So Ive been getting into the whole prepping thing, but I feel like there is a huge problem with most preppers' plans.  What happens when the nuclear power plants dont have any staff anymore due to cataclysmic events/shtf.  I know that some power plants will go into auto shutdown mode, but that requires power from the power grid for a lot of NPPs (interesting to note that many dont use the electricity that they produce).... ive also read that the real threat lies in the spent fuel rods which require cool water circulation to keep them from causing fires and releasing massive amounts of radiation.  So what do y'all think about this?... I guess a good start would be to plan to get the hell out of a 100 mile radius of Nuclear power plant when bugging out.

I would like a definite answer on this too. While I don't live directly in the path of a meltdown fallout pattern, I've heard two schools of thoughts:

- Plants are automated to conduct a "slow" cooloff and shutdown in the event of an emergency. Nothing to worry about.
- Spent fuel rods stay HOT for years after they're spent, and must be immersed in cooling pools for those years. If the cooling pools discontinue to circulate fresh cool water, it'll eventually boil off, and voila! Exposed fuel rods.

Those pools are very deep and will not "boil off" yes they stay hot for years, but hot as in radioactive.  

I don't know for sure, but I believe all of the plants in the US have pretty extensive backup plans that are automated.

IIRC plants have smaller gas generators that they can use to start up their own main generators without need for grid power.  It's called a "cold start" and is a very practiced procedure.

Are you talking about not staffed for a week, or abandoned for a year?




Isn't that one of the major issues with what happened in Japan, that they couldn't refill the holding pool?

Nuclear power is much safer and causes FAR less pollution than the tree huggers and eco profiters would like you to believe. If nuclear power plants can be kept going after decades in crappy third world countries then a modern power plant in a first world nation is among the least of your worries. It is an issue to prepare for, but the realistic thread is much smaller than what the media would have you believe. If power plants have been abandoned, then the situation has been bad enough for long enough time you shouldn´t even be around one, or you’re probably dead already.
FerFAL

Google SCRAM and everything you need to know about reactor shutdown will be answered

spent fuel pools will eventually boil off, if water can not be added to them.
emergency/backup gennys only last as long as there is fuel.

Over time, if not maintained, there is plenty of radioactive material to kill everyone.

They must be maintained until they are dismantled.

Any other thoughts on this is folley.

If you live near a plant and nobody walks in the door for a year
the whole area would likely be uninhabitable.



Yep.   And then the fun starts...

Imagine that times 100.

That is a genuine possibility if serious social upheval happens.

If a Yugoslavia type situation went down here it would be possible.

<–– Electrical engineer that spent a year doing my internship at a nuclear power plant.

ETA If at all possible, the plant will go through a slow, controlled shutdown to minimize risk.  Refueling, planned maintenance, or failure of safety backup systems required for licensed operation are examples of why they may shut down in this manner.  However, if there is a LOOP (loss of offsite power, think August of '03, Fukushima), a LOCA (loss of coolant accident, Three Mile Island, almost Davis-Besse), or any equipment failure that put the reactor water level at risk, the reactor gets shut down RFN.  Rods are inserted fully and the reactor is flooded.

ETA2 The only areas at risk for the long term are the reactor and the spent fuel pool.  I imagine they could be filled with concrete if it was forseen that the plant would be down indefinitely or cooling wouldn't be an option.  Most of the radiation comes from the nuclear steam and the fuel itself.  Once the plant is shutdown most of the uninhabitable places become (relatively speaking) safe.  I've been in the steam tunnels during an outage.  I wouldn't raise a family or eat lunch there, but I didn't die like I would have before the shutdown.

Good info, but there needs to be some clarification of some terms here.  First, nuclear plants are *NOT* "automated" like many may be thinking of.  Remember that these plants are fundamentally 50's technology - Allen Bradley was just developing PLC's at the time.  Nuclear plants have a lot of remote controls, but much less control logic.  So if there is a loss of offsite power, there is an automatic response, but it is not flexible nor "soft".  Plants CANNOT run without the operators there.

Another point - plants use NONE of their own power to operate.  The diesel generators are only there to provide power to maintain the plant in a non-operating condition.  Even that takes multiple diesels bigger than most people have ever seen in their life.

Finally, while I agree that plants are in good shape for conventional catastrophes, a flue epidemic could be very, very bad.  It doesn't matter if the operators are standing watch-and-watch in the plant if they are passed out in their cot in a puddle of sweat and puke.  The plants will have to shut down for lack of operators, which means baseload electrical supply on the East Coast will get very unreliable.  And thanks for some researchers in Denmark now any haji with a masters in biology can recreate 1918.

Interesting times we live in.

As someone who sells oil to nuclear power plants, and has spent countless hours inside them, I can honestly say I firmly believe the security/disaster threat is severely over-hyped.

Thank you for the credentials.

what causes so much confusion about this kind of stuff is people who "Read on the internet" and "done a little research of my own." Answering questions that they think they know the answer to. Too many internet know it all come out and spew "Facts" that are incorrect, or slightly incorrect.
It's like learning about sex from a virgin.

Above, is what I look for in threads like this, answers from people that have atleast some real world experience, because I have found out that, especially among "preppers" If the perceived threat is a 10, the possible threat is actually only a 5, and the REAL threat is only a 2.5.

If the plant goes to shit, everything else around it has probably already gone to shit, and if your prepped correctly for your current threats.....your either gone. or already taped off and waiting for them to tell you "Dont go outside."  

"Environmentalism" and all the resistance to nuclear energy is the actual reason the various kinds of light-water reactors we have for producing power need the "constant care" and could potentially have semi-catastrophic failures if abandoned.

There are more than a few 4th generation reactor designs that are passively "walk away safe", where you could leave every control and system in it's worst state, and nothing would happen. The fuel would be "hot" both radioactively and thermally for decades, if not centuries, but outside the containment area, pose no threat.

Pebble bed reactors where the heat itself slows the reaction, passive gravity driven thermal cooling loops... all sorts of neat ideas that are potentially safe enough to put a mini-reactor in every neighborhood, but we won't get them, because greens and libtards want to pretend the math and economics for windmills and solar panels work out somehow.

Mechanical engineer, 3 years doing maintenance and mods mods at a plant



I probably should have been more clear.  I wasn't criticizing what you were saying so much as some previous posters who were talking as if the plant could run itself.  For instance, plants won't automatically do a "slow, controlled" shutdown.  You didn't say that they would, but others did.



Absolutely.  They also have compressed air systems with huge tanks so the pneumatic systems can still operate for a while.  But my point was regarding someone else's surprise that plants can't power themselves.



Here's where we disagree.  While a flu epidemic isn't immediate like a seismic event, it can move fast.  In the 1918 epidemic, people could drop dead in a day.  Is it an immediate threat?  No.  But it may not be a situation where you can just call up operators off shift to cover.  And if enough operators are affected, it's not like you can train new ones quickly.  In the most extreme scenarios fuel pool maintenance becomes a problem because there may not be enough people left who know what they are doing.

It sounds weird to say it, but in truth, the G.E. 1960's era Fukushima reactors and containment buildings did very well, considering the plant was hammered by a Richter 9.x earthquake and then a tsunami that were literally 500-1000 year events for the region. It was a burp as compared to Chernobyl.

Thanks for all the great replies... here's some interesting info



http://www.nucleartourist.com/world/canada.htm
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/m ... ctors.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/i ... -world-map

If people were to suddenly flee a power reactor, the results could be catistropic.  But in a controlled shutdown, the long terms risks are much less.  A  typical nuke reactor produces about 3000 megawatts of thermal power and about 1000 megawatts of electrical power.  So just whether by a forced shutdown, or loss of the power grid, there is a ton of energy to be removed to the normal mechanical systems as well as the heat that used to be removed by conversion to electricity.

When a plant is gradually shutdown as is done for a refueling outage, there is much less heat to be removed,  I don't have the numbers, and there are of minimal interest, since everyone plans for an emergency when the plant isn't down for a refueling outage.

The power levels after emergency shutdown are:
7.7% at one second
3.7% at one minute
1.3% at one hour
0.5% at one day
0.3% at one week
0.2% at one month.

Now what happens to this heat-   Absolute worst case is it boils off the 100s of tons of cooling water in the reactor- (Best case it goes up the cooling tower, or is removed by the emergency core coolign systems.)    Then what can happen (the worst out come for US reactors) is the fuel starts heating up.  While there is some negative feedback in normal reactor operation, in this case I believe there is none, as we are in a pure beta decay- there is no water moderator left.  At some point (worst case) the core reaches 1370 deg C.  At this point the fuel rod cladding breaks down  and reacts with water to exothermically form hydrogen gas.  At this point the core starts to melt and/or the hydrogen explodes.

Picking on a particular nuclear plant in my home state, you have about 18 hours from total loss of coolent feed(duringpower production) to core destruction.

So for the nuclear power plant to "survive", all you have to do is babysit the plant long enough for the beta decay to come down low enough that the plant won't melt down (at some point enough heat is lost through the side of the building to cool the reactor.  For example after one month, the power is 1/500 of its intial thermal power, or about 6 megawatts, about the heat produced by 3  large (800 kVa) diesel generators.  There are often plans to flood the reactor with water (say 200,000 gallons) which would couple all of this heat to the walls.

What happen in Japan was two fold- the operators chose to abort an emergency shutdown after the earthquake, and then the resultng tsunami left both the operators and control systems unable to do their job with the loss of generators, commerical power, and battery backup.  Had the operators not aborted the emergency shutdown, this would have been a  TMI type disaster without any harm to humans or the envroment.  However the operators felt they could control the situation (earthquake induced shutdown) without incouring the mechanical stresses from an emergency cooling.

The Fukushima reactors scrammed on seismic.  Regardless of whether they were removing decay heat through the steam isolation condensers, or high pressure coolant injection, the reactors were in hot shut-down.  I think it's a mischaracterization to say the operators aborted an emergency shutdown.

a real SHTF we would all glow

Exactly. The operators had to get permission from politicians to initiate emergrency shutdown procedures. by the time they were allowed it was to far gone

You can substitute other words; disabled, impeded, took action to inhibit.  prevented the operation of, but aborted in a one word description that fits. I believe the government's english translation of the operators (Tokyo Electric Power Co) report was "manually shut down"  I'm not blaming them, just like I don't blame the 9/11 pilots who thought not resisting the hijackers was the best course of action.  Their SOPs gave them the choice.  But the manuals should have recognized the chance of an earthquake induced tsunami  (given their location) and they should have been trained not to abort the emergency shutdown after a scram related to sesmic activity.

Their reason for the abort under other circumstances was reasonable- it would allow the plant to return to operation much quicker (I assume as soon as the Xe135 levels dropped).  Otherwise, there were a lot of required steps to insure that there was no damage from the sudden thermal shock.

But you have to admit, an extra 40 minutes of emergency core cooling would have made a hell of a difference, both with the temperature when the tsunami hit as well as the increased thermal mass to resist temperature increases.  The emergency core cooling may have continued to operate after the tsunami, all we know for sure is their atempt to "un-abort" it (my words) three hours later was not sucessiful at reducing core temperature.

Even the operator (TEPCO) stated they (operators on duty)  turned the system off because reactor temperatures were dropping too fast.

If I sound too critical of the japanese, they are freaking genises compaired to the TVA folks at Browns Ferry who wouldn't let the fire department use water to put out a fire they started with a candle- resulting in a nice 20 year outage.  I understand the logic of the japanese, I think the TVA needed a whiz quiz.



I've never heard this claim.  The SCRAM was automatic, the emergency core cooling system was disabled 11 minutes after it began.  They had everythign under control until after the first tsunami hit.

The politicians then and only then began screwing it up.

nuke operator here of over 8 years.

We wont leave the plant until it's safe for the public.  Our families live out there too.

30,000 gallons diesel, chemistry lab, machine shop, vehicle proof security perimeter, paramilitary guard force, bullet proof walls, sally port entrance, redundant and encrypted comms.  This is the stuff of survival fiction.

except my guards really do work for the government, and I don't think they'd let my family in with me

Fuel supply (usually diesel fuel) is limited to days to weeks.

Actually called black start, meaning no lights, more or less.

The Fukushima site had a beyond design basis earthquake and loss of offsite power.  I'm not familiar with BWR Tech Specs, but I've seen nothing that indicates the operators intended to return to power operations.  I think there is some confusion and transposition of the Chernobyl events with the Fukushima events.

SCRAM shuts the plant down but does nothing to remove decay heat.  A reactor can make many percents of power immediately after shutdown just due to decay heat.  If it's not removed by starting certain systems, the cooling water will boil off.

EDIT:  BTW, former plant operator and present mechanical maintenance guy.  6 years Navy nuke and 17 years commercial nuke.  I've done nuke all my adult life.

EDIT2:

As Fukushima showed, the risk of spent fuel pools was severly underestimated.  Very few components in the spent fuel cooling systems are covered by tech specs, nor are the maintained like core cooling components.

What you might see in the future is a forced retrofit of qualified systems for spent fuel pool cooling.  They will be qualifed for earthquake/tornado/flood, etc.  You might also see a hardening of the reactor building roofs, such that they are qualified also.  Right now they're pretty much just a sheet metal cover.

I jokingly posted a topic that started up a conversation about this same subject. Good map in OP you might want to see.

Another Thread here

"Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

There was a REALLY good reason for that.  The fire was in the Cable Spread Room - that's where ALL of the control cables were routed before they terminated in the control room.  Once the fire got into the cable trays and the insulation started burning, the conductors started randomly touching, shorting out and forming cross circuits.  Valves were opening and closing randomly, and control actions by the operators in the control room had indeterminate results.  But even with teh insulation burning there was still some semblance of order, in that some cables were at least physically separated.

Now, pump water into a room full of live, uninsulated wiring that controls the entire plant. :O

Well, by not risking the water, they did loose control, and I think by that point they had evacuated the control room anyway because their SCBAs didn't have air pressure in them (plus the control room was under negative, not positive pressure (which is what started the fire anyway))

The operators finally realised their mistake and allowed the FD to use water to put the fire out.

Of course the real lesson is not to use flamiable insulation in a super critical facility, and if if you do, dont use a candle to find air leaks in the insulation.  And just in case, it helps it you post the correct phone number for the fire department.

Normal tap water is overrated in it's ability to conduct electricity in a spray or stream.  Although Browns Ferry isn't quite "normal", being either in or adjacent to Limestone County (lots of TDS in the water increasing conductivity)  Now if the cables were submerged

Don't get me wrong - the design and construction principles were awful as regards things like system redundancy and separation, and material selection.  What I'm saying is that, at the time, the decision was reasonable and conservative.  It was also wrong, but then so could hosing the room down have been wrong.

Greenes have caused a lot of FUD about nuclear plants.  But, the only confirmed radiation injuries at Fukushima were Beta burns, about like a sever sunburn.  Some people and wildlife still live in the so called Chernobyl dead zone.  While I would not recommend it for a vacation retreat, none of the people, deer, foxes, sheep or cattle  in the zone have two heads or three eyes.

I disagree.  Unless they has some other way to control the fire (CO2, Halon, Dry Chem, Foam or buttoning the room up air tight), letting the cables continue to burn is not going to improve anything.  SCRAM, put the fire out, and see what you can salvage.  The ECCS can be activated without the control room, and isn't going to do anymore damage then the cable fire did in terms of money. I believe, Browns Ferry is a BWR, and doesn't use an ice condenser like their PWR plants.  

I stoped this nonsense at work.  We had a small fire and asked the fire department not to use water-  Instead 100 lbs of ABC dry chem pretty much destroyed the facility without puttign the fire out.  Finally a tech cut a battery cable with bolt cutters to stop the fire.  Now we do not tell the fire department how to fight a fire, unless there is an arc flash hazard.  

Brown's Ferry is a BWR.  Limited parts of ECCS can be operated outside the control room, assuming the areas where the remote shutdown panels are located are habitable.

I'm betting alot of the remote shutdown capabilities were enhanced after the BF incident.  I know there were a ton of wiring issues identified and corrected in the plant I work at.  Additional fire barriers were added or enhanced.  Other enhancements have been added, outside of the fire protection and detection issues.

BF was one incident.  Very likely nothing like will ever happen again.  You can't link the entire nuclear industry to one incident in which ancient technologies (candle leak detection) aren't even used anymore.



Due to Fukushima, further enhancements are being added to help prevent situations that occurred at that site.



It is just my opinion, but I still think spent fuel pools are a HUGE issue across the country, escpecially in the older GE BWR designs, like Fukushima and numerous BWRs here in the States (23 give or take).  If you don't have a hardened and dedicated makeup and cooling system for the spent fuel pools, you are rolling the dice.  A substantial and hardened containment structure above the spent fuel pool would be a huge plus also.





Just for info, below is BF containment in construction:









Also added a pic of the GE plant design in question.  Note the spent fuel pool is outside the concrete structure of the reactor builing.  It is in a secondary containment envelop, but not hardened like the concrete structure of the reactor building.

Exactly! If Colorado had active nuclear power plants, I would be heading there to squat. They will be the first places to go back on line, and you have to think if the military stays together, they will be protecting them and using the power source.

Local coal plant only has a month of coal in stock if the trains and coal mines shut down. They might be able to extend that if the ration power, but not like the advantages of nuclear power.

For anyone wanting to support the nuclear industry, be sure to check out some of the new generation power plants being designed by Westinghouse*.

The AP1000 is unparalleled in safety features and efficiencies.  The designers of this are some serious engineers who put a lot of time and effort in ensuring safety was first and foremost based on 'laws of nature' such as gravity and natural circulation instead of pumps and other mechanics which can fail.  The design can shut itself down if the need ever comes, and remain in a "safe" condition (nothing about enriched nuclear fuel is ever safe if someone has unfettered access and devious plans).

* Shameless plug, but in order to be open and honest, I use to work for Westinghouse Nuclear Automation

We, as a country, really NEED to start building these things.  50 starting tomorrow and 5 every year for 10 years thereafter.

We need jobs, we need the energy.  There are not real good reasons NOT to be building these or plants like these.

If you still have the guards, I think confiscating the local diesel/fuel sources would be one of the first jobs. Or simply tell the locals give up the diesel or we will melt down.

It's hard to say what might or might not happen in any postulated post SHTF event.  I don't think the security force at most nukes is anything that would resemble an offensive or need to be feared force.

I most certainly wouldn't want to be the one to go and tell a local farmer that you're taking his essentials, which are even more essential in any of the post SHTF scenarios.  Farmers tend to group up, have big families and have lots of guns.  You will lose personnel quickly that way.

When I worked at Southern Company plants, it was 30 days for both the A&B train, meaning 60 days fuel minimum, and the tank was refilled when it got to 32 days or so.  Plus there are other generators with their fuel supply, plus a company goal of 30 days of fuel in the ground for company operations- stuff like forklifts, pickups, bucket trucks, etc.  This was a reaction to the 1970s fuel crisis, but has proven itself in other cases.  Even dams (if manned) will often have a 1000 gallon gas and 500 gallon diesel tank.

NRC requires enough for a cold shutdown.

If you rationed that fuel, it would last a long long, time.  And if you kept the reactor going...

My guess they might shut down one reactor (most plants have 2 or 3), but unless everyone wanted to leave, why not keep the other one going.  it's not like the load is goign to disapear.

7 days min.

Ours is 7 days - per diesel.  Each diesel can run one complete train of ECCS.  So you might be able to SWAG 4 weeks on what's stored at the diesels.

We have an aux boiler which runs the same fuel oil.

We have gas turbine peaking units with a massive fuel oil tank on site.

If we were conservative with fuel and loads, I'd guess we'd be in the months best case.

Food and water might become a concern before fuel oil.

Have you ever worked at a commercial nuclear power plant? The security forces are no joke. Obviously it's designed to be a defensive force but I would say as an offensive group they could take a small town police department on with ease.

If you are the public and never get past the guy at the gate, you've never seen the nuclear security.  That guys are just corporate security (TMI is an exceptioon, I think)  At the perimeter is nuclear security, and inside the perimenter(typically) is the reponse force which is prety close to a medium sized city SWAT team.

I work at one now and have for the last 17 years.  Not sure how well the security force would do.  State and local PDs have offensive trained forces.

Having been a reserve deputy and having seen what's in the security force where I work, my uneducated opinion is that the security force where I work doesn't stand a chance.  They are outskilled, outgunned and outmanned.

Other plants may vary.