Re:Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Somed...
by msandford on Thursday January 30, 2014 @11:53PM
(#7155333)
I was more referring to the idea that once you lose the ability to pump coolant, the reactor starts to heat up. Then as it heats up, it starts to melt itself. As it melts, it re-attains criticality and begins to generate more heat, which leads to more melting, which leads to more heat, ad nauseum.
We don't really even know when this stops or how it stops or whatever because the only time (so far) that it really started to get away from us (Chernobyl) a bunch of brave men gave their lives and dumped boron straight on the exposed reactor core to stop it. By doing so they spared us from gaining the very painful knowledge of how a meltdown ends naturally, at what point an equilibrium is reached.
EDIT: spelling
Re:Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Somed...
by pdonis on Friday January 31, 2014 @09:54PM
(#7160662)
once you lose the ability to pump coolant, the reactor starts to heat up. Then as it heats up, it starts to melt itself. As it melts, it re-attains criticality
If it's the Chernobyl design, yes. Not otherwise. See my comments upthread in response to another of your posts. The Chernobyl design had particular features that are not present in any currently operating commercial reactor.
It occurred to me on re-reading that you might have been referring here to the fact that the Chernobyl reactor had a number of features that acted to increase rather than decrease reactor power as actions were taken to try to shut it down. Those features are not present in any current reactor designs that weren't made by the Soviet Union. Certainly they were not present in the Fukushima reactors.