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Subject: 
Re: Unexplained power outages in New York, Toronto, and other cities
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Mon, 18 Aug 2003 03:55:27 GMT
Viewed: 
492 times
  
Do you have doubts in your mind that they were NOT going to risk a meltdown
that would surely toss their sorry @$$e$ in jail? It would be EXTREMELY
stupid to play "meltdown" in real life - it's obvious it was not an
experiment designed for observation of the phenomena, rather one designed
for advertisement purposes. Either that, or those folks should be tried for
risking a nuclear accident!

Well that is exactly what they did. It was government aproved, they
evacutated the only small town that would have been in the blast radius if
the plant was a conventional reactor. They wanted to prove the theory that a
breeder reactor can not meltdown and succeded.

What they proven is that they can evacuate a city. They have not proven that
accident will not happen - only that they can "not happen", which is not much
for proof.


Um...no.  The reactor is called "TRIGA", and is located in Torry Pines, at
General Atomic(s?) site.  It CANNOT expode, or melt down.  Physics dictate how
anything will act, and it WILL NOT explode/PCI, no matter what you do with it-
remove the control rods, walk away, turn off the cooling water, go on vacation
for a week and forget to turn it off...no matter what you do, it won't
(assembled) go supercritical (meltdown/prompt criticality incident).

How is this done?  Because, as materials become hotter, their neutron absorbing
properties change.  Things that are a good moderator when cold become  neutron
absorbant as they heat up- so, the design of TRIGA makes use of this to ensure
that even if you are dumb enough to remove the control rods, all that will
happen is that the power output will spike for a second, and then drop off as
the previously non- active elements start robbing neutrons from the reaction,
reducing the reactor to sub critical levels.

The test was done in June, 1959.

James Powell
(no, I am NOT a rocket scientist!)
-for futher info on this one, I'd refer you to "Project Orion",
isbn 0-8050-7284-5



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Unexplained power outages in New York, Toronto, and other cities
 
(...) And what if something else accidentally happened, that changed the properties of the absorbing elements? Or what if a terrorist figured out a way to do the above? Or what if it's effectiveness changed drastically after the first 2 days? What (...) (21 years ago, 18-Aug-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Unexplained power outages in New York, Toronto, and other cities
 
(...) I'm curious of what conditions you considered in your maths. (...) It is true that the consumption is greatly reduced at night time, which is not to say electricity is not produced or used at all. In fact, much of the electricity generated at (...) (21 years ago, 17-Aug-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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