the volunteer fire/ems. There was an exercise that if terrorists gave smallpox to someone and put them in a plane at Richmond International every state would be infected within 48 hours.
> 
> The heat from the fuel rods will boil off the water, it will evaporate eventually. Then they will catch fire to whatever they are stored inside? No idea just a guess.


A pandemic is almost a non-concern because the control centers of even the oldest crappiest of reactors are sealed, controlled access areas. Even the old Chernobyl reactor only took three people to shut down as I remember. So if even as few as three workers survive for the few hours an "Emergency Shutdown" takes... Sal good.


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## BigCheeseStick

Does everybody realize the latest Mars rover we sent up there, cruising around that planet right now, has a nuclear reactor in it?!?   Obviously it's 100% capable of shutting itself down in an emergency, or under normal conditions _without a single person on the whole planet or even in communication with it._


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## BigCheeseStick

How many people actually died at Chernobyl? 31... Giant hornets are up to 42 as of yesterday. 

There's a good video I'm trying to find that explains everything without the silly drama. This one at least tells the story.


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## wernesgruner

BigCheeseStick said:


> Nuclear power is steam power. The nuclear reaction produces heat in the cooling tanks, producing steam, that runs steam powered generators. Until the nuclear reaction is stopped COLD it's still producing it's own power and needs no backup generators. The backup generators are there in case of a system failure where the steam generators (being totally separate from the reactor) are shut down completely.
> 
> As I understand it (may be mistaken!), an "emergency" shutdown of the reactor would take only a few hours, or even only 45 minutes depending on they age and design of the reactor. Normal shutdown could take several weeks because their going to deplete all the stored energy in the rods rather than waste it.


A nuclear reactor that is not critical doesn't produce enough energy to keep its steam turbines running and therefore cannot keep its active cooling system running. A nuclear reactor can SHUTDOWN ( stop the process of splitting atoms ) in just a few minutes by inserting enough control rods to absorb enough neutrons to stop the reaction , but the residual heat from decaying materials will still eventually cause a meltdown, exactly like it happened in Fukushima. No reactor is walk away safe.

If there is no one to maintain the reactor when its in active state, IT WILL SHUTDOWN. Therefore it won't be producing energy anymore and as soon as the grid stops providing power, the generators will kick in.


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## Doomsday

There are so many holes in your US Nuclear plant meltdown theory that I don’t have time to list. You need to do more research. The US nuclear plants have SHTF contingencies. Not saying it can't happen but not as easy and quickly as you describe. Back in the 80’s when I was building these things we had the same problem with the protesters. They had just enough knowledge to be dangerous. 

FYI all US plants have been upgraded since TMI.


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## wernesgruner

Doomsday said:


> There are so many holes in your US Nuclear plant meltdown theory that I don't have time to list. You need to do more research. The US nuclear plants have SHTF contingencies. Not saying it can't happen but not as easy and quickly as you describe. Back in the 80's when I was building these things we had the same problem with the protesters. They had just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
> 
> FYI all US plants have been upgraded since TMI.


I'm sorry, but your assertion is not very credible with suck lack of content. I'd like to discuss it in greater details as I do posses substantially more knowledge on nuclear power generation than the average Joe, but I'm still not an expert. From what I managed to gather, is that no matter how hard engineers have tried, no reactor powerful enough to generate substantial amount of electricity can passively contain residual heat coming it of nuclear fuel. Usually, residual heat amount for 5% to 7% of power prior to shutdown, and this level is maintained for a significant amount of time.

Please point out specific issues and give more details on your pedigree.
Thanks.


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## BigCheeseStick

wernesgruner said:


> A nuclear reactor that is not critical doesn't produce enough energy to keep its steam turbines running and therefore cannot keep its active cooling system running. A nuclear reactor can SHUTDOWN ( stop the process of splitting atoms ) in just a few minutes by inserting enough control rods to absorb enough neutrons to stop the reaction , but the residual heat from decaying materials will still eventually cause a meltdown, exactly like it happened in Fukushima. No reactor is walk away safe.
> 
> If there is no one to maintain the reactor when its in active state, IT WILL SHUTDOWN. Therefore it won't be producing energy anymore and as soon as the grid stops providing power, the generators will kick in.


So you believe we sent a nuclear reactor to Mars knowing one day it's going to melt down and destroy the planet? :-?


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## wernesgruner

BigCheeseStick said:


> So you believe we sent a nuclear reactor to Mars knowing one day it's going to melt down and destroy the planet? :-?


We didn't send nuclear reactors to space, space probes and curiosity use radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which use P280. A bit like a fuel cell.


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## BigCheeseStick

wernesgruner said:


> We didn't send nuclear reactors to space, space probes and curiosity use radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which use P280. A bit like a fuel cell.


Your right, but it still uses plutonium kept cool by a cooling system that could fail.

The town all the people who worked at Chernobyl lived in was only _one_ mile from the plant. The only people that died from the melt down were actually IN the plant, or the firemen in helicopters flying directly over the meltdown. The town _one_ mile away survived to evacuate.

A better discussion is Fukushima imo. Why's it still burning? I can only guess the normal mechanisms to cool it are destroyed, but people are living in towns all around that plant have been told their fine being there. So they go on about normal life even though it's continuing to melt down and leaking radioactive water like a sieve even today.


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## Sr40ken

I was in the Navy and soaked up a small amount of knowledge about nuclear energy. The biggest thing I know is I don't want to be down wind from a powerplant in a SHTF scenario. I'll leave all the mechanics to the "experts".LOL And I certainly don't believe a powerplant failure nullifies prepping.


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## Doomsday

wernesgruner said:


> I'm sorry, but your assertion is not very credible with suck lack of content. I'd like to discuss it in greater details as I do posses substantially more knowledge on nuclear power generation than the average Joe, but I'm still not an expert. From what I managed to gather, is that no matter how hard engineers have tried, no reactor powerful enough to generate substantial amount of electricity can passively contain residual heat coming it of nuclear fuel. Usually, residual heat amount for 5% to 7% of power prior to shutdown, and this level is maintained for a significant amount of time.
> 
> Please point out specific issues and give more details on your pedigree.
> Thanks.





wernesgruner said:


> Day 1: No one came to operate the reactors, most modern reactors will automatically shutdown ( stop the process of splitting atoms by inserting enough control bars to stop the reaction) just because they require to be constantly monitored in order to operate fission. At this point external power is most likely still reaching the reactor so the active cooling system are still running, but the reactors. Reactors that aren't critical anymore ( operating fission ) do not generate enough steam to keep the turbines running and therefore stops producing power..


20 years in the nuclear industry in engineering and plant operations. NRC requirements requires US nuclear plants to maintain enough personal at any given time to shut down and operate the reactor safety. In other words you cannot leave your post until relieved. There are guards with guns that will stop you.


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## Will2

Prepadoodle said:


> Maybe we should store them in Iraq


Or how about antartica, there arn't trees there, and plenty of cold water 

(joke) The Antarctic Treaty (1961)

Oh come on, if you can learn to fire an AK47 you can learn how to bury nuclear waste.

It does however make the most sense to bury all spent nuclear fuel in a single international facility under the rock of antarctica.

With any processed materials going toward international science projects to fund the containment facility.

Once in the hole pour some pots of water over the hole... DONE.

In the alternatre why isn't the stuff not just dumped into a deep lava tube?

Or how about gathering it all up and doing a deep underground nuclear explosion (this one has me wonder..)

"Rock melting has not been implemented anywhere for radioactive waste. There have been no practical demonstrations of the feasibility of this option, apart from laboratory studies of rock melting. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the rock melting option at depth was taken forward to the engineering design stage. This design involved a shaft or borehole which led to an excavated cavity at a depth of 2.5 kilometres. It was estimated, but not demonstrated, that the waste would be immobilised in a volume of rock 1000 times larger than the original volume of waste."

so for 50,000 tons, may loosely translate to less than 50,000,000 tons of rock. If you think about it that really isn't that much the moon weighs "73,430,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes "

I am geussing |Cheyene Mountain or Yuca probably weighs that much.

Or how about giving every home in america a free heating and cooking source.. get your Energon Cube today


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## topgun

rickfromillinois said:


> Although I am not downplaying the problems, allot of it would depend on where you live, where the reactors are, and prevalent wind currents as to how much radiation you get. Also, let's take Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples. Yes, allot of people died from radiation poisoning and a drastic increase in the occurrences of cancer, BUT, there were also allot of people who survived the blast who lived a long and cancer free life. There are some circumstances that all of the preparation in the world is not going to save you. If terrorists set off a nuclear device and they just happen to do so right next to where you are standing, then you are going to die. If a large meteor hits the moon, knocks it out of it's orbit, and it crashes into the Earth. We are ALL going to die. But to say that if "X" happens it is going to kill everyone, so why bother with prepping, is ludicrous.


Oh great. Here I am planning to bug out to the moon, and then you have to go and say this. Oh well, there's always Plan B


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## Inor

Will said:


> Or how about antartica, there arn't trees there, and plenty of cold water
> 
> (joke) The Antarctic Treaty (1961)
> 
> Oh come on, if you can learn to fire an AK47 you can learn how to bury nuclear waste.
> 
> It does however make the most sense to bury all spent nuclear fuel in a single international facility under the rock of antarctica.


*NOOOOOOO!!!!* What do you want to do, fill the world with giant two headed man-eating penguins?!? I just started getting my preps together to deal with Sharknado. Now you are telling me I have to prepare for an invasion of killer penguins?

It is fine for you to promote the creation of race of giant killer penguins; you live in Ontario. Everybody knows that poutine is the world's greatest penguin repellent. But most Americans do not know about all the great powers of poutine. You will kill us all with your careless ideas!


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## Prepadoodle

The real long term solution to nuclear waste is to grind it up, dilute it, then bury it back in the mines it came from. It's not really more radioactive now, it's just more concentrated. So you mix it at like .001 gram per ton of dirt (or whatever its original concentration was) and stuff it back where we found it. I mean really, this shouldn't be that hard.

Until then, we could easily scrounge up a few million gallons of fuel a day.


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## Will2

Inor said:


> *NOOOOOOO!!!!* What do you want to do, fill the world with giant two headed man-eating penguins?!? I just started getting my preps together to deal with Sharknado. Now you are telling me I have to prepare for an invasion of killer penguins?
> 
> It is fine for you to promote the creation of race of giant killer penguins; you live in Ontario. Everybody knows that poutine is the world's greatest penguin repellent. But most Americans do not know about all the great powers of poutine. You will kill us all with your careless ideas!


Carry on then, enjoy your giant lighter of doom.


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## Arizona Infidel

Interesting thread.


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## Smitty901

So bugging out in the supply room at the nuke plant is out. And it seemed like such a great idea.


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## roy

Prepadoodle said:


> The real long term solution to nuclear waste is to grind it up, dilute it, then bury it back in the mines it came from. It's not really more radioactive now, it's just more concentrated. So you mix it at like .001 gram per ton of dirt (or whatever its original concentration was) and stuff it back where we found it. I mean really, this shouldn't be that hard.
> 
> Until then, we could easily scrounge up a few million gallons of fuel a day.


A better solution is reprocessing. The French have figured it out, We are at least as smart as the French.


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## topgun

roy said:


> A better solution is reprocessing. The French have figured it out, We are at least as smart as the French.


Nobody is as smart as the French. I know, because they told me so.


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## rickkyw1720pf

Well somebody must have forgot to tell all the animals that they couldn't survive Chernobyl. 25 years after Chernobyl the cats that were left behind learned to survive and are doing well with all the other wild animals and plants that are reclaiming the land.


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## BigCheeseStick

Inor said:


> *NOOOOOOO!!!!* What do you want to do, fill the world with giant two headed man-eating penguins?!? I just started getting my preps together to deal with Sharknado. Now you are telling me I have to prepare for an invasion of killer penguins?
> 
> It is fine for you to promote the creation of race of giant killer penguins; you live in Ontario. Everybody knows that poutine is the world's greatest penguin repellent. But most Americans do not know about all the great powers of poutine. You will kill us all with your careless ideas!


I was in agreeance with your post even before I realized you were talking Poutine, not Putin.
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