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Planning for failure is a core activity in nuclear plant design. Modern plants could sustain pretty much any failure and no living area would be lost.
including an airliner flying into surface storage next to the plant?
https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-react...
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do you have a title so I can check it through DDG? I refuse to click the consent pop-ip on YT... EDIT: watched. An aeroplane is not a train.
1) A train is a nastier impactor than a plane, which is mostly air, soft-ish metal and plastic. 2) What's your point? You can kill way more people by flying an airplane into a building than any nuclear facility.
2) don't ask me what the point is, as long as some people can envision a point to it, it's irresponsible to not avoid such a situation. don't ask me what the point is, ask the hijackers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_49
The attitude on risks of radiation have little to do with the economic and technological failures of nuclear power. With multiple schedule and cost failures it seems like fission nuclear is an exercise in what is possible, but not really practical compared to what is accessible via renewables + storage and it's far less constrained financial and technological foundations.
Also let's not forget the problem of burnt fuel storage. Burned nuclear fuel will stay radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Unless we plan to offload the cost of storage to future generations - which we actually do now - nuclear power is horribly unprofitable.
1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
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including an airliner flying into surface storage next to the plant?
They tested for that: https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-react...
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They tested for that: https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-react...
please read carefully: surface storage, i.e. the dry storage casks outside of the reactor. A reactor contains less nuclear material than the dry storage casks which contain decennia worth of nuclear waste.
Sure, rupturing that would release toxic materials out into the surrounding area. But how is that different from flying a plane into a chemical plant? If terrorists hijacked a plane, it'd probably kill an order of magnitude more people by flying it into a skyscraper than into dry waste caskets.
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please read carefully: surface storage, i.e. the dry storage casks outside of the reactor. A reactor contains less nuclear material than the dry storage casks which contain decennia worth of nuclear waste.
The surface storage isn't at temperature, though. Waste is cooled off in a pool of water until it's cooled, before it's placed in dry storage. Sure, rupturing that would release toxic materials out into the surrounding area. But how is that different from flying a plane into a chemical plant? If terrorists hijacked a plane, it'd probably kill an order of magnitude more people by flying it into a skyscraper than into…
theres so many potential failure points, here is another: if they fly through the electric pylons and into the cooling tower, there is no place to dump the energy as the reactor can't be shut down immediately, and cooling will fail soon, ...
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1) A train is a nastier impactor than a plane, which is mostly air, soft-ish metal and plastic. 2) What's your point? You can kill way more people by flying an airplane into a building than any nuclear facility.
1) kinetic energy and momentum ... and jet fuel 2) don't ask me what the point is, as long as some people can envision a point to it, it's irresponsible to not avoid such a situation. don't ask me what the point is, ask the hijackers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_49
Again, if you have a highjacked plane on hand you can cause way more damage by crashing it into a skyscraper than some nuclear waste storage - it's a somewhat different risk but not a greater one.
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The surface storage isn't at temperature, though. Waste is cooled off in a pool of water until it's cooled, before it's placed in dry storage. Sure, rupturing that would release toxic materials out into the surrounding area. But how is that different from flying a plane into a chemical plant? If terrorists hijacked a plane, it'd probably kill an order of magnitude more people by flying it into a skyscraper than into…
who cares about the surface storage temperature? a dirty bomb can deny access to surrounding areas for prolonged times. theres so many potential failure points, here is another: if they fly through the electric pylons and into the cooling tower, there is no place to dump the energy as the reactor can't be shut down immediately, and cooling will fail soon, ...
A dirty bomb is a device specifically designed to disperse radioactive material. Spent nuclear fuels is actually much less harmful than the isotopes that could be used in a dirty bomb, and it's potential for dispersal is much less in a ground collision than in an atmospheric detonation. Nuclear waste would get dispersed over a few hundred meters, and the top couple feet of dirt in these areas would be cleared away and replaced.
> theres so many potential failure points, here is another: if they fly through the electric pylons and into the cooling tower, there is no place to dump the energy as the reactor can't be shut down immediately, and cooling will fail soon, ...
Which is why most plants have more than one cooling tower (well, some don't have any cooling towers if they're cooled by ocean water). And even in the event that all cooling facilities are destroyed, plant operators would insert the cooling rods to shut down the reactors. There are backup diesel generators to power the control systems in the event that the plant's main electric generator fails.
These kinds of scenarios are borderline absurd. By, the way, what happens if someone flies a plane into a chemical plant manufacturing solar panels? Harmful chemicals could be released into the surrounding areas. Should we shut down solar plant manufacturing until this failure point is addressed? Of course not, such a complaint is as nonsensical about the ones you're trying to make towards nuclear.
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1) kinetic energy and momentum ... and jet fuel 2) don't ask me what the point is, as long as some people can envision a point to it, it's irresponsible to not avoid such a situation. don't ask me what the point is, ask the hijackers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_49
Dry storage casks are embedded in some seriously thick concrete for radiation shielding. I wouldn't be surprised if a direct hit of an A-380 engine at Mach 1 didn't actually destroy it. Again, if you have a highjacked plane on hand you can cause way more damage by crashing it into a skyscraper than some nuclear waste storage - it's a somewhat different risk but not a greater one.
Check out these, with humans for comparison:
"Just Have A Think" put out a video about geothermal energy today. Iceland and California both have large faults they use for short distance access (3km) to the >200 Celsius available at an average depth of ~40km everywhere else in the world. I'm not sure of the implications of drilling that deep, but since horizontal drilling is required for steam return - could it ever be an avenue down which to deploy drilling ass…
