On top of the tragedy from tsunami and earthquake, Japan is experiencing another potential catastrophe from a nuclear plant failure.
This article posted on the site of the MIT department of Nuclear Engineering goes into the basic details of the design of the plants at Fukushima and explanation of the events there over the last few days.
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/
The only question I still have after reading this article was how long that they need to keep cooling the shut-down reactor core? Is it several days (so the end is in sight) or will it be weeks? Apparently it has already been 3-4 days at least.
I am also curious about the temperature / pressures involved. Apparently they are battling to stay under 1200°C, and that is with the heat mainly coming from radioactive decay rather than fission (if I understand correctly). If there were no coolant at all how hot could it get just from that?
This article posted on the site of the MIT department of Nuclear Engineering goes into the basic details of the design of the plants at Fukushima and explanation of the events there over the last few days.
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/
The only question I still have after reading this article was how long that they need to keep cooling the shut-down reactor core? Is it several days (so the end is in sight) or will it be weeks? Apparently it has already been 3-4 days at least.
I am also curious about the temperature / pressures involved. Apparently they are battling to stay under 1200°C, and that is with the heat mainly coming from radioactive decay rather than fission (if I understand correctly). If there were no coolant at all how hot could it get just from that?
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