![]() These lay out instructions for what responders should do in the event of all sorts of somewhat-plausible to highly unlikely emergencies). Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has, for every one of the 98 nuclear power reactors operating in the country, drafted emergency handbooks hundreds of pages long. The NRC states that studies regarding large jet impacts are still ongoing.Īll that makes a Chernobyl-scale disaster unlikely, though the Union of Concerned Scientists writes that smaller (but still-dangerous) radiation leaks are a real threat for which the United States is not adequately prepared. government did just that to an empty containment vessel in 1988. You could crash a small jet into the side of one of these buildings, and it wouldn't expose the core. These sealed shells are over-engineered to the point that, in theory at least, even a significant explosion wouldn't breach them. are entirely contained in sealed structures of cement and rebar (a mesh of reinforced steel bars). And unlike Chernobyl, nuclear facilities in the U.S. Modern reactors are outfitted with chemical sprays that can flood a reactor building, knocking radioactive isotopes out of the air before they can escape. ![]() And the buildings themselves are designed to do much of the work to squelch a nuclear reactor fire and a radioactive plume, she added. (and other properly advanced) nuclear reactors are much less likely than Chernobyl to encounter any sort of disaster - never running as hot and operating in sturdier vessels. Modern reactors are way more safe and much more prepared for problems - but they still use boron in their emergency handbooks The big difference, she said, is that modern nuclear plants (at least in the United States) are designed to do a lot of that work themselves. And in the event of a similar disaster today, response teams would take an approach based on the same underlying theory. Still, Huff said, the principle the Soviets used - neutron absorbers to stop the reaction, coupled with materials to knock the radioactive isotopes out of the air - was sound. "The intense radiation killed several pilots," the BBC reported in 1997, adding, "It is now known that, despite those sacrifices, almost no neutron absorbers reached the core." In Chernobyl's case, however, dumping the boron and other neutron absorbers onto the reactor turned out not to work, in part due to the ad hoc helicopter-dumping approach that the plant's design necessitated. 4 core, the theory went, and it would absorb so many of those wildly firing neutrons that the reaction would stop.Īn image from the miniseries shows its depiction of the helicopters dumping sand and boron on the core. So, dump enough boron onto the exposed reactor No. Due to its nuclear structure, it's sort of neutron-thirsty." But boron tends to just absorb the neutron. " Uranium, specifically uranium-235, has a tendency to absorb the neutron and then immediately split apart. "When a neutron interacts with an isotope, there's a certain probability, due to the structure of its nucleus, that it will absorb the neutron," she said. To get a nuclear chain reaction going, she explained, you need to get enough radioactive isotopes close together that their neutrons, firing wildly into space, tend to slam into other atomic nuclei, splitting them. "In a nuclear reactor, there are isotopes that make the reaction go and isotopes that make the reaction slow," Huff said. And the boron, in theory, could squelch the nuclear reaction. The sand smothers the exposed reactor, squelching that deadly smoke plume. (This is why, in the immediate aftermath of nuclear disasters, people in the impacted area are supposed to take iodine pills, to fill up their body's reserves and prevent their thyroids from absorbing any of the radioactive isotopes.) Sand and boronĭumping sand and boron (the actual Chernobyl mixture also included clay and lead) is an attempt to solve both the first and second problems. Our thyroid glands rely on iodine and will absorb iodine-131 just like ordinary iodine, creating a long-term source of serious radiation inside our bodies. It can end up in rivers and make its way into plants, animals and humans. Take, for example, iodine-131, a radioactive isotope of iodine that living cells treat just like regular iodine.Ī smoke plume like Chernobyl's contains lots of iodine-131, which can drift hundreds of miles. Mobile, in this case, means that those isotopes can enter the bodies of living things to cause problems. And some of them, in addition to being quite toxic and radioactive, are very mobile in the environment." And some of them are more radioactive than what you would encounter in your day-to-day life. "Those isotopes, some of them, are toxic to humans. "This is the dangerous part of an accident like this," Huff said.
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