? for yall i live about 3 1/2 hours down river from nuc plant .ok if there was a explosion there what could i do? how could i protect mine ?

well depends on the nuclear powerplant. First off most western build nuclear reactors has a containment building. This the the reinforced concrete dome over the reactor, which is designed to contain a blast from inside and will also protect from outside dangers. Such a containment building, will prevent radiation particles from being being released in the air. Such a structure would have significanty reduced the impact of the chernobyl incident.

That and all the other safety meassures should make a nuke plant extremly safe. You shouldn't worry about that too much.

Meassure to be safe is checking the wind directions and move if something did wend wrong.

"blast?" No.

US nuclear powerplants aren't nuclear bombs and can't be made to produce a nuclear explosion.

They ARE high pressure steam systems and can have steam explosions in worst case scenarios but they are mostly radioactive contamination issues of very small magnitude and low probability of contamination getting very far outside the plant.

You should have a bug out kit setup for the family in the event of an evacuation needed for a radiation release (or river flooding or other natural disaster) but you should understand that your drunk-driving fellow road user is a much bigger hazard to you on a recurring basis than the plant.

3.5 hrs is way too far away to worry about the plant. Even if you are directly downwind.

I wish I had a nuclear powerplant in my backyard. Then I could work there and have a shorter commute!

Have no worries, as others have mentioned modern safty requirements are extremely strict and nuclear plants are very closely monitored.

The basic design safety policy of a nuclear plant runs to 3,625 pages (Yes I've read them). This doc covers every aspect of plant design with virtually every contingency covered, upto and including aircraft penetration of the reactor building dome.

Like someone said you've got more to fear crossing the street, than the plant 3,5 hours away.

I have a second home which is only 5km from a site with two reactors. doesn't both me. Infact one of the nice features about the plant is one of the heat exchangers is used to heat a tropical sanctuary. Plants need to dump a huge amount of heat, best if it serves a purpose.

You are at a distance from the nuke plant. NYC is within 35 miles from a nuke plant, but I worry more about something coming from an intentional release than an accidental one from the plant.

The worst nuclear accident in a U.S. power platn resulted in few if any deaths. The accident at Chernobyl has been estimated to maybe be the eventual cause of 4,000 deaths. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/sep/06/energy.ukraine

I'm also sure you can find these numbers disputed with allegations of cancer outbreaks, but all the same the numbers are not tremendous considering the amount of people that live closer to these plants than you live to the plant in Oak Ridge.

If you want to prepare for an NBC incident, there is nothing wrong with that, but for it, you need to have safe cloths, masks for breathing, and a safe room with a well-filtered source of air, as well as food and water to last a while.

I lived there for aprox 6 months dad was on leave from BYU doing research at oak ridge national lab cool place for a 5th grader I guess.

Had no worries
Lee

I’m about 20 min from Davis Bessie (sp?) nuke plant just east of Toledo. I use to work there, I did security work there, that job sucked more then any other job I ever had. Sitting around for 8 hours a day makes for a miserable, long day.


I have no worries about it at all. Three Mile Island is toted by the anti-nuke people as a failure. But really it’s a success, there was an accident and it was contained, like an airbag that deployed in an auto accident Three Mile Island’s safety features worked.


Now if I lived close to a Russian nuke plant, I’d be plenty worried.

BobS,

I agree, if it was a russian plant, the old gas variety, then I'd be plenty worried.

But there are plans for the Russians to upgrade and or decommission many of these older reactors, those that will be upgarded will be either the American Westinghose AP1000, or the European EPR 1700. Either one are extremely well thought out and are built on the collective experiences of previous generations of reactors.

The next generation (IVth) of reactors many well be experiments in untried technology, the safe guards will be considerable but there is always an element of the unknown with such experiments. Watch this space in 2017.

thanks yall >1 more ? recon that would be a high threat area for terrison?i also have a reactor 5 mi from me .but its not active.

If the reactor is not active, then it is not likely to have any explosion. If there really were a nuclear explosion, like a bomdb, whoever is close to it is pretty much screwed. The further you get from it, the better off you are.

If there is a nuclear blast, the first thing you'd want to do is shield yourself, but you better be able to do it immediately, because things move fast. If you cannot do it right now, then just get down and stay down. With a nuclear blast, you can expect to waves of pressure, one out and one back in, so let them pass over you.

After that occurs or in case of release, you want three things: distance, shielding and washing. The more distance between you and a source of radiation, the better. So, if you are close, you may want to just grab your BOB (bug out bag) and get out of there. The problem there is that you might be taking radiation with you, that's where the washing comes in. You need to wash it off, and just dump anything that might have radiation on it. Shielding of course is a barrier between you and the radiation, that keeps it off of you. It would be good to have a mask that filtered particles, but that also means the mask would be collecting particles in the filter. It would be good to have a suit that covered everything. These things need to get dumped and/or washed.

Additionally, you could try to make a safe room, and let clean up happen while you stay in it. It's very often a better idea to bug-in and not bug out. Those bugging out might to be taking radiation with them. If you want to have a safe room, then you want it to be as sturdy as possible, think fall out shelter, and you also want it to have a filtered air supply. That means you need a fan and power for that fan to draw air through a filter, push it into the room, and then let the air leak out of the room, keeping other unfiltered air from entering the space. You'd also need to have that room stocked with food, water, something to use for hygeine, etc. You might want to also do this in case of pandemic.

Look at the articles here for some more thoughts on this: http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/basicnbc.htm

Finally, I see you are new this week. Welcome and stick around.

"...high threat area for terrison..."

Back when I used to follow this kind of stuff, every year various law enforcement "SWAT" teams form across the country had a competition. As far as I can recall, those guys who guard reactors and other "glow in the dark" stuff won. Every year. Year after year. So I like to assume (always dangerous) that they can do a pretty good job of defending a reactor...

Although a nuke plant seems like a juicy target for terrorists, the chances of anyone getting inside and actually being able to make a nuclear power plant do something spectacular like melt down is incredibly, incredibly remote. Accidents and human error are far more likely to lead to something bad happening, than a terrorist attack, and even that risk is very, very small.

The greatest impact of a terrorist attack on a nuke plant, like a dirty bomb, is going to be psychological. Just look at the fear that people still have of the Three Mile Island incident. There was no explosion, no "China Syndrome", no escape of radioactive materials except a tiny bit of radioactive steam. I read that the residents surrounding TMI got more radiation from Chernobyl from the radioactive dust particles that travelled on the winds around the world, than they did from TMI, just down the road. It's unfortunate that the truth of TMI isn't well known. Everyone just remembers all the hysteria and conjecture while it was happening, but no one knew what the heck was actually going on inside the reactor until much later, and by then, the public wasn't interested anymore.

An old, decommissioned nuke plant might have low grade radioactive materials that might be a target, but nothing that dangerous to you. I mean, perhaps they could steal a truckload of barrels of radioactive cooling water or something like that, but the getaway truck would have to drive by your house and overturn on your front lawn for it to pose any risk to you. I'm being facetious, of course, but the risk is super tiny. I'm sure that the most radioactive components, like spent fuel rods, have been removed. There's nothing there that is going to melt down and explode or something like that.

There will not be a nuclear explosion. Even fresh fuel rods do not have enough fissile material to sustain a nuclear chain reaction and detonate.

I was only using a hypothetical, and it is within the realm of possibility that one could be near a nuclear explosion, without it being caused by fuel rods.

In today's ridiculously sensitive environment EVERYTHING is a "terrorist target."

Dams, bridges, elementary schools, muni water supplies, city intersections, gast stations, the Sheriff's daughter..... everything is a terrorist target depending on who you ask.

It would be real difficult to hurt a reactor plant to make it release fission products. It would take a lot of knowlege and significant time. IT WILL NOT DETONATE WITH NUCLEAR YIELD. IT CANNOT BE MADE TO DO SO.

The biggest damage would be scoring a PR victory when the deed made the news. The media, being unable to distinguish between a sparkler and a thermonuclear device, would immediately demand the President surrender the country to the terrorists to prevent incinerating the planet.

No, you can't get a "nuclear explosion" (as in a nuclear bomb) out of a reactor. Wrong fuel, wrong geometry, etc. The physics doesn't work.

What you can get are steam explosions caused by "power excursions". This is what happened to Chernobyl and why we have containment structures. The reactor starts producing enormous amounts of heat and in a few seconds flashes all of the cooling water to steam, along with any other volatiles nearby. The result is like a steam boiler explosion, only with potentially a lot more energy and radioactive volatiles mixed in...

Much goes into preventing this sort of thing, and other problems. Terrorist attacks aren't likely to accomplish anything since the first thing the operator does in the control room is hit the SCRAM button to shut things down. A more likely failure is enough people making enough stupid mistakes the designers never thought to explicitly disallow in the design.

The biggest problem is likely to be panic in the public. If the containment structure isn't breached you're more likely to die on the highway in a traffic accident trying to get out of town than from anything from the reactor. Even reports of "radioactive steam" release aren't something to panic over.

Now, if there's a steam explosion that blows the containment structure off and chunks of graphite are found in the lake that is the local water supply, then it's time to panic, just like any other time a city loses its water supply.

KI4U sells Potassium Iodide and radiation meters/detectors of various kinds.

PS. Three Mile Island was a serious accident in that the reactor core/fuel partially melted. But containment worked and nobody was injured or killed.

Pretty much EVERYONE on the coasts is 4 hours from a nuke plant

http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist1.htm#PA

1. I think you misread my post. I didn't think I said that you could get a nuclear explosion from a reactor. My comment that it was possible to be near one, that was not caused by fuel rods. I know that it is possible to be near a nuclear explosion that does not involve fuel rods, Hiroshima was one. My comment was to assume you were near a nuclear explosion, and if so, what can or should one do.



2. Now, that's right on. If one was near a nuclear explosion (assuming a worse case scenario) the size of the Hiroshima bomb, panic is very likely to be the biggest problem. If you are a couple miles away, you might not even be able to measure radiation from such an event. That does not mean people outside of two or three miles will not be in a panic. But there is more danger in that panic than in sitting tight.

If you found measurable radiation a few miles away, then it might be because of fallout, particles of debris that are radioactive that are deposited a distance away from a nuclear explosion. Your home is very likely to be your best protection. It's a bigger thicker shield than anything you can put on. Also, RADs drop quickly after any nuclear explosion. So, if you shield yourself for the first few hours or maybe days, you may be at a lower your risks from exposure than if you grabbed your BOB and fled.

Your best bet is probably to shield yourself as much as you can, and if possible, retreat to a safe room with clean, filtered air. But you are going to need to have that room prepared ahead of time.

Actually, we might all have been wrong, and Dan the "least wrong" (I won't say "correct" Dan since you didn't mention any of this <grin>). Mountainboy, is there a nuclear power plant in Oak Ridge? For some reason, I can't find a definitive answer to that.

I don't know why it didn't register before, but we're all thinking of a commercial, nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island. So, we're all concentrating on "nucular plant" but forget the other part. The name "Oak Ridge" includes a lot of different stuff. There's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there are WWII era uranium enrichment facillities (the "K-25 Building"), and the current Y-12 National Security Complex. I'm sure there are other facillities there. Y-12 is a nuclear weapons production facility.

So, Mountainboy, depending on what you're actually referring to, the risk is going to vary. I doubt any terrorist wants to attack Oak Ridge National Lab because they just do research and they don't have any fissionable materials there. Y-12 on the other hands, must be full of weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

OBG was mentioning how the nuclear security teams always kick butt at competitions, which I found surprising. I usually only hear stories like this or this or this about their security. Besides, the Dept of Energy, or the private security firms that DOE hires, don't seem like the kinds of jobs that the really good high speed, low drag types would want to join. Where's the glamour? Actually, that DOE "red team" in the Time article sounds like a cool job.

As far as the likelihood of anything happening under any circumstances, I am not about to think I'm qualified to evaluate those risks. I'm not qualified to figure out what the likelihood of any nuclear incident. I couldn't get into those classes, since I did so lousy in physics.

However, I have thought some about what to do in case of an incident. How does one prepare for that possibility. Since I've seen the issue of a dirty bomb in NYC mentioned, it's something I've thought about mostly in that context, but also with looking at the remote possibility that someone could set off a small nuclear bomb. I also think that many of the thigns you would and could do to prepare for such an incident are the same things you would do to prepare in case of a chemical attack or spill, or in case of a nuclear attack or a pandemic. If radiation, poisonous chemicals or nasty viruses, bacteria or other organisms could be out and out in your area, knowing what to do and preparing for the possibilties is not a bad idea. How far you take your preparations may have some cost/benefit and risk likelihood analysis, but learning about about what you could do if it did happen right now, that may only cost you time.

And as James_Van_Artsdalen correctly recognized not panicing is key. However, knowing what to do goes a long way toward not panicing. I've seen panic. At first, you often see someone freeze and do nothing. Usually, they simply do not know the right thing to do. The brain freezes seeking information to make a good decision, but if the information is not there, that frozen brain is not usually going to do a decent analysis of the problems it faces. Once that , then you often see someone follow the crowd and stampeding off more potential danger than they would have been if they sat still.

Thinking about what to do "IF" helps avoid panic. Doing some homework helps too. Also, drills and other preparations help.

Saw something on the history channel (I think) that said the biggest danger comes from the spent fuel since it remains highly dangerous for a couple thousand years. Is that true? I mean if its totally safe and there's nothing to worry about then why all the fuss over Yucca mountain?

The fuss over the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Storage Facility stems from it's location within seismically active area. The containers are designed to last 300 years and it is thyought that the radioactive material will take 10,000 years to reach the water table, AND it is "hoped" that the radioactive materials will have decayed by then, thus not polluting the fresh water table when it mixes in.

"Have no worries, as others have mentioned modern safty requirements are extremely strict and nuclear plants are very closely monitored."

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong...

Very true. Their goal is not really to do a lot of damage, but to scare and terrorize their enemy's population into demanding that the government give in to their demands. The strategy is to win by fear, not force. Thus, logically, the name "terrorists."

Given the level of fear over nuclear plants and ignorance over radiation in the U.S., I'd be concerned that they could try something. It would, IMO, terrorize and shock the public.

Such a scenario might be something to plan for in your survival scenarios, e.g., thousands of people in a panic, clogging roads to get away because somebody has taken over the plant and is threatening to do "whatever," even if there is little to no "real" danger.

I prepare for nuclear incidents. If I am prepared for that, everything else falls in line.

Bingo.

If you are prepared for extreme events, the minor ones should be less of an issue.

Picking the "biggest danger" is kind of like asking the ETS folks what the best survival knife is. It depends on what you're concerned about.

Did you know that a fuel rod is low-grade enriched uranium pellets contained in a welded tube of some other metal (like stainless steel)?

Spent fuel rods do contain bad stuff in the form of fission products (that's what's left after you break the uranium atoms to get the energy) some of which have very long half-lives (the time it takes for half of the material to undergo radioactive decay and change to some other isotope) and give off some strong radioactive particles or energy when they do. Some of the fission products are bad poison in a chemical sense.

Yucca mountain is all about storing the result of re-processing the fuel rods by separating the remaining uranium (like the 95% that wasn't consumed) for re-use in new fuel rods from the genuinely nasty fission products for safe storage. Many similarities to reusing motor oil with Yucca mountain being where the nasty sludge goes.

Yes, things can go wrong. But the fear-mongers emotionally and vastly overstate the risks. They are in far more danger driving to the rally to protest the plant than they are from the plant itself.

I sat thru the classes. I'm an engineer and I'm a nuclear trained former US Navy submariner. But this is the internet where everyone's opinion is equally weighted.