I dunno. How hot do these fuel rods become once the coolant has been boiled away?
800C, 500C, any idea?
Hypothetically, if temperatures rise above 800C / 1470-ish degrees F, wouldn't a metal containment vessel begin to melt?
If this happens, wouldn't isotopes be released into the atmosphere? I mean with steam and smoke.
Are these not in particulate form, some of which may be nano and or mirco particles?
I dunno, just thinkin if these particles are flyin around through the air and some poor fella just happens to breath in this particle of radioactive isotope, would it not lay in the lung and emit elevated doses of gamma, beta and or alpha rays?
So if this particulate floats throughout an area, a populated area for instance...oh let's say anywhere. How bout Tokyo?
Wouldn't this particulate expose hundreds, maybe thousands, perhaps millions of people to dangerous levels of radioactive material?
Let's say it finally settles to the earth. Folks walking around would shuffle along potentially stirring these tiny nano / micro particles up yet again.
What if these particles landed in a body of water? Just pretend the body of water were to be a source of drinking water for the city of whatever?
Drinking radioactive isotope particles would expose the bowels to elevated doses of radioactive gamma, beta and or alpha rays?
I dunno, just makes sense to me that this has the potential to become catastrophic just working it through my simple mind.
“I dunno, just makes sense to me that this has the potential to become catastrophic just working it through my simple mind.”
Yes, just as it makes sense to the simple minds of journalists and their sheepish, gawking audience, to whom radioactivity is like ice-nine from “Cat’s Cradle.” Any little drop, I guess, is supposed to permeate the entire globe and threaten life as we know it. Excuse me if I don’t buy it. Radiation is not the bogeyman we’ve built it up to be.
For the record, Chernobyl did not have our contemporary containment system, and the stuff dispersed into our world freely. Yet according to reasonable estimates, no more than 4,000 died over the course of decades. Granted, Japan is more densely populated. However, we’ve just witnessed a series of disasters that killed an estimated 10,000+ souls. Can’t we talk about that? No big deal. They were killed by God, not man’s nuclear hubris. We must talk endlessly about what might—but probably won’t—happen, so long as it can be blamed on science, politics, capitalism, or whatever.