RE: Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II
08-10-2024, 06:39 PM
08-10-2024, 06:39 PM
Kursk is a very close mirror of Chernobyl - and even doubled as Chernobyl in some films because filming at actual Chernobyl would have been difficult.
Chernobyl is the glowing elephant in the room but - (And originally I thought it was funnier to leave it that way) the reality is, we know Kursk NPP is safe in part because of Chernobyl. The Chernobyl test was to determine if the coasting generator turbine could provide enough power to drive the emergency core cooling pumps in the event of a loss of offsite power, and with related damage to the reactor - like a steam line rupture.
They used the main cooling pumps as a dummy load to prove the concept, since starting the emergency pumps inadvertently would be *bad*.
There's also an emergency cooling circuit that'll bridge the gap where water is forced into the core with pressurized nitrogen.
Even if you tried to drive a reactor at Kursk specifically to replicate the events at Chernobyl - it wouldn't run up with the same dramatic effect. There've been modifications to the control rods, control rod drives and the scheduling of both AZ-5 and BAZ/FASS (Alternative fast shutdown methods) that make reactivity induced transients and unrequested fission surplus events incredibly unlikely.
The true alarm bell rung by Chernobyl was not that the reactor exploded - it was that it would've exploded sometime before it actually did without any violation if the operators hadn't disabled the automatic AZ-5 system.
An AZ-3 alarm which reduced the reactor from 100% to 50% (Such as a Turbogenerator fault) could cause the reactor to silently enter the exact same hair-trigger state over the course of a few hours, to the point where a subsequent AZ-5 alarm caused by a worsening situation would've blown the lid without anyone violating any operating procedures. This course of events could be expected to happen normally in the course of a nuclear reactor's lifetime and it seems to have only been luck that kept it from happening prior to 1986.
This is a little bit of a David Weber moment for the topic at hand but - the point is - Kursk NPP is fairly resilient to battle damage, in part because of the events of 1986, which were intended to test the resiliency of an RBMK reactor to a simultaneous coolant line rupture and loss of offsite power. This is the sort of thing that can happen to a nuclear reactor when people start shooting in the vicinity of it.
It'll be fine in the event of a loss of offsite power. It'll potentially be fine in the event of a loss of diesel generator fuel. It can take some damage and keep the hot rocks inside their tubes. And even if the worst happens - the worst case failure is that the reactor lid is lifted aside and the core boils dry, which, while incredibly distressing for those unfortunates in the reactor hall at that moment, would just be a steam release rather than anything truly dramatic.
Chernobyl is the glowing elephant in the room but - (And originally I thought it was funnier to leave it that way) the reality is, we know Kursk NPP is safe in part because of Chernobyl. The Chernobyl test was to determine if the coasting generator turbine could provide enough power to drive the emergency core cooling pumps in the event of a loss of offsite power, and with related damage to the reactor - like a steam line rupture.
They used the main cooling pumps as a dummy load to prove the concept, since starting the emergency pumps inadvertently would be *bad*.
There's also an emergency cooling circuit that'll bridge the gap where water is forced into the core with pressurized nitrogen.
Even if you tried to drive a reactor at Kursk specifically to replicate the events at Chernobyl - it wouldn't run up with the same dramatic effect. There've been modifications to the control rods, control rod drives and the scheduling of both AZ-5 and BAZ/FASS (Alternative fast shutdown methods) that make reactivity induced transients and unrequested fission surplus events incredibly unlikely.
The true alarm bell rung by Chernobyl was not that the reactor exploded - it was that it would've exploded sometime before it actually did without any violation if the operators hadn't disabled the automatic AZ-5 system.
An AZ-3 alarm which reduced the reactor from 100% to 50% (Such as a Turbogenerator fault) could cause the reactor to silently enter the exact same hair-trigger state over the course of a few hours, to the point where a subsequent AZ-5 alarm caused by a worsening situation would've blown the lid without anyone violating any operating procedures. This course of events could be expected to happen normally in the course of a nuclear reactor's lifetime and it seems to have only been luck that kept it from happening prior to 1986.
This is a little bit of a David Weber moment for the topic at hand but - the point is - Kursk NPP is fairly resilient to battle damage, in part because of the events of 1986, which were intended to test the resiliency of an RBMK reactor to a simultaneous coolant line rupture and loss of offsite power. This is the sort of thing that can happen to a nuclear reactor when people start shooting in the vicinity of it.
It'll be fine in the event of a loss of offsite power. It'll potentially be fine in the event of a loss of diesel generator fuel. It can take some damage and keep the hot rocks inside their tubes. And even if the worst happens - the worst case failure is that the reactor lid is lifted aside and the core boils dry, which, while incredibly distressing for those unfortunates in the reactor hall at that moment, would just be a steam release rather than anything truly dramatic.
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.