Friday, March 11, 2011

Japan's Nuclear Plant

I'm just going to say that calling this Japan's Chernobyl has to be overblown. The USSR's nuke plants were nowhere near as safe as plants in Japan (and in many other countries) today.

But, that said, this guy knows a bit more about it than I do:

“The electrical grid is down. The emergency diesel generators have been damaged. The multi-reactor Fukushima atomic power plant is now relying on battery power, which will only last around eight hours. The danger is, the very thermally hot reactor cores at the plant must be continuously cooled for 24 to 48 hours. Without any electricity, the pumps won’t be able to pump water through the hot reactor cores to cool them. Once electricity is lost, the irradiated nuclear fuel could begin to melt down. If the containment systems fail, a catastrophic radioactivity release to the environment could occur.”

Are we supposed to believe that they can't pretty easily get replacement generators in there? Why?

Digg!

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