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

[Codger_64]

Modern reactors in the U.S. have "failsafe" shutdown. If power is lost the control rods drop (gravity) and stop the reaction.

 

[Jeff S1]

It does not even take a melt down to cause some major adjustments to you life style. I was living in York, PA when Three Mile Island caused a real scare. Even as a young boy in 6th grade at the time, people went nuts. Gas, food, all types of provisions & cash were in short supply & my parents were really scared even though they did not show it. If it happens things will turn for the worse.

 

[Gadgetaholic]

Modern reactors in the U.S. have "failsafe" shutdown. If power is lost the control rods drop (gravity) and stop the reaction.

Nuclear power keeps getting safer, but the older plants especially in poor countries like much of the former soviet union (like chernobyl) are the ones to be VERY concerned about.

 

[Yorkshire Boy]

Nuclear power keeps getting safer, but the older plants especially in poor countries like much of the former soviet union (like chernobyl) are the ones to be VERY concerned about.

Sorry Gadgetaholic I quoted you, but my forth coming little panic stricken rant isn't directed at you, because I agree (apart from the bit about nuclear power keeps getting safer, nuclear waste is extremely dangerous and all we can do is just store it!).

I watched a thing on the telly about 15yrs ago about a whole fleet of disused nuclear powered ships and submarines sitting somewhere in the Russian arctic. If those reactors were to leak the north Atlantic is going to be a dead zone.

I reckon people in 3rd world countries will do just fine come TEOTWAWKI.

It's all of us in the 1st and 2nd world that will suffer with industrial/chemical/biological pollution.

Chernobyl might well have been a one off, but the consequences of something going wrong with nuclear power is incredibly serious. Even if it goes "right" what would happen to the waste sites if there was no one around to monitor them?

438 nuclear power stations in the world, imagine if only a few decided to go boom or leak in some way and governments weren't around to do something?

 

[mdauben]

That makes me feel a lot better.

I would not really worry over-much about internal problems at a nuclear powerplant. Despite popular fears they can't blow up, and in the US at least have enough built in safety systems to prevent any serious environmental problems.

I think in a TEOTWAWKI scenario, the more serious concern (if you worrry seriously about TEOTWAWKI that is) are military or terrorist strikes on the plant, which has a much greater likelihood of releasing radioactive fallout to the environment than any internal problem, possibly causing local and even regional health issues.

 

[A.W.U.K.]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/apr/13/ruralaffairs.jamesmeikle

This is an oldish link but things are still the same, there was a TV programme about it a few weeks ago.

 

[Cpl Punishment]

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.

More to the point, nuclear power plants are quite secure, and if I were a worker there, I'd probably hole up there. The NEST teams are some serious bad boys, you're well protected, the government (or what was left) would probably use the military to secure the sites and provide rations and whatnot -- after all, they will want to keep the power going for themselves.

Another thing that is rarely if ever addressed in these end of the world scenarios, is what exactly could cause one where the majority of the population is gone? What makes people think we would ever go back to a stone age existence? You're simply not going to destroy all the knowledge in libraries, schools, and private homes. As far back as we could go would be a late 19th, early 20th century pre-electric civilization, and then only where there was no hydroelectric or solar power to be had.

Anything that would wipe out most of the population or send us back to the stone age would be bad enough to be an extinction event.

No, the real "end of the world" will have us living like 3rd worlders, and all that is seems to be taking to do that is [CENSORED because we're not allowed to talk about such verboten subjects here].