No More China Syndrome

Remember that wretched movie The China Syndrome? It was based upon the somewhat exaggerated theory that in a reactor accident, the core would melt its way through the vessel and sink all the way to China.

Well, something like that happened both at Chernobyl and also at Fukushima:

http://wolfstreet.com/2014/08/09/tepco-reveals-more-lies-about-fukushima-meltdowns/

In a former life I was trained as a senior reactor operator on General Electric's boiling water reactors of the type constructed at Fukushima. I have been asking myself what I would have done had I been in Japan when the tsunami hit.

All the reactors should have been shut down and put into forced cooldown mode as soon as the earthquake hit. But in hindsight, no one could have had such foresight.

When all the cooling systems fail, all that one can do is pump in water (often seawater) from whatever source is available. But the reactor vessels are subject to rapid chloride stress corrosion cracking, so while the seawater may remove some of the decay heat it also will contribute to the destruction of one of the primary barriers to the migration of contamination (the reactor vessel and primary piping).

Now that we have proven that the worst that can happen (complete core meltdown) both can happen and is probably inevitable, we should be able to plan for it.

Why not build a "core catcher" beneath each reactor? It could be a mat, a basket, or other sort of barrier that would stop the movement of the corium and help dissipate its heat. And put a secondary bathtub below and around that, filled with material which can both absorb and retain the corium materials.

This may be just a harebrained scheme, but we do need to do something other than build more reactors. And trust me, there will be more reactors built. We haven't learned our lesson, and we never will. Anything which can be done (no matter how stupid it is, no matter what the risk) will be done if some people think they can make money from it and pass the cost of the waste products and the risk on to other people.

Update: Aha! The "core catcher" does exist and has been installed on some reactors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_catcher