Quote:
Originally Posted by turbo6bar
Why can't the plants generate electricity to power the cooling pumps? Sounds obvious to me, so I must be missing something.
jurgen
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That might have been an option last Friday, but no longer. Contrary to
The China Syndrome, there are actually many ways to cause a plant to shutdown and with as many safety system issues as they are having right now, I would imagine that even getting one of the currently undamaged units started up and producing power is impossible.
I would imagine that there is some fuel melting at this point. IMHO that, in an of itself, isn't really a big deal until the point it results in a failure of the reactor vessel itself. Until then, just keep it cool no matter what.
BWRs are generally designed to keep the core covered under what they call the "Design Basis Accident". In the case of the plant I worked at, that meant essentially one of the recirculation lines that attach directly to the reactor vessel falls off. BWRs have a recirculation system that merely circulates water through the core. The pumps, motors and piping for this system all exist within the secondary containment (the drywell) and the piping is large (24" diameter pipe IIRC). All of the safety systems were intended to keep the core covered and cool with a 24" diameter hole in the side of the vessel. We also had 8 backup diesel generators (locomotive engines connected to generators) to power things in the event the plant shutdown and all incoming power was lost.