Alabama Nuclear Reactor Gets 'F' Grade

GatorSnake writes "The US federal government issued a rare red finding against an Alabama nuclear power plant after an emergency cooling system failure. 'In an emergency, the failure of the valve could have meant that one of the plant's emergency cooling systems would not have worked as designed (PDF).' Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"

Comments

Re:Another isolated incident?

[dhovis]

No, you didn't get a "nothing to see here". You actually got an answer. By design, if a water-moderated reactor loses its cooling, it also loses moderation of the neutrons. Fast neutrons don't work as well, so the reaction rate would slow. The residual heat would still have melted the fuel rods and it would be a big mess to clean up, but nobody would have died.

I know it is not the answer you want, but there you have it. It would not have been a Chernobyl-type accident. The Chernobyl reactor had a positive-void coefficient, which means that the reaction rate would go up if cooling was lost. Davis-Besse has negative-void coefficient. The reaction rate will go down if coolant is lost.