billwill
Monday 14th March 2011 3:07am
North London
6,162 posts
Quote: zooo @ March 14 2011, 1:04 AM GMT
Would you choose to live near a nuclear plant in a place that gets constant earthquakes?
I f**king wouldn't.
(Although I wouldn't live in a place that gets earthquakes anyway.)
The Japanese reactors are apparently built in extremely strong concrete boxes which are stronger than the surrounding rocks/earth. In the event of a major earthquake as just now, the whole box stays intact while the earth moves under it. What has happened in this case is that the pipes & pumps that feed the cooling water have broken, and possibly the reserves of cooling water have been contaminated with sea water.
The same sort of thing would occur with any power station & the possibility of explosions would be much worse in one powered by natural gas or oil.
Emergency provision & plans seem to have been on hand to use sea water coolant in case like this as a last resort. The use of sea water will terminate the life of a reactor due to the possibility of corrosion, so the reactor will have to be decommissioned. So such a decision was not taken lightly.