FMF needs atomic help

[Briosafreak]

DarkUnderlord from the Fan Made Fallout project has a request for our help:
<blockquote>Perhaps you know what a positive void coefficient of reactivity means?
Perhaps you don't! Either way, as of right now, the FMF Project has some questions we'd like to ask about nuclear reactors. Yes, we could google (and we have) but we'd (I'd) like someone who actually knows something about them so that we can ask some rather specific questions and hopefully get some overly general answers.

Some questions are:

1. How big/small can a nuclear be? Is it feasible to have a small underground reactor that's quite 'powerful' (but perhaps not as powerful as a full-scale reactor)?
2. What can be done to make a reactor explode? Can it be over-heated, cooled too much, what kind of things could someone do to it to make it go boom?
3. What happens when a reactor goes critical, or rather, how does one of these things explode? What happens, what does it do? Would an underground reactor produce a fancy big mushroom cloud? If not, is it possible to make a reactor that does (IE: what stupid design decisions would need to be made)?
4. What kind of terminology is used in dealing with a nuclear reactor? In terms of operating it and keeping it going, as well as the terminology used when it starts to explode.
There's also a chance that we'll have some more questions as time goes on.</blockquote>
If you have answers for this please go to the Fan Made Fallout site and leave them a message, or instead mail your replies to fmf@knightcommand.net or yet again just pm DarkUnderlord.

 

[JJ86]

A great resource for most things relating to nuclear weapons is the Trinity Atomic Web Site. The Criticality and Radiation Accidents section gives an interesting breakdown of recorded accidents during many years of experiments. The kind where, "oops, I accidentally dropped something into the core..."

During an experiment, the scientist in charge told the operator to press the "emergency reactor off" button. This would have instantaneously removed sufficient reactivity. Owing to a misunderstanding, the operator began by withdrawing the control rods at normal speed. This allowed the reactor to reach a higher power than anticipated and resulted in consequent melting of the fuel elements.

BORAX 1 EXPLOSION
Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 22, 1954
Destruction of the Borax I Reactor released 135 MW-sec of fission energy.

More than 200 safety experiments were made on the Borax I Reactor simulating control rod accidents. For the last test, conditions were set up so that the reactor would be run to destruction.

The tests were carried out by withdrawing four of the five control rods far enough to make the reactor critical at a very low power level. The fifth rod was then fired from the core by means of a spring. In this test, the rod was ejected in approximately 0.2 seconds. After the control rod was ejected, an explosion took place in the reactor which carried away the control mechanism and blew out the core. At half a mile, the radiation level rose to 25 mr/hr. Personnel were evacuated for about 30 minutes.

No one was injured and the destruction of the reactor was part of the cost of the experiment. (See TID-5360, p. 29.)

 

[Human Shield]

Reactors can't explode like a nuclear bomb, they only meltdown which has the core get to a superheated point where it melts down into the ground and throwing tons of radiation everywhere.

 

[JJ86]

Reactors can't explode like a nuclear bomb, they only meltdown which has the core get to a superheated point where it melts down into the ground and throwing tons of radiation everywhere.

Read the quote above. It wasn't a major explosion like a big bomb but it was an explosion.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Brrr... And to think that only a bit more than ten miles from my house there's a working nuclear power plant. Which experienced a small fracture in the reactor hull several weeks ago. *gulps*

Yeah, small fractures in the reactor can make it go boom.

 

[4too]

Davis Bessie Plant on Lake Erie, may have been down more than up for decades. Least likely to be Nuclear Power Plant poster-child, in any millennium. Most recent ''safety'' shutdown, acid eaten crack in containment dome, I think. This may be the plant that was closed when inspection during night shift found operators asleep or not there.

Consider terminal failure from fatal hemorrhage of dollars. Pull the plug, bury in concrete, lock the gate, get federal bail out and retire on Easy Street. Funny if there is no "real'' reactor there and it's been an elaborate 'shell' game.

4too