Where to put nuclear reactors
May 29, 2011 7:28 AM   Subscribe

Why would it be a bad idea to build more nuclear reactors in areas which have had nuclear disasters?

(Ignoring nuclear reactors that are built in areas vulnerable to earthquakes..)

Are there scientific reasons why new nuclear reactors are not built at, say, Chernobyl which is already contaminated?
posted by devnull to Science & Nature (10 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You need people to operate nuclear reactors. People don't want to work in areas where there is radiation in the environment.
posted by dfriedman at 7:38 AM on May 29, 2011


I'm sorry, you asked for scientific reasons. My answer above doesn't really address scientific reasons (other than the health concerns associated with working in a radiated area). Nonetheless, it is a practical barrier to building new nuclear reactors on the site of previous nuclear accidents.
posted by dfriedman at 7:48 AM on May 29, 2011


Response by poster: @dfriedman No no, that's a fair enough answer. I was trying to avoid a discussion about whether more nuclear reactors should be built and focus on the practical reasons.

It it impossible to build a nuclear power station that cannot be automated to the extent that a human would never have to enter it, or at least would never need to enter it for a dangerous amount of time, or where protective gear would not be possible?
posted by devnull at 8:34 AM on May 29, 2011


Best answer: A nuclear power plant needs a control room located somewhere fairly close to the reactor. It's not safe to control the operations remotely because what do you do if communications channels are cut? Those control rooms are usually shielded quite heavily against radiation and are often supposed to double as places of refuge in the event of an accident, but in a very serious accident (as happened at Fukushima) there's still the possibility of radiation exposure for workers inside the control room.

In fact, operations did however continue at the other reactors at Chernobyl for a number of years after the accident at Reactor 4 - the last Chernobyl reactor wasn't decommissioned until 2000. That may be indicative of the somewhat casual attitude towards workplace safety in the Soviet Union, though, and I suspect that this would not have taken place in many other industrialized countries.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 8:49 AM on May 29, 2011


Yes, I think it would be impossible. Not for any scientific reason, I don't think, because the contaminating radiation would be at a far lower level than the active radiation and probably wouldn't affect operation of anything.

However, the nuclear parts of power stations generally are already as automated as possible. Those are really a small part of the operation. All the "nuclear" part does is make hot water. The whole rest of the operation is the problem- the turbines, the cooling towers (or lakes), the electrical grid connections and transformers all need maintenance, and designing a system that is more automated or more requiring of protection is going to be really expensive and not really solve any problems.

Even if you could solve all those problems, how would you build the thing? You really couldn't do the excavating necessary, even if you were somehow able to drop the thing in via helicopter and hit the "go" button.
posted by gjc at 8:52 AM on May 29, 2011


(Not to imply that it isn't a good question. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes practicable in 20 years after technology improves and the radiation calms down a bit.)

If I was king of nuclear energy, I'd probably demand that new plants be installed in a big pit surrounded by 20 foot concrete walls. When the thing needs to be decommissioned, or if there is an accident, just cut the supports, let it drop into the pit and dump rocks and concrete in.
posted by gjc at 9:01 AM on May 29, 2011


Using robotic controls for a reactor in a contaminated area might not be a workable answer. Electronics are subject to damage from radiation, as are many of the materials used in construction of a power plant. Things get brittle, then crack and leak. All these difficulties would make it economically infeasible, even if scientifically possible.
posted by Corvid at 12:04 PM on May 29, 2011


Best answer: I'll just briefly address this from a practical standpoint. If you want a safe working environment you need a really strict radiation monitoring program in place, and having a lot of contamination around would not only potentially raise the amount of exposure for workers, making them reach lifetime limits sooner, but it would also make it much more difficult to trace contaminants back to their source, and lead to a huge increase in "false" positive radiation test results -- i.e. true results, but falsely pointing back to the current installation. It would make the job of keeping the workers safe that much more difficult for both the radiation professionals and the workers themselves.

Anyway, this is really a small problem in the scheme of things that could be improved in terms of nuclear reactor operations. In other words, there are many things you can do to a reactor design that will have a greater impact on its safety than just putting it someplace there was already an accident. There are already many safety improvements that have come to the field since the Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors were designed and built. For example, the Fukushima meltdown is at least in part attributable to the storage of waste fuel on-site, but reactor designs that use the waste materials for their own power generation are already a reality.
posted by dhartung at 2:48 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]


sometimes lightning does strike twice,
posted by caddis at 4:48 PM on May 29, 2011


Building structures requires moving large amounts of earth which kicks up lots of dust. The ground at disaster sites is going to be highly contaminated and construction would kick all that into the air, spreading contamination far and wide. You'd never even be able to build at the site safely, never even getting to dfriedman's point.

In the case of Fukushima, the plant was clearly just a stupid place to build. Building there again after the disaster would just be asking to be punched in the mouth again. Radioactive dust from these disasters spread world-wide, not just locally.
posted by chairface at 11:46 AM on May 30, 2011


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