NEVER FEAR - Homer will be there ...
I think the Japanese answered the question about the Nuclear plant about a year ago.
E-Gen plants have human supervision 24/7. To “not show up to work in the morning” would not make sense unless the crew on-shift purposely left their posts.
I would think that if you are looking at a Galt-like situation, the employees would safely shut it down prior to leaving.
A bunch of illegals show up.
More like the computers would shut down the reactor.
This is TEOTWAWKI stuff.
The scariest thing I ever heard was talked about on Coast to Coast one evening.
All nuclear plants are required to have the ability to generate (external) power for at least 8 hours if they shut down or go off the grid. Because they need to keep pumping cooling water in until they can at least get the fuel rods withdrawn and secured.
Otherwise, we get like what happened in Japan.
OK, so far, no biggie.
Problem is most plants, no matter what, are pretty much on their own after 30 hours or so.
The real problem is the entire power grid depends on these large (90KV to 150KV) transformers.
One decent solar storm could knock out a couple hundred of these across the grid, normally there are about 3,000 online.
And we have zero backups of these transformers. Or so close to zero, it might as well be zero.
So a decent solar storm or EMP, and we have probably less than 30 hours before we have not just one event like Japan, but maybe 50 or 100 all happening at the exact same time.
what happened to the prior shiftwhen the next shift failed to show?? Did they walk out without shutting down the plant, fleeing like crazy lest their irresponsible act of abandoning a functioning nuclear plant overtake their escape? Or walking zombie-like without a care in the world? Or did they die like in a neutron bomb? What happens when a neutron bomb hits a nuclear plant?
Some systems had only hours to go kerplop. The New York subways would be flooded within four days. The power grid would shut down and, in some cases, start combusting within a week.
House dogs and most other pets would not survive. Cats, on the other hand, would do just fine. Those not quick enough to catch mice and squirrels would just switch to moles and birds.
Within 40 years, windows would mostly fall out of buildings. Glass is a liquid, after all. Within a century, highways and streets would be overgrown with grass. Undulates would thrive as would their predators.
After 10,000 years, only a handful of man made edifices would even be recognizable, including Mount Rushmore (minus the noses) and pyramids of Egypt.
Biggest news-- none of the real scientists or computer models would or could predict climate changes in the earth because such changes were largely outside the control of man. Interesting stuff.
Who is John Galt?
I think they dealt with this in the “Life after People” series on the History channel. Rather chilling.
Mister Burns would have to build a robot and steal some poor bastards brain. And Moe would be victimized. Again.
I work in the utility industry and I often wonder the same thing. Imagine when the economy gets so bad and government handouts become so large that going to work stops making sense, especially if you have a dangerous and physically demanding job like working in a power plant.
Would Obamunist KGB (DHS)come to my house to force me back to work at gunpoint? Would they nationalize me into the Army? Would they just ignore my anti-communist past and let me join the Party, becoming a low-level apparatchik as long as I play along and keep my mouth shut?
NEVER FEAR - Homer will be there ...
Automatic systems will trip fossil fuel plants offline once things go out of whack. Nukes? They trip offline too. After they trip - that is where I don’t know.
The Federal Government steps in and eventually takes control of the power plant-—immediately if we are talking about a nuclear reactor.
Cheers
For your problem to occur there would need to be a huge disaster on the order that nothing would really matter anyway.
I don’t have any power plant experience, but I’ve worked in and around the oil patch for 30 years and based upon that experience I’d offer the following:
1) Coal fired plants wouldn’t last a week without human attention. The fuel doesn’t walk there by itself; it’s delivered by rail car and there’s a constant process of unloading, storing, positioning, etc. The feeders require daily inspection, calibration, repair and replacement. Pretty labor intensive stuff I’d imagine.
2) Natural gas plants would go on for quite a while. I would think their problem would be turbine surge issues that would eventually, i.e., within a month or so, cause them to “trip” out of service. They also have cooling issues. And if compressors are involved.....that’s just another weak link although that probably isn’t an issue.
3) I don’t understand the process entirely but I’d think that there has to be some degree of daily input into the volume of electricity being produced. From what I’ve read about “the grid” its managed at central “drain” monitoring sites where they’re monitoring usage along the grid at the consumption points and constantly having to balance input such that if one location, (city) is at peak draw, the managers have to order up additional electricity from other parts of the grid. So, it sounds like they’re making calls to various power plants around the system to produce more, or less depending upon the need to move more available power from one segment of the grid to another.
Here’s the real deal however; in our “prepper” classes, its become apparent that when the SHTF, one of the first things people will need to do is locate and go to their nearest area power plant and see if it can be brought back on-line. The “locals” just aren’t going to sit in the dark for weeks on end without attempting to a) findsome one who knows how to keep the plant on-line, or how to get the plant back online.
The Nuke plants are simply a disaster waiting to happen. Unless everyone were beamed off the orb, the Feds would dispatch the Army Corp. of Engineers to take the Nuke plants offline. Hopefully they can before the melt down.
From Nigeria:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-235714581/phcn-strike-military-engineers.html
I used to work for ge. If I get a chance I will reply later with more information.
I used to work for ge. If I get a chance I will reply later with more information.
Garrett Morris would clean up the reactor room.