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