There is considerable excitement over the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.
The explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant looks bad at the surface. What's behind it?
As soon as the earthquake occurred, the power plants shut down automatically. The control rods enter the core to stop the nuclear reaction. There is a great deal of residual heat, which is handled by the plant's normal cooling system. But the earthquake damage was severe enough to knock out power to the plants, so the cooling system had to be run off backup diesel generators.
The backups have failed because diesel generators don't run well underwater.
So the Japanese have to run around on their destroyed infrastructure and bring power to these plants.
Notably, the power plants were designed to withstand a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, so they have done well to be still there after the 8.9.
However, the sequence of events since Friday does not appear to have been anticipated by the engineers.
The explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant looks bad at the surface. What's behind it?
As soon as the earthquake occurred, the power plants shut down automatically. The control rods enter the core to stop the nuclear reaction. There is a great deal of residual heat, which is handled by the plant's normal cooling system. But the earthquake damage was severe enough to knock out power to the plants, so the cooling system had to be run off backup diesel generators.
The backups have failed because diesel generators don't run well underwater.
So the Japanese have to run around on their destroyed infrastructure and bring power to these plants.
Notably, the power plants were designed to withstand a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, so they have done well to be still there after the 8.9.
However, the sequence of events since Friday does not appear to have been anticipated by the engineers.
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