Nuclear Plants - Safe or Waste

i have many many nuclear plants in cities and i always wonder whether they will meltdown, i have never experienced a meltdown before, has any1 ever experienced one? if so what the heck happens?

There's a chance of a meltdown. Iirc that chance is higher if the city is revolting. What happens? You lose the plant, there's some pollution and maybe (also iirc) you'll lose some population.

Nuclear Plants are great, no problems at all as long as you keep the population happy.

Take a look at Catt's Everything You Wanted To Know About Power Plants article.

In short, nuclear plants only have a chance of melting down if the city goes into disorder, and even then only if you leave it in disorder until the following turn (i.e. do nothing.)

Exactly. As long as your cities don't go into civil disorder, they're perfectly safe. If only things could be that way in the real world...

yer too bad chernoble plant went bang

What happened at chernobyl can't really occur at US reactors. They have fundamental design differences. I wouldn't worry too much about our real power plants. Nuke plants in civ are still much more dangerous than real ones

Contrary to popular belief, Chernobyl, although obsolete, was safe. The meltdown of the reactor #4 had its primary cause in an irresponsabile behaviour of some people. The plant was set to produce power beyond its safe limits, and some security alerts and mechanisms were shut down at the moment of the accident.

You are basically right Tr1cky. They were testing the ability of the steam turbines to produce electricity as they were spinning down. The idea was to see if power could be maintained during an offsite power failure. To do the test the power level on the reactor had to be reduced to almost shut-down state. Unfortunately, the reactor did shut itself down...so to start it back up the operators removed almost all the control rods and shut down some automatic trip systems. When the reaction rate jumped, it was too fast for the operators to stop.
The russian RBMK reactor (chernobyl is of this type) is fundamentally different from US reactors, though. To not completely bore people, the end result is that RBMK's do not have negative feedback. In all US reactors, negative feedback causes reaction rate to decrease as temperature goes up. The reactor basically shuts itself down in emergencies.
While we are on the topic though, I just wanted to mention that there is a HUGE misconception about chernobyl. Most of you probably already know, but nuclear reactors are not bombs. They cannot cause nuclear explosions like bombs can. The chernobyl explosion was actually steam and hydrogen rapidly expanding and causing a pressure buildup that launched the reactor vessel lid through the roof of the building. (another key difference between chernobyl and US reactors.....no reinforced concrete containment building....chernobyl was just a regular factory with a reactor set up inside)

I just want to add something: They lifted the contorl rods, and when the power dramaticly increased, they quickly dropped them down again. And then another flaw showed up: The rods had weights on its ends to drop faster. I'm not sure what they're made from, but this material massively increases the power. In the seconds when the rods were dropping, the reactor power was about 100x higher than normal.

cfacosta said:

What happened at chernobyl can't really occur at US reactors. They have fundamental design differences. I wouldn't worry too much about our real power plants. Nuke plants in civ are still much more dangerous than real ones

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*cough* three mile island *cough*

It was differnet kind of explosion, and the heavy concrete armor reduced the damage.

Pentium said:

The rods had weights on its ends to drop faster. I'm not sure what they're made from, but this material massively increases the power.

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I wish you could explain this. The rods should be heavy enough to quickly drop into the core and catch the neutrons.

They had a thing, i think for faster dropping or maybe just for insulation or protection. But it was a moderator.

Three mile island didn't explode and the containment structure wasn't breached. In fact, the other TMI reactors around TMI 2 are still operating and people live nearby. Noone died in the accident and public records of illnesses in the surrounding area reported no increase in thyroid cancer beyond background levels. As opposed to this, Chernobyl sent trillions of curies of material into the atmosphere and deposited radioactive iodine as far away as Sweden. Health effects are still being felt today.

As far as the control rods go, here is a brief explanation of why they got into trouble. There are varying degrees of accidents that can happen with reaction rate increases. Depending on how much positive reactivity is inserted (this just means how badly you ****ed up), the reactor will operate differently. A properly working reactor is said to be critical (contrary to what movies portray). When positive reactivity is introduced, the reactor goes super-critical and the reaction rate starts increasing. The neutron lifetime is long enough so that humans can respond to the speed at which things change. If too much reactivity is inserted, the reactor goes prompt-critical. This means that the prompt neutrons (neutrons emmitted directly from fissioned nucleus) are enough to keep the reaction rate going. The lifetime for a prompt neutron is 1*10^-4 seconds. That means that things change at a rate too fast for just about any type of intervention. The control rods drop fast....but not fast enough.