Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemlawk
The dose levels are lethal in the reactor building. Water needs to be pumped up 100' to cool the rods, that requires power. Most plants have an emergency pump that runs off gas or diesel but if that got ruined by the quake, there's nothing they can do.
Their best bet now it to dump concrete onto the rods and entomb the fuel.
Those 50 workers who stayed behind will be dead soon. :(
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True heroes.
They can't just flood the facility because of the destruction it would cause to containment materials. Sea water on extremely hot metals is super corrosive. There are still daughter products decaying AKA there are still minor fission reactions happening within the reactor core. That lingering heat generation means if they flooded the chamber and it were to fall apart and drain, there would just be more problems. I really don't know all the details of the reactor, but it should only be putting out between 0.3% and 0.4% of it's full potential heat output by now from residual daughter reactions, but I guess that would be very problematic if they were to lose containment, on top of the fact that would expose more radioactive material to the atmosphere. I only have a very basic understanding of the reactor here, but that's what I'm understanding from what I've seen. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.