Posted on 05/20/2019 5:07:27 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In the second episode of "Chernobyl," ...A large fire rages in the ruins of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. ... Deadly radioactive dust has drifted all the way out of the Soviet Union and into Sweden. The air above the reactor literally glows where the uranium core has become exposed. And the people leading the disaster response decide to dump thousands of tons of sand and boron on the core.
But why did first responders use sand and boron? And if a similar nuclear disaster were to occur in 2019, is this what firefighters would still do?
Modern reactors are outfitted with chemical sprays that can flood a reactor building, knocking radioactive isotopes out of the air before they can escape. And unlike Chernobyl, nuclear facilities in the U.S. are entirely contained in sealed structures of cement and rebar ...You could crash a small jet into the side of one of these buildings, and it wouldn't expose the core. In fact, as part of a test, the U.S. government did just that to an empty containment vessel in 1988. The NRC states that studies regarding large jet impacts are still ongoing.
...U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has, for every one of the 98 nuclear power reactors operating in the country, drafted emergency handbooks hundreds of pages long.
Those handbooks are available in plain English on the NRC's website. ...You can find instructions for when to shove lots of boron into the core...It saw what to do if hostile forces attack the plant (among other things, start preparing a regional evacuation the moment it becomes clear that the forces might cause a significant radiation leak). And, in the event of significant amounts of radioactive material escaping into the atmosphere, it says who declares an evacuation...
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Sand I understand. Why bacon?
They gotta eat.
OK, mine didn’t really have a Raquel Welch model standing by the water wagon...
Concrete + Rebar Containment Domes are designed to survive attacks far harsher than aluminum airliners loaded with fuel. These aren’t skyscrapers. This is very heavy steel rebar spaced so closely there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to pour the concrete.
An attacker might want to bring artillery and some high explosive anti tank rounds just to get the party started, because those domes are going to be tough nuts to crack.
I herd a story where poor people preserved their food with salt. The salt was high in iodine and poor people statistically did better than rich people who had refrigeration.
Wasn’t Ronald Reagan the narrator to the television show Death Valley Days?
I live 18 miles from a nuclear plant. A lights out situation and that fact always bothered me. I would get the hell out of dodge.
Boron absorbs neutrons.
Yep.
Yep, that’s the way I remember it.
[Boron absorbs neutrons.]
At the time, they said they dumped lead into it. That turned out to be a mistake, because it vaporized the lead after neutron-activating a lot of it.
“When Chernobyl Blew, They Dumped Boron and Sand into the Breach. What Would We Do Today?”
Dump democrats into the breach?
Boric acid kills cockroaches and fireants.
Boron is a friend
Chernobyl didn’t “blow.” They had a radioactive graphite fire. We use a totally different water moderated system. Only Ft. Saint Vrain in Colorado was similar to the Soviet system. It was a helium cooled High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor that used both uranium and thorium.
Really a pretty neat system that could use plentiful thorium and uranium (and possibly plutonium if I remember correctly). What was good about it was that there was not a lot of radioactive water after years of operation. It was also pretty easy to increase or decrease output to meet changes in load demand.
We would never need to dump boron on a fire. Additionally, the St. Vrain core was contained in a vessel, whereas the Chernobyl nuclear pile was just that - a pile of graphite and radioactive rods in the middle of a hanger-like building.
I don’t know about now, but back when Chernobyl happened, the phrase “safety margin” was a difficult concept for the Soviets to understand.
CC
IIRC, iodine treatments were standard procedure for years afterward.
CC
Wow.
That’s a really nice kit.
“Museum Quality” and everything.
I didn’t have a nice kit like that.
All I had were some rocks.
Got em on Halloween.
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