Does this mean they couldn’t shut down the reactors in a week before the diesel runs out? That seems odd.
DB2
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Not at all odd. That is a well understood “Achilles Heel” of nuclear power plant design and operation. Here is the simple explanation:
On a loss of offsite power situation reactors are shutdown in minutes. The problem then is keeping the reactor core cooled for weeks. The reactor core is radioactive and keeps generating decay heat which is what happened at Fukushima. With no reactor core cooling, the core begins to melt, the fuel cladding reacts with the steam and produces hydrogen, when the hydrogen reaches explosive levels an explosion occurs while the reactor core keeps melting.
Jaak