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Nuclear meltdown
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A nuclear meltdown is a term for a severe nuclear reactor accident. This can occur when a nuclear power plant system or component failure causes the reactor core to cease being properly controlled and cooled to the extent that the sealed nuclear fuel assemblies – which contain the uranium or plutonium and highly radioactive fission products – begin to overheat and melt.
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A nuclear meltdown is a term for a severe nuclear reactor accident. This can occur when a nuclear power plant system or component failure causes the reactor core to cease being properly controlled and cooled to the extent that the sealed nuclear fuel assemblies – which contain the uranium or plutonium and highly radioactive fission products – begin to overheat and melt. A meltdown is considered very serious because of the possibility that the reactor containment will be defeated, thus releasing the core's highly radioactive and toxic elements into the atmosphere and environment. From an engineering perspective, a meltdown is likely to cause serious damage to the reactor, and possibly total destruction.
Several nuclear meltdowns of differing severity have occurred, from localized core damage to complete destruction of the reactor core. In some cases this has required extensive repairs or decommissioning of a nuclear reactor. In the most extreme cases, such as the Chernobyl disaster, deaths have resulted and the near-permanent civilian evacuation of a large area was required.
A nuclear explosion does not result from a nuclear meltdown because, by design, the geometry and composition of the reactor core do not permit the special conditions necessary for a nuclear explosion. However, the conditions that cause a meltdown may cause a non-nuclear explosion. For example, several power excursion accidents have caused coolant to rapidly over pressurize, resulting in a steam explosion.
Causes
In some reactor types, the fuel assemblies in the core can melt as a result of a loss of pressure control accident, a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), an uncontrolled power excursion, or any other event that might start a fire around the fuel assemblies.
- In a loss of pressure control accident, the pressure of the confined coolant falls below specification without the means to restore it. In some cases this may reduce the heat transfer efficiency (when using an inert gas as a coolant) and in others may form an insulating 'bubble' of steam surrounding the fuel assemblies (for pressurized water reactors). In the latter case, due to localized heating of the steam 'bubble' due to decay heat, the pressure required to collapse the steam 'bubble' may exceed reactor design specifications until the reactor has had time to cool down. (This event is less likely to occur in boiling water reactors, where the core may be deliberately depressurized so that the Emergency Core Cooling System may be turned on).
- In a loss of coolant accident, either the physical loss of coolant (which is typically deionized water, an inert gas, or liquid sodium) or the loss of a method to ensure a sufficient flow rate of the coolant occurs. A loss of coolant accident and a loss of pressure control accident are closely related in some reactors. In a pressurized water reactor, a loss of coolant accident can also cause a steam 'bubble' to form in the core due to excessive heating of stalled coolant or by the subsequent loss of pressure control accident caused by a rapid loss of coolant.
- In an uncontrolled power excursion accident, a sudden power spike in the reactor exceeds reactor design specifications due to a sudden increase in reactor reactivity. An uncontrolled power excursion occurs due to significantly altering a parameter that affects the exponential rate of a nuclear chain reaction (examples include ejecting a control rod or significantly altering the nuclear characteristics of the moderator, such as by rapid cooling). In extreme cases the reactor may proceed to a condition known as prompt critical.
- Structural and core-based fires may also severely endanger the core and potentially cause the fuel assemblies to melt. A structural fire may directly heat the fuel assemblies (such as during a fire on lagging of piping near the core) or in other cases it may damage control electronics or wiring preventing operators from quickly responding to other failures (such as during the Browns Ferry fire in which remote control was lost for several hours but in which the core was not damaged because the plant operators exercised manual local control systems). In certain reactor designs it is possible for hydrogen or graphite to ignite inside the reactor core. A fire inside the reactor may be caused by failure to carefully control the amount of hydrogen in the coolant, an air addition to certain types of nuclear reactors, the uncontrolled heating of the coolant or moderator of the reactor by the types of reactor accidents listed above, or by an external source. Fires can be a much more severe casualty for nuclear reactors that are moderated with graphite because without taking proper precautions Wigner energy may accumulate which will greatly increase the severity of the fire (for example, during the Windscale fire).
A nuclear reactor does not have to remain critical for a nuclear meltdown to occur because fires or decay heat can continue to heat the reactor fuel assemblies long after the reactor has shut down.
Sequence of events
What happens when reactor fuel melts depends upon reactor design, and is the subject of conjecture and some actual experience (see below).
Before the core of a nuclear reactor can melt, a number of events/failures must already have happened. Once the core melts, it will almost certainly destroy the fuel bundles and internal structures of the reactor vessel (although it may not penetrate the reactor vessel). (Note that nearly half of the core at Three Mile Island melted but the molten debris [called "melt"] still stayed within the reactor vessel.) If the melt drops into a pool of water (for example, coolant or moderator), a steam explosion called a Fuel-Coolant Interaction (FCI) is likely. If air is available any exposed flammable substances will probably burn fiercely, but the liquid nature of the molten core poses special problems.
In the worst case scenario, the above-ground containment would fail at an early stage, (due to say an FCI within the reactor vessel, ejecting part of the vessel as a missile - this was the 'alpha-mode' failure of the 1975 Rasmussen (WASH-1400) study), or there could be a large hydrogen explosion or some other over-pressure event. Such an event could scatter urania-aerosol and volatile fission-products directly into the atmosphere. However, these events are considered essentially incredible in modern 'large-dry' containments. (The WASH-1400 report was replaced by better-based newer studies, and now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has disavowed them all and is preparing the over-arching State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses [SOARCA] study - see the Disclaimer in NUREG-1150.)
It has not been determined to what extent a molten mass can melt through a structure (although that was tested in the Loss-of-Fluid-Test Reactor described in Test Area North's fact sheet). The molten reactor core could penetrate the reactor vessel and the containment structure and burn down (via a melt-concrete interaction) to groundwater (this has not happened at any meltdown to date: see China Syndrome). A water moderated reactor would go non-critical as soon as the water boiled away (with a fast reactor it is possible that the molten mass might mix with any material it melts, diluting itself down to a non-critical state). In the Chernobyl accident, the fuel became non-critical when it melted and flowed away from the graphite moderator - however, it took considerable time to cool. If hot uranium dioxide is combined with iron(II) oxide a eutectic is formed which may cause the fuel to become more mobile than it would otherwise be.
It should be noted that the molten core of Chernobyl (that part that didn't vaporize in the fire) flowed in a channel created by the structure of its reactor building (e.g., walls and stairways) and froze in place before a core-concrete interaction could happen. In the basement of the reactor at Chernobyl, a large "elephant's foot" of congealed core material was found. Furthermore, the time delay and the lack of a direct path to the atmosphere (such as a containment building is designed to provide) would work to significantly ameliorate the radiological release. Any steam-explosions/FCI which occurred would probably work mainly to increase cooling of the core-debris. However, if the basement of the reactor building were penetrated the groundwater itself would likely be severely contaminated, and its flow could carry the contamination far afield.
In the best case scenario, the reactor vessel would hold the molten material (as at Three Mile Island), limiting most of the damage to the reactor itself. The American Nuclear Society has said "despite melting of about one-third of the fuel, the reactor vessel itself maintained its integrity and contained the damaged fuel". However the Three Mile Island example also illustrates the difficulty in predicting such behavior: the reactor vessel was not built for, and not expected to remain intact with, the temperatures it experienced when it the core melted, but possibly because some of the melted material collected at the bottom of the vessel and cooled early on in the accident, it created a resistant shell against further pressure and heat. Such a possibility was not predicted by the engineers who designed the reactor and would not necessarily occur under duplicate conditions, but was largely seen as instrumental in the preservation of the reactor vessel's integrity. (However, it should be noted that the reactor vessel was inside a containment building, as in all non-Soviet nuclear plants, so a failure of the reactor vessel would not automatically mean that radioactive material would be released into the environment.)
All non-Soviet nuclear power plants are designed with Emergency Core Cooling Systems, some active and some passive and automatic. CANDU reactors, for example, are designed with at least one, and generally two, large low-temperature and low-pressure water reservoirs around its fuel/coolant channels. The first is the bulk heavy-water moderator (a separate system from the coolant), and the second is the light-water-filled shield tank. It has been shown that even under severe loss-of-coolant conditions these backup heat sinks are sufficient to prevent either the fuel meltdown in the first place (using the moderator heat sink), or the breaching of the core vessel should the moderator eventually boil off (using the shield tank heat sink). [Allen et al.]
The three final defenses against a loss of cooling
A great deal of work goes into the prevention of a serious core damage event. If such an event were to occur, three different physical processes are expected to increase the time between the start of the accident and the time when a large release of radioactivity could occur. It is also important to understand that retaining the fission products within the core for some time will reduce the size of the radioactive release. This is because the worst isotopes in a fission product mixture are short lived. For example if all the iodine in a core was released one week after criticality was terminated by a SCRAM then the thyroid dose suffered by the population would be lower than if the iodine had escaped the plant one hour after the reactor was scrammed. Even while the Chernobyl accident had dire off-site effects much of the radioactivity remained within the building, if the building was to fail and dust was to be released into the environment then the release of a given mass of fission products which have aged for twenty years would have a smaller effect than the release of the same mass of fission products (in the same chemical and physical form) which had only undergone a short cooling time (such as one hour) after the nuclear reaction has been terminated. However if a nuclear reaction was to occur again within the Chernobyl plant (for instance if rainwater was to collect and act as a moderator) then the new fission products would have a higher specific activity and thus pose a greater threat if they were released. N.B. to prevent a post accident nuclear reaction steps have been taken (such as adding neutron poisons to key parts of the basement).
These three factors would provide additional time to the plant operators in order to mitigate the result of the event:
- The time required for the water to boil away (coolant, moderator). Assuming that at the moment that the accident occurs the reactor will be scrammed (immediate and full insertion of all control rods), so reducing the thermal power input and further delaying the boiling.
- The time required for the fuel to melt. After the water has boiled, then the time required for the fuel to reach its melting point will be dictated by the heat input due to decay of fission products, the heat capacity of the fuel and the melting point of the fuel.
- The time required for the molten fuel to breach the primary pressure boundary. The time required for the molten metal of the core to breach the primary pressure boundary (in light water reactors this is the pressure vessel; in CANDU and RBMK reactors this is the array of pressurized fuel channels) will depend on temperatures and boundary materials. Whether or not the fuel remains critical in the conditions inside the damaged core or beyond will play a significant role.
Effects
The effects of a nuclear meltdown depend on the safety features designed into a reactor. A modern reactor is designed both to make a meltdown highly unlikely, and to contain one should it occur. In the future passively safe or inherently safe designs will make the possibility exceedingly unlikely.
In a modern reactor, a nuclear meltdown, whether partial or total, should be contained inside the reactor's containment structure. Thus (assuming that no other major disasters occur) while the meltdown will severely damage the reactor itself, possibly contaminating the whole structure with highly radioactive material, a meltdown alone will generally not lead to significant radiation release or danger to the public. The effects are therefore primarily economic.
In practice, however, a nuclear meltdown is often part of a larger chain of disasters (although there have been so few meltdowns in the history of nuclear power that there is not a large pool of statistical information from which to draw a credible conclusion as to what "often" happens in such circumstances). For example, in the Chernobyl accident, by the time the core melted, there had already been a large steam explosion and graphite fire and major release of radioactive contamination (as with almost all Soviet reactors, there was no containment structure at Chernobyl).
Reactor design
Although pressurized water reactors are more susceptible to nuclear meltdown in the absence of active safety measures, this is not a universal feature of civilian nuclear reactors. Much of the research in civilian nuclear reactors is for designs with passive safety features that would be much less susceptible to meltdown, even if all emergency systems failed. For example, pebble bed reactors are designed so that complete loss of coolant for an indefinite period does not result in the reactor overheating. The General Electric ESBWR and Westinghouse AP1000 have passively-activated safety systems. The CANDU reactor has two low-temperature and low-pressure water systems surrounding the fuel (i.e. moderator and shield tank) that act as back-up heat sinks and preclude meltdowns and core-breaching scenarios [Allen et al].
Fast breeder reactors are more susceptible to meltdown than other reactor types, due to the larger quantity of fissile material and the higher neutron flux inside the reactor core, which makes it more difficult to control the reaction.
Accidental fires are widely acknowledged to be risk factors that can contribute to a nuclear meltdown. It is for this reason that circuit integrity measures are used for the electrical wiring that runs between control rooms and reactors. Ideally, a reactor is equipped with two "shutdown trains" or two sets of wires so that if one should fail, the other can be used to shut down the reactor. This common procedure became the subject of controversy during the Thermo-Lag scandal, when whistleblower Gerald W. Brown notified the NRC that the fire testing used to qualify Thermo-Lag was inadequate, meaning the fire-resistance rating thought to exist was in fact much lower, which meant that the majority of NRC licensees did not have operable protection of its safe shutdown wiring. Similar criticisms were leveled by US Congressman Ed Markey at the use of combustible silicone foam as firestops. The problem did not occur in German plants as operators must follow not just the directives of their federal regulators but are also required to follow the local building code, which makes product certification mandatory. Bounding in US and Canadian plants is not based on product certification. The Canadian disclosures by Gerald W. Brown revealed that Canadian plants also used unbounded silicone foam and Elastaseal based on indefensible test reports. The safe shutdown trains, typically consisting of wiring inside of cable trays used single-sided "fireproofing", consisting of sheet metal and proprietary intumescent sheets, for three dimensional cable trays. The disclosures were made public by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "The National" program, which caused the proceedings of the Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Nuclear Affairs to take place. Still, to this date, neither the NRC, nor the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission require product certification, which is mandatory for civilian construction.
Other theoretical consequences of a nuclear meltdown
If the reactor core becomes too hot, it might melt through the reactor vessel (although this has not happened to date) and the floor of the reactor chamber and descend until it becomes diluted by surrounding material and cooled enough to no longer melt through the material underneath, or until it hits groundwater. This type of nuclear meltdown is known as a China Syndrome. Note that a nuclear explosion does not happen in a nuclear meltdown due to the low fissility of the radioactive components. However, a steam explosion may occur if it hits water.
The geometry and presence of the coolant has a twin role, and both cools the reactor as well as slowing down emitted neutrons. The latter role is crucial to maintaining the chain-reaction, and so even without coolant the molten core is designed to be unable to form an uncontrolled critical mass (a recriticality). However, the molten reactor core will continue generating enough heat through unmoderated radioactive decay ('decay heat') to maintain or even increase its temperature.
Meltdowns that have occurred
A number of Russian nuclear submarines have experienced nuclear meltdowns. The only known large scale nuclear meltdowns at civilian nuclear power plants were in the Chernobyl disaster at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, in 1986, and the Three Mile Island accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, USA, in 1979, although there have been partial core meltdowns at:
- NRX, Ontario, Canada, in 1952
- EBR-I, Idaho, USA, in 1955
- Windscale, Sellafield, England, in 1957 (see Windscale fire)
- Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Simi Hills, California, in 1959
- SL-1, Idaho, USA in 1961. (US military)
- Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, Michigan, USA, in 1966
- Chapelcross, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, in 1967
- A1 plant at Jaslovské Bohunice, Czechoslovakia in 1977. 25% of the fuel elements in a heavy water moderated carbon dioxide cooled 100 MW(e) power reactor were damaged due to operator error. The operators failed to remove silica gel packs from a new fuel element. The silica gel was used to keep the unused fuel dry during storage and transport. The silica gel packs blocked the flow of the coolant resulting in overheating of the fuel and the pressure channel holding it. As a result of overheating the heavy water leaked into the part of the reactor where the fuel elements are accommodated, the cladding was subject to corrosion and a considerable amount of radioactivity leaked into the primary cooling circuit. Through leaks in the steam boilers (similar basic design to a MAGNOX or AGR plant) some parts of the secondary circuit became contaminated.
Not all of these were caused by a loss of coolant and in several cases (the Chernobyl disaster and the Windscale fire, for example) the meltdown was not the most severe problem.
See also
External links
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