What if terrorists knocked a nuclear power plant off the grid the way these were by the tsunami?

[Quixote1818]

Or what if there was a huge roving blackout that knocked a bunch of nuclear power plants off the grid? How do they deal with this and in what situations might a melt down occur if they could not get back on the grid fast enough?

[name not needed]

1. They shut down the reactors as a precautionary measure.

[Quixote1818]

2. Didn't they do this in Japan? nt

[northoftheborder]

3. Do they have a way to shut them down without electricity? (I'm ignorant about subject)

[Statistical]

11. Gen II reactors? No. GenIII+ reactors yes.

Also remember under routine operation the reactor produces its own power.

Main Turbine Power.
Battery Backup (8 hours).
Diesel Generators
Offsite Diesel Generators
Grid Power

GenIII+ reactors add passive cooling (ability to cool with no electricity, pumps, or human interaction).

[TheWraith]

4. Being "knocked off the grid" is completely irrelevant.

A nuclear plant generates it's own electricity. The problem here was the combination of the loss of external power AND internal power in the form of the generators going offline, the backup generators being partially destroyed along with most of the battery backups...

[Quixote1818]

5. Thanks, that answers my question. nt

[k2qb3]

7. In order to replicate what's happening in Japan...

A terrorist group would have to destroy a very large amount of infrastructure over a wide area in addition to completely disabling all the systems of the plant. They'd have to make it impossible to get emergency equipment to the site for an extended period.

They've been operating without power or the ability to pump water for a week, how a terrorist group could cut a nuclear facility off from outside assistance for that long is hard to imagine.

The whole Japanese crisis is due to a lack of electric power and pump capacity. I honestly don't understand why it's taken as long as it has to get emergency power on site but I think it's safe to say that if it wasn't for the widespread damage of the tsunami this wouldn't even be a story, even if the exact same thing had happened at the plant. They could have just driven in some generators from elsewhere in Japan the first day.

[Statistical]

10. The tsunami destroyed all power lines 30 miles inland.

They have had to rebuild power lines for over 30 miles dealing with destroyed roads, bridges, etc.

[Cleita]

6. Actually, some news person said that was the original 9-11 plan but the

terrorists realized they couldn't get near a nuke plant before they would be shot down so they decided on New York WTC instead. Don't remember whom but I think it was Thom Hartmann.

[Turbineguy]

8. We'd all be wishing

we'd voted for a republican president!

:evilgrin:

Oh... wait.... never mind.

[Statistical]

9. Knocking off the grid is not sufficient.

You would need to destroy turbine (so reactor can't produce its own electricity), also cut connect to the grid, cut connection to off site backup power, and destroy generators on-site.

With GenII reactor it would be like Japan. Of course without a tsunami one would hope backup generators could arrive in less than 8 hours (battery backup for pumps).

With GenIII+ reactor (like AP1000 planned for GA) it could completely cool itself with no power, and with no operators. We need to deploy newer designs.