What will happen to US Nuclear Power Plants when a massive solar flare burns out the entire US electrical power grid?

I think they are supposed to have backup generators, enough to keep cooling fluids circulating, including in spent-fuel pools. Hopefully the control systems of the backup power supply are hardened to solar flare effects…hmmm.
Worst case the plasma surge could take out the generator side of the turbines but the nuclear pile would not get a direct effect.
Just don’t send a tsunami through the backup power switching rooms on top of that.

If the whole grid is truly hosed, and unrecoverable, only people near a nuclear plant will be worried about nuclear plants.

The rest of us will be dealing with our own catastrophes. A big portion of the population will starve pretty quickly. Distributing food to most people would be impossible without communication and refrigeration.

@jaytkay What is pretty quickly? 3 weeks? 2 months?

It ain’t gonna be pretty.

Thank goodness I am growing green beans, poblano peppers, and radishes in my little garden. None of you can have any.

@dabbler I know they do have backup either by diesel generators or diesel pumps, but what I am unsure of is how long those systems are designed to run. Can they truly take over for long stretches of months or years?

@On the East Coast of the US, almost the entire population lives within 50 miles of some nuclear power plant. If they do all start to melt down simultaneously, well over 100 million people would be threatened by radiation. But I am sure you are right that the power grid meltdown would present massive problems wven if all the nuclear plants weather the solar flare just fine.

@bob_ As Winston Churchill said, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”

@JLeslie Not a bad idea to have some self sufficinecy plans in place.

Map of Operating Nuclear Power Reactors

I know this isn’t answering your question, but it got me thinking. Doesn’t look good for those of us in Illinois. :/

Can’t the nuclear plants shut down? There is the back up system, and then if we know the grid will not be coming back on line, wouldn’t we eventually shut dwn the nuclear plants before risking meltdown?

@ETpro I have a tornado shelter if there is some sort of big explosion. Not that it will protect me from radiation or anything, but it sounds good right?

@jonsblond Thanks for the map. Looks like I might be ok in Memphis. Surprising considering Oakridge is in TN.

Can’t the nuclear plants shut down?

No. Even the “spent” fuel which doesn’t have enough oomph to power the generators needs a constant cooling bath.

They keep the spent fuel in pools onsite.

Hello zombies!

BTW, it seems a great fire is threatening Los Alamos nuclear research facilities and this supposedly expert on TV says it is unlikely to happen but the possibility is not zero that if that fire reaches nuclear material in Los Alamos, radioactive elements will spread in the air.

Well, I’d hope some of them would have EMP hardened circuits, otherwise guess we all will simply be SOL.

I have said it before. I hate nuclear power!

@mazingerz88 Right now?

@jaytkay Holy shit.

@jonsblond I should have thought to post a link to such a map. Thanks for finding it. See what I was saying about the East Coast. From Maine to South Carolina, nearly everyone within 200 miles of the coast would need to evacuate to Ohio! Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but I cannot visualize that going smoothly.

@JLeslie Hang on to that tornado shelter for the kind of storms it was meant to protect you in. :-)

@jaytkay Thanks for fielding the question about simply taking the plant offline. As you noted, that’s no solution.

@mazingerz88 Who cursed us with the hex, “May you live in interesting times”?

@King_Pariah Based on observations about safety and the fact most of our plants are now approaching 40 years old, I’m betting EMP shielding wasn’t part of the plan.

@ETpro You’re welcome. I try to be helpful. =)

@JLeslie Yes, now. http://abcnews.go.com/US/los-alamos-fire-initial-air-samples-normal-radiation/story?id=13953953

@mazingerz88 Thanks for the link.

When Jesus described hell as a place where there would be ”...weeping and gnashing of teeth…”, I think he was talking about the world we make for ourselves. We should make a different world for ourselves.

”...a catastrophe that would take many months to repair?”

y.o.u…m.u.s.t…b.e…j.o.k.i.n.g

Our reactors are a bit different from the Fukushima reactors and totally different from Chernobyl’s. Our regulations are pretty damn strict by comparison, and after a close call with TMI, we are a bit more cautious as well.

Our reactors have the diesel generators for backup, plus pretty damn tough containment. Three Mile Island melted about half it’s core and yet the radiation released was pretty insignificant. (Enough to scare those that know nothing of radiation, but actually comparable to a chest X-ray, and less than a 1% increase over what the average denizen of Planet Earth gets.)

Their cooling was shut off entirely, valves closed and everything, and that was all that happened. Try that with the cooling valves open and it’s significantly safer and the consequences are far less severe than the almost negligible ones from TMI.

I wouldn’t worry about the reactors, especially as we know more about this sort of stuff than we did long ago and what precautions to take. I would worry more about looting, mass hysteria, scaremongers, scam artists, and the like.

And with that, I’ll go to sleep a little easier. Nite, y’all!

@jerv I knew it was worth it waiting for your answer to pop in. Back to my xxx videos…with less anxiety! Heh.

Hopefully they’re smart enough to keep an eye on the sun and shut these plants down when the signs of massive coronal mass ejections appearing.

I happen to live in an area of the east coast out the 50 mile range of any nuke plants. But nuclear meltdowns can spread fallout much further, as we’ve seen from the fallout from Fukushima being found all over North America in trace amounts. Many of these plants supposedly have dead man switches on them, but I don’t trust the people running them enough to think they’ve actually installed them consistently.

I’ve got self-sufficiency plans like @JLeslie, not to mention respirator masks and protective clothing. Just in case (and because I like to garden). Of course, if there’s fallout everywhere there wouldn’t be much I could do with my garden.

That was very generous of you to say I have self sufficiency plans. The truth is I would not last very long probably.

There are helioscope satellites that can track plasma ejections. The can get word back to earth at the speed of light and the plasma goes a lot slower than that so we can get a few hours warning. One of the satellites planned for a la grange point between earth and moon is designed for solar observation.

@JLeslie Hey, anyone who grow any of their own food is leaps ahead of the average American in terms of self-sufficiency.

@jerv Unless the news media was lying to us, the Fukishima plant and many US nuclear plants were built to the same standards and plans by the same contractor. And most of our plants are near or at their 40 year limit of design operation. The regulators are already handing out 20 year extensions to plant operators with NO upgrades to design. As mild as the accident proved to be, TMI essentially halted nuclear plant permitting in the US. So how did we change the design of plants built before that accident to reflect what we learned from it?

@ETpro That is hard to answer without knowing how much you already know about reactor design. Suffice it to say that much (though obviously not all) of the plant can be replaced relatively easily, possibly with upgraded components.

@jerv The question I’m interested in is how much has been replaced or upgraded, not what the possibilities are. As to understanding technical issues, I was a chemical engineer by education but spent my working career as a mechanical engineer. And strange as it may seem, I worked summers and weekends as a carpenter building garages and additions to houses. I’ve dealt with building concrete forms for simple garage pads, home foundations and a Destroyer Submarine pier for the Navy. So I can grasp what is easy and what’s not so cheap when it comes to retrofits of buildings and the gear in them.

@ETpro Fair question. As it’s late, I will have to give you a more detailed (and lucid) answer tomorrow, but the containment vessel isn’t normally exposed to radiation (if it is then there are other issues) and thus lasts about as long as a skyscraper.

Sorry I can’t find the source but something I read mentioned that several reactors in the US are the same design and build as Fukushima but most have some small upgrades to the reactor seals and plumbing. Where they all in the US are different is their spent fuel facilites, which are alleged to be vastly superior,
The spent fuel systems at Fukushima were the biggest trouble and to the extent there are reactor breaches they may have been preventable if the extremely deadly burning spent fuel wasn’t above in the same building.

Are We Prepared for a Catastrophic Solar Storm?

A lot depends on what happens in that 19 hours between the ejection of the plasma and when it gets to earth. The more switches can be opened up so there are less connections across distance the less chances for electrical potential to build up to problem levels except in isolation.

Right now though our grid in the US is way underprotected with breakers of any kind, never mind automated ones.

@jerv Thanks. I hope you can find more specifics, and explain or post a link.

@dabbler That is definitely what I heard from a number of different investigative journalists covering the disaster for different news organizations.

@incendiary_dan Well that link certainly says we’d be mortally screwed. Since we have so many people needing jobs, why the heck don’t we fix this ticking time bomb?

@dabbler Great point. Planning for that would be step one, it would seem.

@ETpro “why the heck don’t we fix this ticking time bomb?” You mean we as in We the People? ZOMG!! You are inviting the wrath, or pesky brain farts, of the “gov’mint can’t do nothin’ right” ” the gov’mint don’t dare spend a plugged nickel on that unless it has been taken from seniors’ health care first” folks. ;-)

I agree whole heartedly that is a superb example of the sort of thing that “the markets” will never do and needs doing.

Nuclear power plants can’t handle multiple disasters occurring at the same time. So if grid power goes down and something else happens too we’re in trouble.

Nuclear power has no future. People just don’t want it. And our grandchildren will sarcastically tell us: thank you so much for letting us take care of all the radioactive trash.

@mattbrowne Solar and wind also have no future as they require too much space and are inconsistent as they depend on weather conditions. Oil had no future for obvious reasons. Tidal and hydroelectric have their own issues.

So basically it’s either learn to live without electricity or use something that has no future. TANSTAAFL.

BTW, there are ways to handle the waste, so any claims that we will be dealing with it for thousands of years is scare tactics. The only way I see that you can avoid bring hypocritical is if you also hate plastic and all other petroleum-related things as well as electronics, batteries, and many chemicals just as vehemently.

@jerv So basically it’s either learn to live without electricity or use something that has no future.

I vote for no electricity.

The only way I see that you can avoid being hypocritical is if you also hate plastic and all other petroleum-related things as well as electronics, batteries, and many chemicals just as vehemently.

That’s a straw man, but it still describes me. Yay!

Can you describe what the ways of dealing with the waste are?

If you want to eliminate electricity and chemical products, you need to figure out how to drastically reduce the Earth’s population.

There are a lot proven methods. Ethnic cleansing, euthanasia, planned starvation, concentration camps & ovens, gulags

Which ones do you prefer? Are there newer and more efficient ideas?

@jaytkay You left one off the list, Ignorance and neglect => unplanned starvation.

Ref Nuclear waste, I think it can be managed (not the ways it is now in most cases) and I’d be willing to trust it IF I could imagine any human institution with continuity long enough to carry out the task. There never has been one and that’s a big bet.

@jaytkay If you want to eliminate electricity and chemical products, you need to figure out how to drastically reduce the Earth’s population.

No, you really don’t, or at least not any more than we have to now anyway. There’s more than enough food grown for all the humans, even using ineffecient and unsustainable methods. If food production were relocalized and grown using sustainable polycrops, we’d easily be able to feed ourselves without electricity, oil, etc. It would also do a great deal to help that water problem, since in this country 90% of water use is from industry and agriculture, and both create runoff which have polluted basically all the rivers and streams in the country to varied extents.

There are a lot proven methods. Ethnic cleansing, euthanasia, planned starvation, concentration camps & ovens, gulags

There are other proven methods that have worked historically for most of the human specie’s history, like community-oriented birth control. Women having access to safe and effective birth control, as well as having open forums to discuss making sensible family planning decisions, has gone a long way in traditional communities in terms of maintaining sustainable population levels. And it can be done without industrialism; there are over 200 plants traditionally used as effective birth control on the North American continent alone (usually in combination).

@incendiary_dan “other proven methods” good point, they have been proven to allow ZPG at least, and they would be worth a try to lower population.

I was slouching into cynical. It’s easy to extrapolate from the contemporary and go : yikes.
Who knows, though? All sorts of smart ideas could pop up each in the nick of time and land us in some sustainable well-fed and well-entertained population.

An issue would be getting the required awareness and consensus for it to be effective globally. I like the idea of plant-based solutions that don’t rely on industrialization or banking to work.

Wilful population reduction is as possible as the other ways, but maybe less likely.
It’ll take unprecedented courage for the whole of humankind to do something like that together. What will motivate us all to do that?
Might as well think that direction, though.
I’d way more like to see an intended drop in population than unintended collapse from broken civilization.

@dabbler Yea, unfortunately I’m pretty cynical about it too. We could be smart about it, but considering that so much control and power is at the center of our problems, and that most people just don’t have the faintest idea of how to do without the system as it is (even if they recognize the problem(s)), I don’t see this culture changing voluntarily any time soon. Maybe it’ll take a kick in the butt. Let’s just hope it’s not too hard of a kick.

@incendiary_dan Many of the arguments I’ve heard against nuclear power revolve around the half-lives of some of the elements present in the spent fuel rods, which are >10,000 years. What they fail to realize is that some other reactors are able to use those as fuel and wind up with stuff that has half-lives that are considerably shorter (on the order of decades at most). Personally, I am rather fond of CANDU reactors.

Another thing people often overlook is that comparing Nuclear to other forms of energy like coal is like saying that planes are more dangerous than cars even though there are more fatalities per passenger mile with cars than with planes. Something about major-but-extremely-rare events makes a bigger impression than a steady accumulation. I mean a fatal car accident every day for a year will result in more deaths than two fully loaded 727’s colliding in mid-air, but guess which gets more media attention?

As for he straw man, it seems to me that if you are against something for polluting our environment then you should be more opposed to things that pollute more of our environment. I see no straw man there, merely a digression that illustrates a double standard.

I also share your cynicism, and feel that it’s easily possible for people who could fuck up a wet dream to screw up energy regardless of the source.

@dabbler It might take some planning time and even research in some ti the issues, But there are significant parts of hardening the grid that are shovel ready.

@mattbrowne Thanks. That’s how I see it.

@jerv I wouldn’t say solar and wind have no future, They ate not likely to be the only solution/s. But with an upgraded, smart grid, solar and wind could be an important part of the network; powering homes, apartment buildings and business facilities when local conditions are good, and also pumping energy into a storage facility when it’s not being used by the owner.

@incendiary_dan So many straw men lately. Let’s generate energy by burning the straw men! :-)

@jaytkay That is an absolutely unacceptable answer in my opinion. I do not accept the assertion that population reduction is necessary.

@dabbler Great answer. Thanks.

@incendiary_dan Thanks for the link to Permaculture. Clearly, there are more than one answer. There are even some that will actually work.:-)

@dabbler I’m pretty sure the threat isn’t so great we need to start killing ourselves to save ourselves from dying.

@incendiary_dan Sadly true. But again, the problems we face are solvable. We just need to decide we are going to solve them, and then get to work.

@jerv I am all for development of the technologies that will mitigate the spent fuel storage problem. Breeder reactors, subduction burial, etc.

Now we need to worry about jellyfish.

@jonsblond Gah! I wonder if any of our Fluther jellies got sucked into this one. :-)

@ETpro Zen has been MIA. hmmm…..

@jonsblond Zen has cat^cat lives. He’ll emerge alive. Glowing in the dark, but alive.

@ETpro “significant parts of hardening the grid that are shovel ready” This is quite so. The engineers who run the systems know what we need, but it requires investment (“spending” OMG!) by an entity bigger than any of the systems themselves. This is an area where I’d say there is a clear role for government action, as there is not the kind of profit in it to motivate ‘the market’ to get the job done.

Must be a misunderstanding, I’m not advocating anyone killing themselves for a solution. I’d advocate willful population control which is very different from killing anybody, and is all about improved quality of life for most of society. Probably fodder for a distinct interesting question.

@ETpro I can use straw men to mulch my garden. :)

@jerv It’s a straw man in that it’s a purposeful oversimplification of arguments set by you to make your own argument appear stronger. To my knowledge, nobody has categorically denounced everything that pollutes. I, for instance, readily recognize that we can’t continually do these sorts of things, but that doesn’t mean I reject the usefulness of some things. I think we should have a way of life without electricity, but I also recognize that we can use electrical power to help us get there. Computers cause massive poisoning of water sources and give women and childrenin third world countries cadmium poisoning, but they’re here so I use them to gather and spread information and build the kind of resilient sustainable community I want. I wish we had a world without firearms, but I like mine and I think they’re useful for hunting and defense, and don’t necessarily judge anyone for using them.

Maybe I’ve gone a bit overboard with examples, but my point is that arguments of that sort are dishonest. Our opinions are more complicated than that. It’s not hypocricy, it’s sensible and useful evaluations of our situation(s) and how we can leverage things.

@incendiary_dan I see where you are coming from, but that leads to the singling out of nuclear power because of pollution to be a straw man, and thus to hpocrisy.

Now, I can see why others might single out nuclear power as opposed to, say, rechargeable batteries or cars as there are so many things that pollute our environment (many of them moreso than nuclear power) that you really must pick only one windmilll to tilt at.

My point is merely that my argument is no more (or less) dishonest than most arguments I hear from the anti-nuclear side, and I would like people to acknowledge that any appearance to the contrary is a result of bias.

@jerv That’s not a straw man, and I’m pretty sure you know that. Granted, many people have huge blind spots about what they do and don’t oppose, particularly in terms of solar and wind power and their destructive production. But having incorrect information doesn’t make something a straw man argument, nor hypocricy, just ill-informed

Nuclear power is unique in that it’s wastes are so supremely toxic. What the industry lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality; one particle of plutonium has a 100% rate of inflicting cancer. Some of those wastes can never be safely gotten rid of, despite your claims to the contrary. Reusing fuel doesn’t get rid of it, and that only accounts for a small part of the overall waste.

And in such an industry, any chance of catastrophic failure is unacceptable. Any chance of any small leak is unacceptable. Indeed, plants working as designed are unacceptable.

I can wish more people would come to the conclusions I have, that all of industrialism is at odds with biodiversity, healthy ecosystems, and a living planet, but I’m not going to claim their arguments are fallacious when they’re not.

P.S. Who do you work for? Your B.S. is fantastic.

@incendiary_dan In the spirit of full disclosure, I work for a steel foundry that makes all sorts of things for all sorts of customers, and who ships half of their products overseas because we can do things they can’t. Oil companies, aerospace, mining, medical… quite a wide range. I don’t work for the nuclear industry, if that is what you are thinking.

I used to be as scared of nuclear power as many people until I actually wound up studying nuclear reactors during my time in the Navy. I am well aware of the risks and dangers, and the fact that most of them are resulting from the human element; regulation, profit-seeking corner-cutting, and poorly trained personnel.

As for only a small percentage of waste being used to fuel other reactors, that is why I am a fan of the newer reactors and some of the prototypes and proposed designs, just as I prefer the Tesla Model S over the Ford Model T, and my laptop over a room full of vacuum tubes. Admit it, no matter how we power our future, new technology beats stuff from the last century, and we will have to be smart about how we do things; our power grid is rather stupid and largely antiquated, so we need to rethink distribution as well as generation.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it, @jerv.

Germany (the 4th largest economy in the world) has decided to implement a plan of shutting down its 17 nuclear plants and replacing them with renewable energy and gas-fired power stations by 2022. Gas-fired power stations will be replaced by renewable energy between 2040 and 2050. I do trust German engineering.

I’m not saying that operating nuclear power plants as such is totally irresponsible (it is in regions of high tectonic activity), but we have to respect the wish of the majority of voters. Of course totalitarian systems like China can do whatever they want.

It’s also a bit unfair to reduce renewable energy approaches to simplistic slogans like ‘oh, no wind and the sun doesn’t shine’. Newer solar thermal plants heat up oil to 400 degrees celsius which continue to produce steam during the night. There are offshore wind parks. There’s geothermal energy. There are continent-wide grids, so there’s always some place with wind. And above all, there’s a huge potential to save more energy without losing comfort.