Golmer's Blog

I’ve made it a hobby over the last 30 or so years to learn everything I could about everything nuclear. Some collect stamps, some candles. I read and study about nuclear reactors, weapons, accidents, storage, containment, and just about every other aspect of radioactivity. As a kid, my dad was an electrician at an Oklahoma Gas & Electric PWR reactor near Ada - I’m not sure if it was ever actually brought online. As a kid, my dad had pretty much the entire set of design plans for the plant electrical control systems. I poured over them like other kids pour over dinosaurs. He would bring his work home, and my sister and I were often pressed into service helping build the things, as kids relegated to cutting and stripping wire, getting the proper connectors, zip tying wire bundles, heat shrinking splices, etc. My stint in the military was almost one as a nuclear machinist mate - I decided to pick a rate at the last minute instead that had a larger amount of shore based rather than ship based time.

Suffice to say, given my hobby and recent events, I find nuclear reactor designs and plant layouts highly lacking. They are all a compromise on safety in deference to cost savings - the GE Mark I plant design in particular has been criticized from the beginning as flawed, and was estimated in 1995 to have a 90% containment failure rate in a loc/blackout event such as in Fukushima. That estimate, so far, is holding true. The primary problem, in my estimation, is in plant layout vice core design (although a few improvements in that area would be a plus too) layout - and reliance on active vs passive coolant in dire emergencies.

I have come up with a set of no-brainer design rules to mitigate even the worst case scenarios, the implementation of which will probably never be considered because the companies that make the damned plants would consider them too costly. I don’t think they are, but I digress. So here goes:

Thou shalt never colocate individual reactor plants in such a way or in such close proximity that damage at one reactor plant causes damage to or prohibits accident control at another plant.

Thy control facilities shall be physically located at a sufficient distance and with sufficient thermal and radiation shielding such that it is not rendered uninhabitable by any nuclear accident.

The emergency heat sink for thy plant shall be of sufficient volume to cool thy reactor indefinitely. Acceptable heat sinks include lakes, rivers, reservoirs, seas, and oceans.

Thy entire containment, both for the reactor and for spent fuel assemblies, shall be physically located below the lowest point of thy heat sink reservoir.

Thou shalt connect emergency cooling for thy reactor and spent fuel assemblies in such a way that gravity feeds the emergency coolant from thy heat sink passively, and sets up natural convection or flow within or through thy containment.

Thou shalt never design a nuclear power plant in such a way that emergency cooling relies on active pumping of any kind.

Thou shalt design thy reactor core in a modular manner, such that in a complete blackout and scram condition, the modular components physically separate so that a maximum volume of emergency coolant can passively reach the hottest portion of the inner core.

Thou shalt design all of thy containment layers to detect and mitigate hydrogen buildup and pressure conditions that exceed tolerable limits. Thou shalt not allow any explosive condition within any containment structure. If man can get a pressure cooker right, thou can get a relief valve or inert gas hydrogen displacement system in place.

Thou shalt keep, on site, sufficient material and earth moving equipment such that, even if the worst possible loss of coolant/core meltdown scenario were to occur, the on-site radiological material could be entombed well enough to prevent aerosol dispersal of contaminates.

Thou shalt estimate the worst possible set of geological, weather, and other natural disasters, and then engineer thy plant to withstand thrice the damage.