

Radioactivity detected 60 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant  - chailatte
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014489916_quakenuke14.html

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jameskilton
Journalists should be taught a few things about the current design of nuclear
reactors. In the case of a complete melt-down, the radioactive material still
can't melt through the steel containment vessel. It's designed explicitly to
prevent such a catastrophe. Even 3-Mile Island, which had half it's reactive
material melt, only made it through less than an inch of the containment
steel.

So no, the article is very wrong in this point. In the event of a full melt-
down, they'll have another completely useless reactor (pumping sea-water to
cool it will require a new containment vessel due to corrosion anyway). It's
hard enough keeping people informed of how safe nuclear power actually is
without journalists constantly spreading FUD.

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ChuckMcM
And as others have pointed out, if you get a "full meltdown" with the control
rods fully inserted, the resulting uranium/boron alloy is not critical.

In short hand, once the rods are in, its game over, just a question of how
hard the final result is to clean up.

If you keep it under the melting point of the core you can just pull the fuel
and dispose of it in the normal way, if not you have to clean out the non-
critical slag core.

