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Evolution of the nuclear accident nuclear accident 7 ideas

This morning has been an explosion in Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. All Japanese nuclear plants have been seriously affected by yesterday's earthquake. Many things are being published, most inaccurate. It is not easy to know exactly what is happening, they probably would not have enough information (or analysis capability) to know of so imminent. Yet there are some things worthy of comment to see what we can expect and what the point of no return. In the 3 years I worked at Westinghouse Spain, one of the things we did was simulated nuclear accident with a very good simulator. See if the following lines I can summarize the main ideas of the case, by way of headlines:

1 .- Nuclear plants never produce "nuclear explosions" as the atomic bomb. For the construction itself never achieved the conditions for this situation.

2 .- When the integrity of the core remains, that is not blown, we are at a level of accident while it may free up a lot of radiation to the outside and be severe, is controllable and will be corrected in the medium term.

3 .- If the core melts category change. This is what is called a "severe accident", and the ability to manage the situation will be much more limited, even in the long term. The release of radioactivity to the outside is inevitable, large and durable.

4 .- At the beginning of the accident chain reaction ceases. The concern from there is the residual heat. Spent fuel is highly radioactive, is naturally fissile generaldo hundreds of MW (megawatts). Management accident has to focus on core cooling, evacuating the residual heat to prevent hot enough to melt.

5 .- In addition to cooling the core is to maintain the integrity of the barriers that keep radioactive material contained. This is already very variable depending on the type of plant, there are both barriers and strategies for their maintenance. In any case, if the core melts lost the main barrier contains spent fuel, which is the most radioactive of all.

6 .- there are still no precise diagnosis of what it occur, it operates according to some "emergency operating procedures" that will indicate what needs to be done algorithmically, based on measurable symptoms in indications of safety instrumentation. These procedures were generated from the accident at Three Thousand Island, and is to refine and verify that there have been thousands of simulations of accidents.

7 .- If the core melts, mass produce nuclear fuel and other materials (rods, part of the vessel) paste, which produces its own heat which specialists call "corium" and we can see as lava volcano, just not cools, produces its porpio heat. The only case that occurred at Chernobyl really was, and still there medioenterrado a "sarcífago" cement.

information I get from Japan will not let you know how close the possible occurrence of a meltdown. Somewhere I read that many hours have been a total loss of electrical power (diesel or even batteries). If this were so, it certainly could have approached this situation. But neither the official notes of the company or other sources guarantee that end. Moreover, the explosion may have occurred in an auxiliary building and not in the reactor ... Let's wait. In any case, radioactivity in the environment will be safe, like smoke in the vicinity of the refineries that are burning. Is the extent we can not calibrate.

The source more "serious" I'm following is THIS , which they say is well proven and technically sound ... but little change is updated. Between an update and another on Twitter and have read several atomic bombs.

DISCLAIMER: Throughout the text "fusion" refers to change of state, to liquefaction. In any case nuclear fusion. As if there was any doubt.