After the EMP comes Nuclear Meltdown
September 15, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
An EMP (electro magnetic pulse), if big enough, will fry electronics, microelectronics, and will blow up transformers along the electrical power grid. Although a large nuclear blast high in the atmosphere will cause a wide ranging EMP affect, the most likely scenario of EMP devastation will come from our Sun. A monstrous solar flare. It certainly will happen, there is no doubt about that – even among scientists and government organizations. But… when…
The scenario:
First, high energy sunlight – mostly x-rays will ‘ionize’ (convert into ions, atoms or molecules with a net electric charge) Earth’s upper atmosphere, which will interfere with radio communications.
Next comes a radiation storm, potentially dangerous to unprotected astronauts.
Finally comes the real killer, a coronal mass ejection (CME), a slower moving cloud of charged particles that can take several days to reach the Earth. When a CME hits, the solar particles will interact with Earth’s magnetic field to produce powerful electromagnetic fluctuations. It is these fluctuations that will produce electrical currents in ‘conductive’ things here on Earth, such as our criss-crossing power lines suspended above our streets. As you may have witnessed during a powerful lightning strike, transformers will explode and burn up as these currents overload their design capacity.
The result:
Power across the land will be mostly gone. Satellites will be fried – no GPS, or communications. No cell phones. No working pumps for utilities or gasoline. No ATM’s. No modern day transactions or commerce. Distribution channels are closed. Transportation grinds to a halt. The clock is ticking towards chaos…
The power companies do have spare transformers. However, all reports indicate there are only fractional numbers available, and most studies indicate that it could take up to many years to resolve. By then of course, it will be a different world.
Nuclear Meltdown:
While civilization will rapidly deteriorate into chaos, the worst of it is just beginning to boil over. That is, the worlds 440 nuclear power plants (about 700 if you count all research reactors).
Nuclear reactors while running normally, are in a state of controlled meltdown as they heat water into steam which turns turbines that produce electricity. The only thing saving us from disaster is the constant supply of fresh cool water that keep the rods from melting down. The flow of water requires electricity and pumps, and working electronic systems to control them. If these systems are damaged, or the electricity is OFF, well, remember Fukushima??
Backup batteries will keep pumps running for a day or so. Diesel generators will keep pumps running as long as their is diesel fuel and spare parts on hand. The problem is, in our scenario the diesel fuel will run out (assuming that the generator works in the first place). Distribution will be down. Where will the fuel come from? Surely there will be some reactors saved, but common sense tells us that there will remain a very large number of nuclear plants that will suffer full-on meltdown. Imagine a hundred or more Fukushima’s – all at once.
There will hardly be a safe place on the planet should this occur. Soils will be permeated with radioactive particles, which when farmed will produce vegetables that glow in the dark – assuming that the Farmers are still alive. Top soils will need to be scraped off to access cleaner soils. Of course it will be much worse downwind from any nuclear plant. Unless you can survive underground for an extended period of time, living top side will be a life challenge, to say the least.
If you don’t think it can happen:
There will always be skeptics. Skepticism is a very good thing. However, do your own research and check on the 1859 Carrington Event. That solar event, had it occurred in modern time (and it will), it would have certainly produced results similar to the scenario above. These major solar events reportedly occur every 150 years or so. And, they can happen at any time, even during ‘off-peak’ of a solar cycle.
In conclusion:
The purpose of this article is NOT to fear monger, but to highlight your risk awareness of this eventual certainty. It may very well happen in your lifetime. Most people don’t think about these types of dangers or risks. I happen to think about them from time to time – must just be the way my brain is wired 
It is a good life insurance policy to factor risks into your life situation. A proportional amount of preparedness for various disaster scenarios is a very wise thing. In my opinion.
You may also be interested in USA – Safe Distance from Nuclear Power Plants
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Actually another event that could be catastrophic for all those nuclear power plants if there was a mass pandemic that occurred much like Stephen King’s movie The Stand. If all of a sudden there was some sort of flash plague that stop people from maintaining those plants and the electricity that comes into those plants then the whole planet is in trouble. I have thought about this before because the planet is due for a big time panademic. Of course all out war is another catalyst for power plant failure all over the planet.
The only risk is if the EMP/CME fries the generators. The generators (and diesel to run them) are there to provide time to get the plant safely shut down, not to keep it running week after week. I welcome any actual evidence that nuclear plants and their infrastructure are not equipped to handle CME/EMP.
There could be a couple that have problems, but not the “hundred or more” postulated.
To the statement “vegetables that glow in the dark”. What a load of … baloney. Are there glowing plants around Chrernobyl? Nagasaki? No. And if it wasn’t meant to be a literal statement, then it was exaggeration and fear mongering.
This article IS fear mongering and could have been written to inform, but instead is supposition that encourages the reader’s fear of something they don’t know about. I do think about these things, but not for very long, my dad designed nuclear power reactors. And I live downwind from one of the largest nuclear power facilities in the US.
@David, “vegetables that glow in the dark”, if you actually thought that this was meant to be a literal statement… whoaa… It was actually one of those statements that people will make in order to emphasize a point. The point was (is), would you purchase vegetables that are grown around Fukushima right now? Get it?
Enjoy your location downwind, is all I can say at the moment
(not a personal attack – just really surprised at the lens angle of your field of vision, so to speak)
I see just fine thanks. But my preps are done in an educated manner, not based on fear. (not a personal attack – just really surprised at how many of your posts leave it hanging as to how people can prepare for the threats you imagine)
No worries. Also, You make a good point that when an article is focused on ‘shock-and-awe’ (so as to get the attention of folks and maybe get them thinking…) it may help to complete the intention by offering ideas of solutions – or positive things that may help the reader to prepare – so it’s not all doom-and-gloom in those particular articles. I appreciate that you are reading the site and are communicating here.
@ David. I think Ken does a remarkable job of putting on day after day information about the world we all live in. Certain items of interest deserve to be fearful of, and the thought of an EMP event occurring again, which it will, is something to be concerned about. One has to look at Fukushima and imagine the nightmare of even ten of these because of failures from EMP. Just look at the nuclear reactor in Virginia that had problems because of a moderate size earthquake of either 5.9 or 5.8.
To further talk about how Ken can continue to put on stories and survival related information that I and others enjoy reading, day after day, and not get burned out or have writters block shows the intelligence and adaptablity of keeping everything fresh and new really says something about Ken. Other survival web sites become stale, not this one. On top of this Ken had much to do with his wife that had major medical problems. This article was pretty good and Ken tries to put a bit of humor into something like vegetables glowing in the dark. Please appreciate that this web site exists, as I and many others are.
Just to be clear there were NO problems at the North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia after the earthquake. There was NO radiation leak….
Quoted…..”After the Va. quake, generators at North Anna kicked on and the cooling process continued. One reactor remains shut down.” The one reactor is still shut down until it can be inspected to make “certain” there was no damage to it not because there was a problem.
@ Anonymous. Please check out http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/utilites-operation-dominion-northanna-idUSN1E78724S20110909 The Earthquake did something and it was ONLY a 5.8 or 5.9, ONLY. This was the point, ONLY. Imagine what much bigger quake could have done.
The Japanese event should be a wake-up call to the world. It doesn’t take very much to “tilt” this pin-ball machine. And as you know, when you ’tilt’, all control is lost. The flippers don’t work, the bumpers fail and there is only one possible fate…..down the losers hole. Only there will be NO extra ball…NO do-over….NO continuation of the game cause it’s….GAME OVER!
Time to build a subterranean home ! Even if you need to pool your funds together to get it done. A few families.
Sarah Angelina DeLagostti
@all; Peace out brothers and uhhh brothers! Unless of course chiller is a dudette. Ken’s general premise is correct. Fukushima, as I watched in horror, was two trains crashing head on; keystone cops play physicists; the three stooges and homer run three mile island DOH!!!! First, let’s distance ourselves from Japan and Fukushima. Without going into a lot of detail let’s just say that Japan bowed to political pressure by trying to downplay the situation and not ask for help, sorta like the Russians and the Kursk. Also everything that could have been done wrong, they did wrong. The third thing is the way they designed their containment facility. Whomever designed it with square corners and no concrete should be thrown on one of the reactors. Now let’s leave hyperbole’ land and concentrate on some other facts. First Ken has a great blog and his premise is not out of bounds. It prompts open debate and thought, which is good. I personally disagree with the degree of potential disaster of the premise and this is why. Can’t teach reactor building in one post but let’s just say we don’t build any COMPLETE facilities the way the Japanese do. They were using General Electric Pressurized Water Reactors which are just like most of our power plants here in the U.S. It is a very robust and tried and true design. None have ever failed. Fukushima’s back up power supply was not remote to or protected from the tsunami..stupid! When they lost power and back up power they panicked and started pumping sea water into the closed loop system of the reactor and I won’t try to explain how or why that is bad, it just was the wrong thing to do. Also, if they had left it alone it would have scrammed. This in turn caused the reactors to overheat in the piping system and explode. As I understand it from some DOE sources the explosions ruptured at least two of the Pressure vessels and all four containment buildings. When a well designed PWR is made all the guts are inside a very thick stainless steel vessel that keeps the reactor water pressure in. If the reactor is run correctly (key issue) the vessel will hold any normal working pressure and over pressure. The introduction of sea water negates all this fine technology and basically makes the reactor FUBAR, which is what the Japanese did. Why can’t that happen here. First, most reactors are not on the coast and yes I know about the one in Ca. Two it is my understanding that there are NO protocols to use sea water for cooling and one would hope that “Remember Fukushima” would come to mind. Three our pressure CONTAINMENT vessels, the big concrete (special high stength) domes, are round (stronger) they are over six feet thick, they have rebar the size of your bicep and are the most impregnable thing mankind has ever made. The DOE used an F4 Phantom (vietnam jet fighter)drone and flew it into a full sized mock up of a containment vessel. It scorched the outside and maybe flaked off some millimeters of concrete. Now back to Ken’s premise. If a reactor gets certain signals (seismic, explosions, over radiation, loss of electricity) they are designed to shut down automatically (to be scrammed). This is done a number of ways. First how does a reactor work. Fuel rods with Uranium fuel pellets are inserted into the vessel to a point that they reach an optimal thermal level and make steam to turn a turbine. To stop this thermal (fission) reaction is traumatic to the system if not done systematically. You can do it slowly as in a shut down where you pull out a particular sequence of rods over an extended period of time or you can do it fast as in a scram (emergency stop). There can also be control rods inserted that will absorb most of the neutrons generated in the reaction, stopping 98% of the fission taking place and hence the reactor stops sort of!!. When a reactor is scrammed it is hard on the reactor, it is conceivable that something could break, but not likely. If you have lost all flow, which is impossible if you leave it alone and let it do what it was supposed to. That’s what happened at TMI, the Homers there started dicking with the system and actually manually turned of the water when they thought they were turning it on and caused a partial fuel rod meltdown and FUBARed the reactor. So, with battery power (inside a shielded building)and a loss of external electricity the reactors in the U.S. will scram themselves. Will they all work? Don’t know, there would have to be a catastrophic failure in the reactor vessel at just the same time you went to scram an otherwise functional reactor. Could it happen, yes but not likely. Most western European reactors and containment is very similar. So I wouldn’t worry. Just don’t live near one. I am 120 miles absolutely due west of a double reactor system but the prevailing winds are almost never straight out of the west. The east European and other Soviet reactors and Chinese are the ones I would worry about. Now I’ve described a perfect shutdown scenario and this only applies under these circumstances. Chernobyl was a worst case scenario. Fukushima wasn’t nearly as bad. Good article Ken.
Just to clarify, all of the reactors at Fukushima are/were BWR, or ABWR, Boiling Water Reactor and Advanced Boiling Water Reactor. They were not pressurized water reactors, just thought it was worth mentioning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Reactor_data
I don’t want to sound like a jackass, but if you don’t even know what type of reactors were being used at Fukushima and you’re just assuming they were pressurized water reactors (when they were Boiling Water Reactors) you should probably refrain from commenting on the Fukushima situation.
The nuclear reactors are one thing, the spent fuel pools are another. They need to be contantly refreshed if not the water boil then the spent fuel catches fire and radionucleides go into the atmosphere.
The reactors can be shut down in case of emergency but the spent fuel pools are the big problem : when there’s no diesel left for the generators, all hell gets loose.
We should have a plan to get in the south hemisphere when this happens…
I would like to think that most nuclear plant operators would recognize the potential for nuclear meltdown and work to shutdown their reactors. I assume that if they can maintain water flow for a few days then they could effectively mitigate such a threat? Since I’m not well versed in nuclear plant operations I’m just guessing… and hoping for the best.
You can never walk away from a nuclear power plant as long as there is still radioactive decay occurring. As long as radioactive decay is occurring you need to make sure you have residual heat removal or else the heat will eventually burn a huge hole and at some point it may burn an opening to the outside world. A few days won’t cut it, more along the lines of a few decades/centuries (at the least).
You can shut down plant operations very easily and bring fission to a halt, but that won’t do anything in regards to residual heat. Any radioactive fuel source is going to produce heat as it decays. This is just one of the reasons we need a national storage site for nuclear waste.
If they had gone ahead with Yucca Mountain, it *MIGHT* have resulted in an exposure to the nearby public of about 1 mrem (1 millirem) per year for approximately 1,000,000 years. By comparison, you receive about 1300 to 1500 mrem per year if you smoke cigarettes. 1 mrem per year is not even significant, you probably receive around 50-75 mrem per year if you live in Denver or the Denver area.
Just FYI, U-235 has a half life of around 700 million years. That is to say, the time it takes half of the material to decay/go away is 700 million years. If you set aside 10 pounds of U-235 today, in 700 million years there would be approximately 5 pounds left.
As for getting rid of nuclear waste, sitting around in class throwing out ideas, the best ideas I was able to come up with were-
1- Launch it into the Sun. The main issue is this is not cost effective (the professor raised this issue right about the same time I was pointing out the main issue with my plan). Additionally there is the issue of waste being scattered over a wide area if something happens with the launch.
2- Seal the radioactive waste in the industry spec casks (they can withstand being hit by a train going 80 mph and they can withstand a collision into a brick wall at 65+ mph) and place them in the ocean. The casks I am referring to are basically the ones that the nuclear industry wanted to use to transport waste to Yucca Mountain but a lot of ignorant people were shouting about a “mobile Chernobyl” an utter impossibility, but nonetheless something they yelled about. If they are not going to approve Yucca Mountain the next best way to get rid of nuclear waste is to seal it in the casks and dump it somewhere, possibly the Caspian Sea or a large inland salt-water lake that is not used for drinking.
3- Pay a third world country to take the waste and store it… The main objection I saw with this plan is that they might cut corners and store it in an unsafe manner or they may just dump it in the sea after receiving the waste.
Right now they are pushing “temporary” on-site storage at each plant, which means each plant has to store the waste on-site in casks. This “temporary” storage scheme will basically become semi-permanent and then outright permanent. We’re going to have to live with the idea of every single nuclear power plant in the USA keeping large amounts of waste on-site, for decades to come, unless there is approval for a national storage site.
There is nothing wrong with using well-designed casks and placing the waste at Yucca Mountain, or in some body of water, but the radical environmentalists will never stand for such a thing to happen. Not to preach, but it seems to me that if they had their way, we’d either still be using candles or we’d be totally in the dark.
My view on Fukushima is that their safety systems would have been able to handle the earthquake OR the tsunami, one or the other, NOT BOTH. Of course it usually goes without saying that an earthquake can cause a tsunami. The massive earthquake was bad enough and they probably could have handled the situation, the safety systems in place would have sufficient for them to get by and recover. However, the earthquake, combined with the tsunami, meant that disaster was inevitable. Of the two disasters they suffered, the earthquake was the least worrisome in terms of damage to the plant; the tsunami was what really crushed the plant.
I don’t think it would have been unreasonable for the Japanese to mandate that their plants have a 40-50 foot barrier wall around the grounds of the facility, basically a sea-wall, to mitigate the risks posed by tsunamis and typhoons. There may very well be such policy changes in the future for the Japanese nuclear industry.
You have to design for the likely disasters in your area, which means in Ohio you design for massive tornadoes, in Florida or the Gulf states you design for major hurricanes and tornadoes, in California you design for major earthquakes. From what I know, the nuclear power plants in the area impacted by Katrina were built with category 5 hurricanes in mind and they were not damaged by Katrina. The same goes for Turkey Point in Miami, it was operational during Hurricane Andrew and it was DIRECTLY HIT, with containment sustaining NO damage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Incident_history
As for Katrina, I want to point out, the main plant in the impact zone, Waterford Nuclear Generating Station did halt operations, but that probably had more to do with considerations for plant personnel so they could be with their families. Of course it pretty much goes without saying that they kept a minimal crew of essential personnel on hand to make sure the plant was safe and that residual heat removal was not interrupted, but the plant itself ceased operations during Katrina and despite being impacted by a massive hurricane containment was not damaged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterford_Nuclear_Generating_Station
After the earthquake the reactors automatically shut down because the safety systems in place were operational and they functioned flawlessly. However, the tsunami came in and it just flooded out all of the systems used for residual heat removal, thus stopping the removal of the radioactive decay heat, making a melt-down inevitable (which is of course what happened).
The only safeguard I could think of, with my limited knowledge of nuclear plant designs (plant drawings/schematics is next semester) would be the use of some sort of manually operated system that can flood all of containment in the event of a major incident that destroys/wrecks the coolant systems and denies personnel physical access to containment. Perhaps it could be a system that can be activated manually/physically from outside of containment which can release a large amount of water to cover the reactor core. Perhaps something along the lines of a large water tower with a direct connection to containment, a connection that has physical/manual valves so that it can be manually activated/opened and containment can be flooded, of course that would only be a temporary solution as they would need a constant flow of water to keep things from heating.
If and when they put teams of experienced engineers to the task of finding something that will work as an adequate safety system, I have no doubt they’ll think up something far better than what I simply “thought up” with a five minute brainstorm. However, I do strongly suspect it will be a system whose activation/operation will be manual.
A major CME hitting Earth is a real threat. Happening maybe once every 200-500 years. Reactors being affected, as you say, is a high probability.
BUT, plants will not glow. Please remove that stupid comment. Yes, the soil will be irradiated and several inches of top soil will need to be scrapped off so as to grow safe healthy vegetables.
It will be a grim future.
The reference to ‘glowing plants’ was meant to add a bit of light humor to a sobering subject. The assumption made was that most people understand that plants will not literally ‘glow’ when irradiated… You are absolutely correct regarding the need to scrape off several inches of top soil.