In the event of a TEOTWAWKI situation, have you taken into consideration...

Fletcher Knives

Fletcher Knives

STEEL BREATHING BLADE MAESTRO
Moderator
Joined
Aug 30, 2007
Messages
5,483
The proximity of nuclear power plants to your current position? I was watching a funny skit show the other day and one of the skits was about this small group of anarchy freaks yelling happily after the fall of society. One of them pops up with, "well I used to work at a power plant up North, and I hate to say this, but we really need to keep an eye on that thing..." Even though it was just a funny show, it still got me thinking. After a while, I found myself searching for maps of known active nuclear facilities in the United States.

Now assuming that for some reason people are no longer able to do their necessary jobs at the power plant, it doesn't seem like it would be too long before things got to a critical level. I'm no scientist and have no idea the emergency systems in place for something like this, but I have to assume that if no one tends to the time bomb, after a while it's going to go critical and have a meltdown. I mean, everything in there is a steady balance of cooling systems that have to keep going.

Looking at the maps I was able to find, I discover that I'm not far from several plants that are currently in operation. What do you guys think about this aspect? I always thought, "well I'll just bug in, take advantage of my stockpile, and protect my family." Depending on what kind of contamination radius would come from these plants having meltdowns, that might not be an option. So what are your thoughts on it? Anybody currently work in one of these facilities that could shed some light on it?

...discuss.
 
Nuclear Power plant 63 miles due south of work, 87 miles south of home.
unless there's a really odd storm, prevailing winds would push any steam plume away from me.
 
The safety controls are pretty good, and reactors can be shut down (scrammed, neutron poisoned, etc.) rather quickly if not automatically and any release of meltdown-related radioactive by-products can be trapped by the containment building provided the building's integrity remains intact. Unless you are in Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc., in which case you are screwed anyway.
 
Dylside said:
Now assuming that for some reason people are no longer able to do their necessary jobs at the power plant, it doesn't seem like it would be too long before things got to a critical level. I'm no scientist and have no idea the emergency systems in place for something like this, but I have to assume that if no one tends to the time bomb, after a while it's going to go critical and have a meltdown. I mean, everything in there is a steady balance of cooling systems that have to keep going.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you are wrong. Usually such a thing would be designed so that the reaction would be stifled if no one does anything - I am sure you could google for the relevant safety systems in nuclear power plants. Even the meltdown on 3 mile island didn't cause any harm to the environment, you are probably worrying about nothing.
 
That makes me feel a lot better. Like I said, I have no experience or previous info on the subject so I thought, "HEY! I'll ask the W&SS brotherhood. Surely some of them have looked into this or have knowledge of the emergency solutions.
 
I work within a 16 miles of nuclear sub base and live within 40 miles of it.

I reckon I'd maybe be able to look up from my desk and say look at that big white flash but then I'd need to leave. Doubt staying within that type of distance would be good for me.

If I was at home I'd still probably get some distance between me and the explosion site. Just to avoid contamination from airborne radiation or watercourses.

Remember when Chernobyl went up, we got radiation turning up in our fields and then sheep. Always better to get some distance between these things I reckon. I will admit to not being anywhere near an expert though.
 
Meltdown, I'm safe - nothing close. There's actually a huge abandoned site near me, but it lost funding in the 80's and never got built and no nuclear material was ever brought to the site. I don't care how safe they say it is, I'm still glad it didn't get built.
 
I'm guessing that there are far more pressing things to worry about, such as why it's suddenly The End Of The World As We Know It. :eek:
 
I am under the impression that the high level waste stored at these plants in the huge pools for cooling are more of a threat than a scrammed reactor. Without water to cool the decaying waste these things would get pretty hot. How hot? I'm not sure, but it's not where you would want to be.
 
I thought that the show on the History channel or Discovery(?) "Life after people" talked about that, once power is lost its something like 2 weeks maybe before a meltdown.. Im not 100% on that or if thats even correct
 
jb101 said:
I thought that the show on the History channel or Discovery(?) "Life after people" talked about that, once power is lost its something like 2 weeks maybe before a meltdown.. Im not 100% on that or if thats even correct
Click to expand...

You beat me to it.

I don't remember them mentioning the meltdown though. All I remember them saying in terms of power generation is something about how hydroelectric power plants would continue to run and generate power until total mechanical failure took place.
 
yeah Im probably wrong about it, i was only half paying attention when it was on but I thought it was a total failure of elctricity to the cooling systems would cause the melt down
 
you have a few weeks, but you shouldn't stick around to wait for failure. you can scram a plant which will prevent immediate meltdown, but nothing turns off the radioactive core - it continues to be radioactive and produce heat, even at lower levels when it's considered "waste fuel". so you've got weeks, not hours to start trekking as far as possible

fwiw, i'm pro-nuclear power, it's a great thing and a good solution to our energy needs - it's safe and environmentally benign. but that all depends on the fact that TEOTWAWKI never occurs - because if it does and these plants go unattended, it's going to be a mess on a global scale

also, refineries are notoriously difficult to shut down - personally i'd be more concerned about one's proximity to a refinery than a nuclear plant

"If everyone on earth disappeared, 441 nuclear plants, several with multiple reactors, would briefly run on autopilot until, one by one, they overheated. As refueling schedules are usually staggered so that some reactors generate while others are down, possibly half would burn and the rest would melt. Either way, the spilling of radioactivity into the air and into nearby bodies of water would be formidable, and it would last, in the case of enriched uranium, into geologic time."

http://books.google.com/books?id=UE...&resnum=5&ved=0CB8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
As RoyalM said, when Chernobyl blew up there were radio active sheep walking around the British hills.

I wouldn't hold to the idea of prevailing winds saving you if you were within several hundred miles of one going boom. Only the extremely heroic and fatal efforts of chopper pilots and soldiers prevented Chernobyl from been any worse. Over 300,000 people had to be resettled and even 24yrs on children (especially in Belarus where 60% of the fallout landed) still suffer birth defects and cancers.
 
It's really not that bad.

The safeties will automatically shut the reactor down. As far as long-term heat problems, when certain aspects reach danger levels, the plant will automatically flood the containment building and permanently seal it. You won't have problems until well in the future when earthquakes or just weathering finally crack the casing of the containment building.

We saw this when 3-mile island tried to go Chernobyl on us, and that's exactly what happened. The core is still contained in the building.

Like someone else said, if you're in a 3rd world hole, then you need to worry.
 
So what happens when 2nd and 3rd world nuclear power stations all go boom and dump their poison all over your country?

:eek:
 
The big bummer lurking in all of this is that if the civilization switch is suddenly turned off, the result is not a return to arcadian subsistence, but a really dirty, dangerous environment.
 
Unless the event instantly killed off a large number of the population, there would still be workers at the plants for at least a short time. I can't imagine that they would all just flee without shutting down. These guys would know better than anyone the consequences of abandoning an operating nuclear power plant. I would also hope that they have contingency plans for this kind of situation.
 
Our house is 5.83 miles NW of an operational plant. Prevailing winds here are from the SW, so most of the time, it's blowing "away" from us and when storms blow, the wind usually comes from the NW, so that's even better.

I have equipped my wife and kids with potassium iodate tabs in their pfaks, so they have them immediately available if something happens.
 
Chernobyl was a special case. First of all -- no containment. Anything went wrong, it went into the atmosphere. Three Mile Island kept all its problems inside the building.

Second, the entire plant was overage, even for a Soviet operation in a satellite country (Ukraina :)).

Third, the Soviets, bless their bureaucatic hearts, told no one! Until Europe began picking up unbelievably high readings, the Soviets were stonewalling. Too bad they didn't stonewall the reactor itself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top