# Stuff and Things > HISTORY, veterans & science >  The safety of nuclear fision reactors

## phoenyx

I started a discussion with someone in another forum here regarding the safety of nuclear fision reactors. I suspect it won't go far, but figured it at least deserved a thread of its own. So here we go. I don't think that they're safe. I pulled 2 articles from the internet that agree with my point of view. They are here:


Nuclear Power Is Not Safe | cleantechnica.com

Nuclear energy isnt a safe bet in a warming world  heres why | theconversation.com


His response was that these 2 articles "ignore the fact we've used nuclear power safely now for over six decades."


Apparently he's never heard of 3 Mile island:

https://energycentral.com/news/netfl...t-heres-how-we


Or Chernobyl:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...rue-death-toll

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Common (06-26-2022)

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## Big Dummy

Thorium reactors are my favored method. Nixon needed Washington State to win the election so he sold out to Westinghouse (Washington St.) and the uranium reactors they sold. Ending thorium research.

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## Karl

> Thorium reactors are my favored method. Nixon needed Washington State to win the election so he sold out to Westinghouse (Washington St.) and the uranium reactors they sold. Ending thorium research.


A kid in Michigan back in the 1980/1990s built a small scale Nuclear Reactor in the Backyard...

Thorium was "sourced" from stolen Smoke Detectors..

Feeling Bad didn't wanna put his Mother outta that house but it was "Nuclear" Contaminated Site now..

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...Un37JmXEx_Och_

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## Karl

> A kid in Michigan back in the 1980/1990s built a small scale Nuclear Reactor in the Backyard...
> 
> Thorium was "sourced" from stolen Smoke Detectors..
> 
> Feeling Bad didn't wanna put his Mother outta that house but it was "Nuclear" Contaminated Site now..
> 
> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...Un37JmXEx_Och_


"Hahn was a Boy Scout fascinated by chemistry, and spent years conducting amateur chemistry experiments, which sometimes caused small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. He later received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and became fascinated with the idea of creating a breeder reactor in his home. Hahn diligently amassed radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks, and tritium from gunsights. His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.[3][4]"

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## Big Dummy

> A kid in Michigan back in the 1980/1990s built a small scale Nuclear Reactor in the Backyard...
> 
> Thorium was "sourced" from stolen Smoke Detectors..
> 
> Feeling Bad didn't wanna put his Mother outta that house but it was "Nuclear" Contaminated Site now..
> 
> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...Un37JmXEx_Och_


Yep, a famous story.

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## foggy

Coal is the bad guy because the libs say so.

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## Physics Hunter

Chernobyl was a shit design run by a 2nd world country.

TMI shows that yes, anything that powerful is potentially dangerous, that is why we build giant containment structures.

We need power, what would you replace that 20% of the USA Grid with?

Personally, I like Microreactors under 10MegaWatts. 
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/b...-microreactors

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East of the Beast (06-26-2022),imaginethat (07-13-2022),Quark (07-15-2022),Swedgin (06-26-2022)

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## Wildrose

> I started a discussion with someone in another forum here regarding the safety of nuclear fision reactors. I suspect it won't go far, but figured it at least deserved a thread of its own. So here we go. I don't think that they're safe. I pulled 2 articles from the internet that agree with my point of view. They are here:
> 
> 
> Nuclear Power Is Not Safe | cleantechnica.com
> 
> Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why | theconversation.com
> 
> 
> His response was that these 2 articles "ignore the fact we've used nuclear power safely now for over six decades."
> ...


Chernobyl as already stated used a reactor design that was already obsolete when they were installed.

Three mile Island is still in operation. In spite of one reactor's cooling system failing and the reactor melting down there was no serious leakage of dangerous radiation.




> On March 28, 2019, we will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident, which was then and still remains the most serious accident by far at a nuclear power station in the United States. The plant, located on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a severe loss of coolant that, researchers later discovered, caused a meltdown of the reactor core and irreparable damage to the facility. It also produced high anxiety among federal and state government officials, and, with good reason, among the population of the region for five acutely tense days after the accident occurred.
> Despite the enormous destruction that the accident caused to the plant, it did not allow the escape of hazardous amounts of the most dangerous forms of radiation to the environment. The safety systems designed to protect the public were tested as never before, but in the face of a massive meltdown, they held.


Three Mile Island remains the only major incident in the US and it's safety systems proved capable of containing a complete meltdown without any serious radiation being released.

That was also a fifty year old design.  Modern reactor designs have taken into account the reasons for every prior reactor incident and include multiple different fail safe measures to prevent such incidents from repeating.

https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/42233/t...fter-40-years/

France generates 70% of it's power using nuclear and our nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers have proven the US has the nuclear tech necessary to generate electricity with nuclear power safely.

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East of the Beast (06-26-2022),Quark (07-15-2022),Swedgin (06-26-2022)

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## Wildrose

> Thorium reactors are my favored method. Nixon needed Washington State to win the election so he sold out to Westinghouse (Washington St.) and the uranium reactors they sold. Ending thorium research.


Thorium Reactor research never ended and is still ongoing.

Thorium Reactor - Thorium Power Plant

The 3 Mile Island scare pretty much killed off the US nuclear power industry for several decades but it's really the only "green alternative" we have that can begin to replace coal and natural gas as the primary power sources for US energy production.

In the sixties and seventies we were all convinced that nuclear power was a future but the fear mongers eventually succeeded in shutting down future reactor construction in the late eighties/early nineties.

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imaginethat (07-13-2022),Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Wildrose

> A kid in Michigan back in the 1980/1990s built a small scale Nuclear Reactor in the Backyard...
> 
> Thorium was "sourced" from stolen Smoke Detectors..
> 
> Feeling Bad didn't wanna put his Mother outta that house but it was "Nuclear" Contaminated Site now..
> 
> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...Un37JmXEx_Och_


The EPA cleaned it up so it's no longer a hazard.

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## 12icer

What surprises me is the way they use nuclear power to produce electricity. 
It seems to me that a direct emission process would be much safer more stable, and much simpler to control and regulate. 
As radiation travels within its envelope of field it has the potential to produce energy potential in most any stable receptor placed within that envelope as it passes. 
When you can use microvolts instead of volts to produce most desired results combined with superconductor electromagnets as a flux generator one would have to wonder why it hasn't happened yet.

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## Call_me_Ishmael

> What surprises me is the way they use nuclear power to produce electricity. 
> It seems to me that a direct emission process would be much safer more stable, and much simpler to control and regulate. 
> As radiation travels within its envelope of field it has the potential to produce energy potential in most any stable receptor placed within that envelope as it passes. 
> When you can use microvolts instead of volts to produce most desired results combined with superconductor electromagnets as a flux generator one would have to wonder why it hasn't happened yet.


Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

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## Wilson2

> I'm skeptical. Some information I found:
> 
> 
> **
> *Two US naval nuclear submarines  USS Thresher and USS Scorpion  currently remain sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, at depths of more than two kilometres, after sinking during the 1960s.
> 
> More than 200 mariners died in the disasters, and neither vessels' reactors, nor the nuclear weapons on board the Scorpion, have ever been recovered.
> 
> Two years ago, 14 Russian naval officers were laid to rest after they were killed in a fire on a nuclear-powered submersible in circumstances that were not fully revealed by the Kremlin.*
> ...


Thresher sank in 1963, Scorpion in 1968.  Neither sank because they were nuclear powered.   Thresher appears to have suffered structural failures (bad welds), Scorpion is uncertain but appears to be an explosion in the torpedo room.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## phoenyx

> Thresher sank in 1963, Scorpion in 1968.  Neither sank because they were nuclear powered.   Thresher appears to have suffered structural failures (bad welds), Scorpion is uncertain but appears to be an explosion in the torpedo room.


Understood, but that doesn't change the fact that nuclear reactors went to the bottom of the sea, something that wouldn't happen if they weren't nuclear powered subs. Any idea how much radiation has leaked from them by this point?

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## Wilson2

> Understood, but that doesn't change the fact that nuclear reactors went to the bottom of the sea, something that wouldn't happen if they weren't nuclear powered subs. Any idea how much radiation has leaked from them by this point?


Good question, I looked it up.  There is actually an epa report on it.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...53/NT-18-1.pdf
400 miles southwest of the Azores in more than 10,000 feet of water. The reactors used in all U.S. naval submarines and surface ships are designed to minimize potential hazards to the environment even under the most severe casualty conditions, including the actual sinking of the ship. First, the reactor core is designed so that it is physically impossible for it to explode like a bomb. Second, the reactor fuel elements are made of materials that are extremely corrosion resistant, even in seawater. The reactor core could remain submerged in seawater for centuries without releases of fission products while the radioactivity decays, since the protective cladding on the fuel elements corrodes only a few millionths of an inch per year. Thus, in the event of a serious accident where the reactor is completely submerged in seawater, the fuel elements will remain intact indefinitely, and the radioactive material contained in these fuel elements should not be released. Furthermore, the maximum rate of release and dispersal of the radioactivity in the ocean, even if the protective cladding on the fuel were destroyed, would be so low as to be insignificant.



There was sampling from from around the wreckage and no radiation found.

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phoenyx (07-14-2022),Physics Hunter (07-15-2022),Quark (07-15-2022)

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## phoenyx

> Good question, I looked it up.  There is actually an epa report on it.
> 
> https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...53/NT-18-1.pdf
> 400 miles southwest of the Azores in more than 10,000 feet of water. The reactors used in all U.S. naval submarines and surface ships are designed to minimize potential hazards to the environment even under the most severe casualty conditions, including the actual sinking of the ship. First, the reactor core is designed so that it is physically impossible for it to explode like a bomb. Second, the reactor fuel elements are made of materials that are extremely corrosion resistant, even in seawater. The reactor core could remain submerged in seawater for centuries without releases of fission products while the radioactivity decays, since the protective cladding on the fuel elements corrodes only a few millionths of an inch per year. Thus, in the event of a serious accident where the reactor is completely submerged in seawater, the fuel elements will remain intact indefinitely, and the radioactive material contained in these fuel elements should not be released. Furthermore, the maximum rate of release and dispersal of the radioactivity in the ocean, even if the protective cladding on the fuel were destroyed, would be so low as to be insignificant.
> 
> 
> 
> There was sampling from from around the wreckage and no radiation found.


Well that's good anyway :-). Still I imagine the disposal of the radioactive waste of active nuclear subs is probably a problem, just like it is with regular nuclear reactors.

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imaginethat (07-14-2022)

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## Taxcutter

> Well that's good anyway :-). Still I imagine the disposal of the radioactive waste of active nuclear subs is probably a problem, just like it is with regular nuclear reactors.


Taxcutter says:
Actually it is easier.   The sub (and CVN) fuel rods use a highly enriched mix of U-235 ad Pt-239 and even when "spent" it contains more of a fissile fraction than the low-grade stuff used in land-based reactors.   Therefore recycling the spent fuel rods costs much less than recycling civilian fuel rods.

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imaginethat (07-14-2022),Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Taxcutter

> What surprises me is the way they use nuclear power to produce electricity. 
> It seems to me that a direct emission process would be much safer more stable, and much simpler to control and regulate. 
> As radiation travels within its envelope of field it has the potential to produce energy potential in most any stable receptor placed within that envelope as it passes. 
> When you can use microvolts instead of volts to produce most desired results combined with superconductor electromagnets as a flux generator one would have to wonder why it hasn't happened yet.



Taxcutter says:
Actually, this rabbit hole was explored back in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Theoretically it could work, but it has insuperable engineering problems.   It wouldn't work for more than a few seconds.

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## Wilson2

> 3106385[/URL]]Well that's good anyway :-). Still I imagine the disposal of the radioactive waste of active nuclear subs is probably a problem, just like it is with regular nuclear reactors.


The huge majority of “nuclear waste” is not uranium or fuel rods, it’s material that was subjected to the restricted environment such as respirators, tools, generators, pumps, protective clothing, etc.  Wverything that goes into restricted spaces is thrown away as waste whether it’s actually dangerous or not.  Those scary looking stacks of barrels full of “nuclear waste” are full of that kind of stuff, if they were opened nothing would happen.   The truly radioactive waste is recycled or processed or stored underground, and it’s much less than people think.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## phoenyx

> Taxcutter says:
> Actually it is easier.   The sub (and CVN) fuel rods use a highly enriched mix of U-235 ad Pt-239 and even when "spent" it contains more of a fissile fraction than the low-grade stuff used in land-based reactors.   Therefore recycling the spent fuel rods costs much less than recycling civilian fuel rods.


Well, that certainly sounds good.

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## Quark

> I'm skeptical. Some information I found:
> 
> 
> **
> *Two US naval nuclear submarines  USS Thresher and USS Scorpion  currently remain sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, at depths of more than two kilometres, after sinking during the 1960s.
> 
> More than 200 mariners died in the disasters, and neither vessels' reactors, nor the nuclear weapons on board the Scorpion, have ever been recovered.
> 
> Two years ago, 14 Russian naval officers were laid to rest after they were killed in a fire on a nuclear-powered submersible in circumstances that were not fully revealed by the Kremlin.*
> ...


I remember the Thresher and Scorpion going down and I don't think the reactors had anything to do with it.

Unicorn farts isn't going to do it. So if you don't want coal, oil, gas and there is a big push to dismantle all hydroelectric dams than nuclear is it baby on less you want to go back to the 17th century and candle power.

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## Quark

> Understood, but that doesn't change the fact that nuclear reactors went to the bottom of the sea, something that wouldn't happen if they weren't nuclear powered subs. Any idea how much radiation has leaked from them by this point?


Really? Non-nuclear subs never go to the bottom of the sea? No radiation as far as I know.

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## UKSmartypants

> I remember the Thresher and Scorpion going down and I don't think the reactors had anything to do with it.
> 
> Unicorn farts isn't going to do it. So if you don't want coal, oil, gas and there is a big push to dismantle all hydroelectric dams than nuclear is it baby on less you want to go back to the 17th century and candle power.





> Really? Non-nuclear subs never go to the bottom of the sea? No radiation as far as I know.



Thresher -  failure of a salt-water piping system joint that relied heavily on silver brazing instead of welding. High-pressure water spraying from a broken pipe joint may have shorted out one of the many electrical panels, causing a reactor scram, which in turn caused loss of power and propulsion. 


Scorpion - No agreed cause. Whats true is there were two explosions picked up hydrophones. An onboard catastrophic event took place causing partial flooding of the sub which then sank down below crush depth and imploded.  The main theories are
-a torpedo exploded whilst being disarmed in the torpedo bay
-the torpedo exploded whilst in the torpedo tube
-its possible a defective torpedo was launched which then did a U turn and hit the sub launch tubes
-a defective torpedo might have U turned and hit the propeller, causing the entire propeller and propeller shaft to detach (it has been found separated from the wreckage some distance away), which would have then caused rapid flooding of the sub
-the sub was attacked by a soviet sub tracking it (possible but unlikely)

-use of Trash disposal unit at improper depth may have caused a flood of sea water into the battery  compartment, causing massive hydrogen generation and then an explosion.

The sinking of the Scorpion is an interesting mystery 


The Soviet Navy has lost five nuclear subs (one of which sank twice), the Russian Navy two, and the United States Navy (USN) two.  The IAEC reports no detectable leaks of radioactive material have been detected.


The action of seawater on plutonium, uanium and reactor fuel rods in any case tends to create heavy chorides which sink immediately.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## UKSmartypants

Lost Russian/soviet nuclear subs

K27  decommissioned and deliberately scuttled, 1982
K8  suffered onboard fire, then sank in rough seas while being towed 1970
Yankee Class K219, fire and explosion, sank whilst being towed  1989
K-278 Komsomolets sank after catastrophic fire 1989 (the eighties seemed to be a bad decade for soviet subs)
K29 sank and raised twice. 1983 sank after a botched flood test, raised, sank at her moorings two years later, raised and scrapped

The Kursk, 2000. We all know about the Kursk. Those damn russian torpedos.
K159. Decommissioned 1988, left to rust for 15 years, then sank in a storm whilst being towed to a scrap yard.

None have resulted in a radioactive leak.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Physics Hunter

> Lost Russian/soviet nuclear subs
> 
> K27  decommissioned and deliberately scuttled, 1982
> K8  suffered onboard fire, then sank in rough seas while being towed 1970
> Yankee Class K219, fire and explosion, sank whilst being towed  1989
> K-278 Komsomolets sank after catastrophic fire 1989 (the eighties seemed to be a bad decade for soviet subs)
> K29 sank and raised twice. 1983 sank after a botched flood test, raised, sank at her moorings two years later, raised and scrapped
> 
> The Kursk, 2000. We all know about the Kursk. Those damn russian torpedos.
> ...


That is an outstanding list, but I vaguely think you may have missed one US boat...  :Thinking: 

Since (most of?) those hulls were ferrous, they will rot away and expose the reactors, they will be exposed to seawater.
I have always wondered if the Uranium fuel rods were susceptible to deterioration by salt water.  Certainly the somewhat irradiated containment structures are.
I know those rods are harder than Tungsten (A-10 gatlin gun rounds...) 

But, the Oceans are large and contain huge amounts of minerals in vastly diluted quantities.

Like I said, I always wondered about this.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## UKSmartypants

> That is an outstanding list, but I vaguely think you may have missed one US boat... 
> 
> Since (most of?) those hulls were ferrous, they will rot away and expose the reactors, they will be exposed to seawater.
> I have always wondered if the Uranium fuel rods were susceptible to deterioration by salt water.  Certainly the somewhat irradiated containment structures are.
> I know those rods are harder than Tungsten (A-10 gatlin gun rounds...) 
> 
> But, the Oceans are large and contain huge amounts of minerals in vastly diluted quantities.
> 
> Like I said, I always wondered about this.


Well fuel rods are made in various ways, but the usual way is to sinter Uranium then compress it into a zinc tube.  When salt water gets round a fuel rod, a complex but interesting reaction occurs.  The Zinc will at first slowly react with the salt water depending on it pH, to make Zinc chloride and hydrogen  gas. However, as soon as a patch of uranium  is exposed, the who things switches to another mode, Galvanic corrosion.  Basically it starts acting like a sacrificial anode, because the electrochemical potential difference between Zinc and uranium is quite large, and an electric current starts to flow through the water.   This causes the corrosion of the zinc to kick up a gear.

What happens next proceeds at different rates depending if the rod is Uranium or Plutonium. Uranium reacts slowly with the hydrogen released from  the electrolysis of the water by the galvanic current to form Uranyl Hydride.  Plutonium does the same but about a thousand times faster. The result is a thick black somewhat radioactive sludge that forms and settles off.  The rate these reactions run is an exponential function of the salinity and pH.

Now whats interesting about PuOH (Plutonium Hydride) is it can form BIG molecules by repeatedly linking to other molecules of PuOH so you get

Pu2O2H
Pu2O3H
Pu3O4H2

until you get to 

PU7O9H3


A dark brown, medium radioactive, heavy sludge, that alarmingly we have found a specific bacteria that likes to eat it.

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Physics Hunter (07-15-2022),Quark (07-15-2022)

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## phoenyx

> I remember the Thresher and Scorpion going down and I don't think the reactors had anything to do with it.
> 
> Unicorn farts isn't going to do it. So if you don't want coal, oil, gas and there is a big push to dismantle all hydroelectric dams than nuclear is it baby on less you want to go back to the 17th century and candle power.


Lol :-). I believe there are other possibilities. I mentioned some in this post:


https://thepoliticsforums.com/thread...=1#post3092709

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## phoenyx

> Really? Non-nuclear subs never go to the bottom of the sea? No radiation as far as I know.


No, it's just that other subs don't have nuclear reactor cores in them. Anyway, someone here said they hadn't leaked much radiation, which certainly sounds good.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Wilson2

> Well fuel rods are made in various ways, but the usual way is to sinter Uranium then compress it into a zinc tube.  When salt water gets round a fuel rod, a complex but interesting reaction occurs.  The Zinc will at first slowly react with the salt water depending on it pH, to make Zinc chloride and hydrogen  gas. However, as soon as a patch of uranium  is exposed, the who things switches to another mode, Galvanic corrosion.  Basically it starts acting like a sacrificial anode, because the electrochemical potential difference between Zinc and uranium is quite large, and an electric current starts to flow through the water.   This causes the corrosion of the zinc to kick up a gear.
> 
> What happens next proceeds at different rates depending if the rod is Uranium or Plutonium. Uranium reacts slowly with the hydrogen released from  the electrolysis of the water by the galvanic current to form Uranyl Hydride.  Plutonium does the same but about a thousand times faster. The result is a thick black somewhat radioactive sludge that forms and settles off.  The rate these reactions run is an exponential function of the salinity and pH.
> 
> Now whats interesting about PuOH (Plutonium Hydride) is it can form BIG molecules by repeatedly linking to other molecules of PuOH so you get
> 
> Pu2O2H
> Pu2O3H
> Pu3O4H2
> ...


That’s not how US Navy reactors fuel rods are constructed.  See post 115.   They are encased in material that essentially does not corrode even in sea water.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Call_me_Ishmael

From your post 115.




> Good question, I looked it up.  There is actually an epa report on it.
> 
> https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...53/NT-18-1.pdf
> 400 miles southwest of the Azores in more than 10,000 feet of water. The reactors used in all U.S. naval submarines and surface ships are designed to minimize ....



Does this link actually work for you?

It doesn't for me. Now, I did find NT-19-1 , which contains the paragraph you put in your post. But I had to search to find it.


NT-19-1 references NT-18-1 but I could not actually find NT-18-1 .


It's odd but moot maybe since NT-19-1 supports your claim (although you did leave out the subsequent paragraph about the rods melting.)





> .....would be so low as to be insignificant. 
> Radioactive material could be released from this type of reactor only if the fuel 
> elements were actually to melt and, in addition, the high strength, all-welded reactor 
> system boundary were to rupture. The reactor’s many protective devices and inherent 
> self-regulating features are designed to prevent any melting of the fuel elements. 
> Flooding of a reactor with seawater furnishes additional cooling for the fuel elements 
> and so provides added protection against the release of radioactive fission products.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Quark

> Lol :-). I believe there are other possibilities. I mentioned some in this post:
> 
> 
> https://thepoliticsforums.com/thread...=1#post3092709


No offense intended but still unicorn farts. Coal, oil, gas, hydroelectric and nuclear is what we have until further notice.

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12icer (07-16-2022),Physics Hunter (07-15-2022)

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## UKSmartypants

> Thats not how US Navy reactors fuel rods are constructed.  See post 115.   They are encased in material that essentially does not corrode even in sea water.



Probably Zirconium. There's various ways to do it.

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## Wilson2

> 3107085[/URL]]From your post 115.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Does this link actually work for you?
> 
> It doesn't for me. Now, I did find NT-19-1 , which contains the paragraph you put in your post. But I had to search to find it.
> 
> ...


No the link in post 115 does not work.  Maybe this one will-
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...66/NT-19-1.pdf

I copied the paragraph relevant to the post, its not practical to post the entire 50+ page document, or even every part that someone might care about.   If someone is really interested they can search out the paper or follow the link.

If you read the paper, if the Navy ship sinks then that actually helps contain the reactor by flooding it with sea water.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## phoenyx

> Originally Posted by phoenyx
> 
> 
> Lol :-). I believe there are other possibilities. I mentioned some in this post:
> https://thepoliticsforums.com/thread...=1#post3092709
> 
> 
> 
> No offense intended but still unicorn farts. Coal, oil, gas, hydroelectric and nuclear is what we have until further notice.


Well, if the government keeps on suppressing these technologies, they may as well be "unicorn farts" I suppose :-p. I think they're real, but it's hard to persuade others that governments would be suppressing this type of thing.

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## Physics Hunter

> Well fuel rods are made in various ways, but the usual way is to sinter Uranium then compress it into a zinc tube.  When salt water gets round a fuel rod, a complex but interesting reaction occurs.  The Zinc will at first slowly react with the salt water depending on it pH, to make Zinc chloride and hydrogen  gas. However, as soon as a patch of uranium  is exposed, the who things switches to another mode, Galvanic corrosion.  Basically it starts acting like a sacrificial anode, because the electrochemical potential difference between Zinc and uranium is quite large, and an electric current starts to flow through the water.   This causes the corrosion of the zinc to kick up a gear.
> 
> What happens next proceeds at different rates depending if the rod is Uranium or Plutonium. Uranium reacts slowly with the hydrogen released from  the electrolysis of the water by the galvanic current to form Uranyl Hydride.  Plutonium does the same but about a thousand times faster. The result is a thick black somewhat radioactive sludge that forms and settles off.  The rate these reactions run is an exponential function of the salinity and pH.
> 
> Now whats interesting about PuOH (Plutonium Hydride) is it can form BIG molecules by repeatedly linking to other molecules of PuOH so you get
> 
> Pu2O2H
> Pu2O3H
> Pu3O4H2
> ...


Well, that is at least tech post of the month.

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Quark (07-15-2022)

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## Physics Hunter

> Good question, I looked it up.  There is actually an epa report on it.
> 
> https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...53/NT-18-1.pdf
> 400 miles southwest of the Azores in more than 10,000 feet of water. The reactors used in all U.S. naval submarines and surface ships are designed to minimize potential hazards to the environment even under the most severe casualty conditions, including the actual sinking of the ship. First, the reactor core is designed so that it is physically impossible for it to explode like a bomb. Second, the reactor fuel elements are made of materials that are extremely corrosion resistant, even in seawater. The reactor core could remain submerged in seawater for centuries without releases of fission products while the radioactivity decays, since the protective cladding on the fuel elements corrodes only a few millionths of an inch per year. Thus, in the event of a serious accident where the reactor is completely submerged in seawater, the fuel elements will remain intact indefinitely, and the radioactive material contained in these fuel elements should not be released. Furthermore, the maximum rate of release and dispersal of the radioactivity in the ocean, even if the protective cladding on the fuel were destroyed, would be so low as to be insignificant.
> 
> 
> 
> There was sampling from from around the wreckage and no radiation found.


Thanks, one of the million tech and engineering questions that I have carried around in my head for years...

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Quark (07-15-2022),Wilson2 (07-16-2022)

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## UKSmartypants

The one to delve into is Fukishima, because it the worst case scenario.  At Fukishima you have an entire core which has melted into an amorphous radioactive lava blob, along with a large chunk of the concrete floor, then run down into the cracks in the granite bedrock and solidified, and is now regularly washed by sea water twice a day when the tide come in.  And despite what TEPCO and its subsidiary the  Tokyo Electric Power Company say, no one knows  what complex reactions are going on deep in the fissures, but it is true the seawater is coming out radioactive and washing back into the pacific.

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Quark (07-16-2022)

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## 12icer

What would the half life of the sea water be if it is irradiated and disbursed?

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## UKSmartypants

> What would the half life of the sea water be if it is irradiated and disbursed?



Well fuck knows. Like I said, we have no idea what reactions are going on deep down in the cracks in the granite. The stuff coming out does  has a 'signature', an identifiable mix of isotopes and fission products, which is why we know the crap has got as far as the Californian coast and is now heading vie La Nina to Australia.

Plus they have 1.25 million tonnes (yes that not a typo) of even more radioactive water thats been through the core to keep it cool and is now in storage, but they have started tipping that into the sea as well to get rid of it.

What a fuck up Fukishima is.  All for the sake of a bit of common sense and putting the pump backup generator on the roof instead of the basement.


Nuclear expert reaffirms harm of dumping nuclear-contaminated water into ocean, calls on Japan to stop pressuring opposition voices - Global Times


Cobalt 60, id like to point out,   is viciously radioactive, a gamma ray emitter  and the half life  is 5.3 years.  Cobalt 60 seriously fucks you up and pretty quick as well.

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Quark (07-16-2022)

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## UKSmartypants

For every terawatt-hour of energy generated (roughly the annual electricity consumption of 27,000 people in the European Union) there are 32.72 deaths due to accidents and air pollution associated with lignite. For nuclear energy, this figure is only 0.07 deaths. 


The future is Small Modular Reactors - SMRs, which are also currently being intensively researched, have a comparatively low output (less than 300 megawatts) and fall back on concepts that have already been tried and tested. They are being developed for countries that only have small power grids available. This is often the case in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Thanks to miniaturization, the systems can be prefabricated and quickly assembled on site. They are designed to be ultrasafe, use significantly fewer pumps and pipelines and can also be built underground.


A core meltdown is impossible due to the low power and passive cooling systems. (Passive means that no power supply is required to cool the core in the event of a malfunction.) The cooling takes place through natural circulation.   Furthermore, new concepts are being developed for dual-fluid reactors where molten salt fuel circulates. This would also make a core meltdown impossible because the fuel would already be in liquid form.  Plus,  nuclear power plants do not produce any carbon emissions.

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