Matthew X wrote: > > "If you lose control, the reactor scrams." > > I don't recall a lot of scientific scoffing of the China Syndrome movie > when it came out.
When it first came out, it was considered a plausible scenario. Later, DOE ran some accident simulations at an instrumented test reactor in Idaho to induce a core meltdown. They got pretty much what later happened at Three Mile Island - significant damage inside containment, nothing outside. >It also came out at almost the same time there were some > problems SCRAMming a reactor that almost led to the east coast becoming > uninhabitable for 250,000 years. You mean that gravity was suspended? All it takes is a momentary interruption of current to the solenoids holding the safety rods to scram a reactor. Another antinuke fairy tale. If nothing else, the 250,000 year figure gives it away. > Mike joins Mongo in the Nuclear corner? I am almost embarrassed to be a > cuckoo here sometimes. Barbarella is a great movie tho.Look Mike,if > reactors are so bombproof why did they pull all the webpages on them? I say > they are still good targets and the best way to find out is field testing > with Boeings.Do you want to know more? Nobody is saying that nuclear reactors are invulnerable - only that a NUCLEAR catastrophe cannot be triggered by an airplane. As somebody has correctly pointed out, the powerhouse and spent fuel pools (the latter the result of antinuke campaigns against reprocessing) are vulnerable. It certainly is possible to put a reactor out of action by destroying everything outside containment. Marc de Piolenc
