I don't really have the time for a detailed update of what's going on here, and for those of you wondering, I do actually intend on uploading some good pictures. I have over 90 of them, in fact, but I am currently editing them so they look nice. But enough of that...
If any of you out there are currently watching
Atomic Twister on TNT, let me clarify a few things for you:
- Any nuclear power plant in the United States is designed to withstand external forces well in excess of the winds of an F5 Tornado.
- The nuclear reactor is not the big tower you see. The nuclear reactor is underground, buried under several feet of reinforced concrete and shielding material, and then again under another layer of it. The reactor is buried so deep that a tornado can't hit it, and a bomb would have a very hard time doing any damage. The shields on a reactor can withstand more than the force of a cruise missile.
- SCRAM procedures on a nuclear reactor in the United States are not computer-controlled. By law (and procedure), all SCRAMs are carried out using mechanical interlocks. If the reactor had to SCRAM (forced and immediate shutdown), it would not matter that there was no computer control, nor would it matter about power. In fact, if power is lost at the reactor (especially the pumps!), the rods in the reactor would drop, cutting all power production.
- If a reactor shuts down, the control operators will know it and will initiate cooldown procedures. You don't need pumps for this - you just open a few valves (which, by procedure, by protocol, and by law, are open anyway) and let convection create a fluid current across the fuel rods. Loss of power doesn't stop a reactor from shutting down at all. It is possible for a well-protected person to enter the reactor chamber (that's inside the primary shield, not the reactor vessel) and open the valves, if need be. It is also possible for a protected person to manually drop all rods, if need be, but that is a significant health risk. But essentially, a malfunctioning reactor can always be shut down as long as it has been properly maintained and controlled. (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and SL-1 are all examples of violations of maintenance and control procedures).
- If a reactor were to go critical, that just means the reactor is producing power at a stable rate. A SUPERCRITICAL reactor is the one that is producing power at an increasing rate. I really wish people could get their terminology right.
- A critical or supercritical reactor won't necessarily lose control. There are very few things that will do that, namely: loss of coolant (pressure, motion, etc.), stuck rods (not likely at all), and prompt critical reactions (the rods are extracted too fast). Only one of the above has ever happened in practice, and that's a loss of coolant (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl), and only one was not recovered in time (Chernobyl), but that's because the design of the reactor prevented it. United States reactors do not suffer from this flaw. SL-1, the first power-producing nuclear reactor (located in Idaho), suffered from a prompt critical reaction, and that was before it was known such things could happen, and the problem resulted from an operator not following established guidelines.
- A reactor that produces uncontrollable power won't create a nuclear bomb - it's not physically possible. What happens is a steam explosion - if you heat a sealed container filled with water, it explodes, right? Some (but not a large amount) of nuclear material can be released then, but that has happened only on a small scale (except for Chernobyl and SL-1 in Idaho), and has been controlled thereafter (except for Chernobyl and SL-1).
- Nuclear reactors are probably safer than you think. An operator standing outside the secondary shield gets more radiation from the sun than he would from the reactor inside the secondary shield. Nuclear reactors do not produce pollutants (like fossil-fuel plants), only waste (and fossil-fuel plants create both!). The waste can be taken care of, can now serve purposes in daily life, and are of use to science. More research needs to be done, but we don't do it because we (mistakenly) think nuclear by-products are all bad, possibly worse than fossil-fuel by-products. Not true.
So, can we please stop crying about how nuclear power is a bad thing? We need something other than fossil fuels, and one (small) nuclear reactor puts out more power than a similarly-sized fossil-fuel plant, produces less waste, and harms the environment less. No, it's not perfect, but it's better than what we have - most well-developed countries in Europe already know this, so why don't we? Films like Atomic Tornado just make the problem worse by making people fear something that's relatively safe. Look up the statistics yourself. Get an education. Do something! Just don't watch a movie and think you know everything. Look up Chernobyl, SL-1, and Three Mile Island for yourself - Wikipedia has some great articles on these incidents.
Shame on you, TNT, for showing such a bad flick!