Boy, I sure am a sporadic poster... LOL: I get motivated for preparedness in spurts!

Having read "Lights Out" and "One Second After" has left me with one of my biggest emergency fears being the threat of EMP. Especially after the interesting event a little while back with the strange "missile/plane/thing" off the coast of California.

However, one thing the two aforementioned books fail to discuss involves nuclear plants... specifically, the spent fuel storage. And how that spent fuel depends on a constant flow of cool water to keep it from blowing the heck up. I do realize that the nuclear plants have backup plans (all of which seem to depend on having electricity!)... but if an EMP fries the generators and transformers... how will they receive cold water? They won't.

I was watching "Aftermath: Population Zero". It paints a very ugly picture of what would happen if the spent fuel is not kept submerged in water. You can imagine.

So. I started researching maps of the nuclear plant site in the US. The sheer quantity makes survival seem like a bleak prospect.

I thought some of you (especially those with more experience or knowledge in the nuclear field) may have some thoughts or insights on this?

Aside from having and being able to get to an isolated place somewhere in the world, what protection is there from this?

I would hope that the reactor cooling systen in a nuclear power plant would be designed to survive an EMP event.
Pumps can be driven by diesel engines, which can be started by compresed air, or by hand in small sizes.
Basic electrical equipment can be hardened/protected against EMP, the military do this, and I would hope that this is true of nuclear power plants also.
I would still prefer not to live downwind of one though !

adam2,

From what I've read, the plants are hardened against emp... but they are still part of the main electrical grid (not sure about my terminology here). So if the "main grid" or whatever is not working, then how would the plants draw power (even if their systems were still functional)?

The plants should be self sufficient in terms of electrical power generation (i.e., they use what electricity they generate first to run the plant then put the rest on the grid. Second, when the rods go in if you loose control, the plant shuts down and cools down. This is a feature of Pressurized water reactors which are what the US uses. Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor, rods in mean more heat which means big molten pile.

Big take away, don't worry about the nuc plants.

Regards,
Bill

"One Second After" is grim reading. Made me think I should add cyanide to my survival kit.

Yep,if they lose power gravity drops the rods and the reactor shuts down -- I think the term is Scram.

EMP is very difficult to achieve. I have no concern about EMP being employed against the US by anybody but the Russians and the Chinese. And I don't think they're likely to nuke us.

Getting to an isolated place in the world is the last thing I'd do in whatever global catastrophe is in the national hysteria for 15 minutes. I'm hunkering down right here in town with all my neighbors and my CERT team and firefighters that we're associated with. If the disaster strikes here (I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area), here is where the aid will come.

> the strange "missile/plane/thing" off the coast of California

was identified, by the way. It's some scheduled flight that happens at that same time every day.

Exactly. It's the emergency break for the reactor, so long as gravity works the failsafes will work unless something horribly, horrible wrong has happened at the mechanical level and then was ignored. More so than nuke plants, I'd be worried about the tens of thousands of chemical works around the country.

I agree i have seen more Chemical, Metal An Fuel Plants or w.e Explode and such. They show atleast like 3-4 Places on TV in them Wildest or Most amazing shows. There is a metal works that delt with explosive metals that blew, a Place that made Some kinda fuel for THe shuttles that blew up, a Propane? place that blew up, And there was some kinda spill that set fire to a town I think the video of a cop backing away at top speed from the flames as the fumes set fire is always shown from that.

"Lights Out" and "One Second After" both make a lot of unwarranted assumptions about an EMP. They assume it works, while it was observed in some cases it was not observed in other cases. Nobody, not even the experts, are sure what an EMP device would look like and they don't know how to employ it if they had one.

The effect is not a sure thing. Many of the references used to support a claim of a catastrophic effect are quite old. Those books claim that modern electronics are always and predictably more vulnerable. Comparing mid-50s tube electronics to CMOS they clearly are.

Comparing more recent circuit and component designs, which are designed to avoid issues with voltage surges from any source, and optical systems which are entirely immune it is far less clear that an EMP would be more an issue now than in the 60s. Some quite credible studies claim that the vast majority of observed effects on test circuits in the 70s were temporary, requiring little more than resetting systems, or requiring replacement of simple components such as fuses.

Standard assumptions like vehicles with electronic ignitions failing is not so simple. Some tests on individual vehicles show they fail. Others not. As far as I can tell nobody has made a systematic study.

The doubt adds its own dynamic. Not knowing how effective, or ineffective any attack, an attack nobody knows how to do, an attack that has never been tried, may be makes it a high risk strategy. If you spend millions on a bomb would you use it on a potential light show and making our lights flicker?

Beware reading the survivalist literature and semi-factual alarmist sites too literally. They do not sell because they are reliable and accurate guides but rather because they are calculated to raise passions.

Its just electricity. Its only been widely available for the last 60-80 years. You can actually live without it. Even the Internet has only been around for about 15 years.

The 3 TV channels we had back in the 1970s had better TV programs anyway. There have always been dystopian views of the future. This is quite a good one. The whole TV series is available on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43EZbisZvqc

Then there is of course, the 'Katrina times 100 from outer space'. (yes I know it sounds like a line from Team America)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhRO9p494Xs

Actually, only the PWR type of reactors have the control rods on top. The BWR rods come up from the bottom.

The question was about spent fuel storage, not what happens in a scram.

I wouldn't worry much about the spent fuel. It's not going to melt and cause a huge radioactivity release. Even if it does heat and melt it probably won't cause a big problem. It's at least in a building and wouldn't be creating a lot of windborne radioactivity.

Now the running reactor on the site..... I hope that decay heat management doesn't require that all control systems work.
Decay heat after scram is VERY significant (5% of the power just before the scram for about an hour or something like that) and must be actively managed by the plant operators.

True, the OP mentioned spent fuel. I also don't see EMP and spent fuel being such a bad combo. Spent fuel is still "hot"--radioactivity and heat-wise--but it's no longer capable of sustained fission so it's not going to blow up and spew radioactive fallout or anything like that.

Without pumps, it could boil off the water in the containment pools, but I don't believe they are hot enough--temperature-wise--to cause any sort of China Syndrome type of event by melting through the floor of containment. Still, definitely not good being inside the containment building with bare, exposed spent fuel around due to the radioactivity.

"Its just electricity. Its only been widely available for the last 60-80 years. You can actually live without it. Even the Internet has only been around for about 15 years."

I doubt that it would be as 'easy' as it seems. Everything from manufacturing to transportation to medicine to education would mostly come to a screeching halt. We have become almost insanely dependent on electricity.

How well would trucking companies run without a computer system? Most phone systems are electronic -- it's hard to find an old phone that doesn't. How fast would they be made without electricity?

Most of the railroad signals and switches are operated electronically from main dispatch locations (here in the PNW, all the mainline tracks are operated from Texas).

Hospital equipment and medical records are mostly electronic.

American public schools would be paralyzed (worse than they already are).

It would be a good thing most vehicles wouldn't be operating, because even a small city would be paralyzed without working traffic lights.

Huge buildings... no power, no lights, no elevators, non-operating electronic locks, even the toilets flush electronically.

Stores couldn't operate because many people don't know how to add, subtract, figure tax, or make change on their own.

No burglar alarms, no police communication, no phones to call police. No lights in the jails and prisons.

Is it winter? Electric heat not available. Electronic ignition in many heat sources, not working. Pellet stoves, not working.

No, it's not as simple as you might think. We wouldn't go back 50-80 years, we would be back in the Middle Ages. But even then, people knew how to do things, to make do, to grow food, to make things by hand. Most of that knowledge is long gone from most of the industrialized populations.

Some people wouldn't even be able to get into their cars to use them as shelter because the little button on the key fob wouldn't work.

The first 50 years of electricity we still had knowledge, useful skills and experience, now most of that is gone. Turn off the power and you'll have turned off the thin veneer of what we refer to as 'civilization', because most of what we call civilization is just technology.

Sue

I couldn't live without the Internet.

How would I know which knife to buy?



Pardon me, I mean to say: "knives"

The Amish Population would Quadruple!Hygiene would become Low giene,in Short order!Victory Gardens would be Law!The sound of Fingernails,Scratching Chalkboards,would be Common...Again!The Smell of BayRum would be Ever so Present!Hand-blown Bitter Bottles would make a Strong Comeback!Doctors would be Paid with Chickens,& Golf Courses would be Inhabited with Cattle!Our lives,would be Dictated by the Weather,Once Again!TB/Anthrax/Cholera/Malaria/Polio-Would No Longer refer to Heavy Metal Rock Bands,lol!

The scariest thing about EMP is the lack of information and predictable effect.

Clearly the worse case, permanent and irrecoverable destruction of every electrical device, as presented by Hagee, and other ill informed pushers of apocalyptic fears, is not physically possible.

The issue has been studied but the numbers of variables involved confounds any easy predictions for individual cases or locations. Fears and wild speculations proliferate and grows strong in the dark.

Thread ReFire.

Two reasons:

1) It is very interesting to read the thoughts on nuclear reactors in a post electric situation circa comments December 2010. The thread is using the assumption of EMP, but we can now observe Japan reactors a month ago.

2) The real reason for refire is that I just received my published copy of Lights Out by David Crawford aka Halffast from Amazon.

I was looking to download my personal .pdf version into my nook and stumbled upon recent updates on the book. Apparently David started a movie and book deal last year and asked sites hosting his book (with estimated 3 million downloads) to take it offline so he could publish it. And they did. God love it. In December 2010 the full book was released on Amazon for $20. It is a small font paperback with 600 pages.

I still have the .pdf but I purchased the book as a thank you to David for writing the story and releasing it free. He deserves my support. Thought I'd spread the word.

What a coincidence, I just pulled the .pdf file earlier this evening and gave it to my DW to read.

After almost six years of my nagging her, she is actually finally getting interested in emergency preparedness and I thought a well-written piece of fiction might inspire her further.

I even got her to read 98.6 last week.

I have Earth Abides, A Canticle for Liebowitz and Alas, Babylon lined up for her next. If you see a new member on the forum in the near future named "buckette", you'll know I'll probably have created a monster


buckeye

The scariest thing about EMP is using works of fiction as authoritative sources of information. Surely there is a better way.

Believe me, I'm not and I hope no one is using works of fiction as authoritative sources.

I'm just looking for ways to motivate my DW to step it up a notch, in terms of taking real preparedness more seriously, and if a work of fiction can help motivate her, more than my nagging, then that is fine with me.

buckeye

You're probably not far off Susan. I spent time on the weekend in an area that was on it's fourth day without power and people were going a little wrangy. No lights, no heat, no flushing toilets, no elevators, no traffic lights, no tv, take-out food and ice from a nearby town, having to charge iphones in the car...

It was fascinating to listen to. Made me wonder what would happen if it was on a larger scale, was longer lasting and or if it involved more damage or injuries.

Strange was Those large 5 gallon jugs of water available to purchase at any stores? Toilets can be flushed by filling the back tank with atleast 3 gallons of water.

We had a few navigational challenges that threw our timing off, Frisket, so I didn't get a chance to check out the stores. I was just listening to the stories. There was no big disaster, just a wind and rain storm that knocked power out and caused some flooding and other damage.

There are lots of work-arounds but it's sometimes hard to hear them when you're complaining about not being prepar... wait, I mean, taken care of.

Most toilets will flush pretty well of you pour a couple of gallons in the bowl quickly. There is a bit of technique to it. With the right touch and toilet a single gallon will flush it. It helps if you pour from a bucket as it makes rapid pouring easier.

One gallon of water poured out of a bucket quickly will flush virtually any toilet. One gallon of water poured out of the small neck of a jug won't do anything except waste water.

And I hope no one is using drinking water to flush toilets...


Buckeye, start with Alas, Babylon, where the people actually do things. The main character in Earth Abides is basically just a philosopher, useless even in the short run.

Sue