Subject:
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Re: Unexplained power outages in New York, Toronto, and other cities
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 18 Aug 2003 03:55:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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465 times
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> > > 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
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