Shady
March 13, 2011, 7:39pm
67
No, the REAL big differences is that the RBMK reactor at chernobyl had barley a scrap of containment vessel around the reactor core, and that the design of an RBMK reactor and it’s functions puts it at FAR more risk when this sort of incident occurs. People who know little about nuclear reactors confuse shielding with contaiment. Sheilding is essentially the protective layer that retains neutrons amongst other radiactive particles and isotopes while the reactor is in thermal operation, while the contaiment is essentially a large steel and concrete vessel that surrounds the reactor completely in the event that an internal rupture of the core and shielding occurs. Chernobyl had no such containment on any of it’s 4 reactors. If fact a concrete and steel sarcophagus was built around the #4 reactor to contain the debris of the still exposed reactors(which has been degrading drastically FWIW). A majority of the explosion of chernobyl was from when the RBMK’s moderator was exposed to the atmosphere, where it instantly ignited and exploded. A proper containment vessel could have been flooded and likely prevented that from ever happening if one was in place at the time.
Chernobyl was copious amounts of human error and bad timing combined with poor reactor design and faulty safety features. The LWR in japan is far from that. Again still a HUGE issue, but it’s no chernobyl. There only major issue with flooding the reactor site is that IF the final external contaniment vessel does rupture, then there can be massive contamination to the sea water. As stated before, beyond worst case scenario.
Read up on the differences of RBMK and LWR’s. One of their biggest differences lies in how and what they use the cooling water for, and ultimately one of the biggest safety benefits of LWR’s
Well I do not know as much as you seem to in terms of the reactors technologies or Nuclear technologies in general, I was more or less just trying to point out that it is always possible for a failure to happen, as its happend in the past. Regardless of their “technologies” it takes one major fuckup and subsiqent failures to result in a catastrophic failure which has happend in both cases. Apparently its not as clear cut to compare as I tried to make it seem.
Adam how da fuck you hold all this knowledge in your head? :lol