{"id":604,"date":"2015-10-17T17:12:51","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T01:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/?p=604"},"modified":"2015-10-17T17:13:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T01:13:52","slug":"solar-flare-nuclear-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/2015\/10\/17\/solar-flare-nuclear-meltdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Flare – Nuclear Meltdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We’ve all heard about the potential disaster another Carrington Event like solar flare could cause to our power grid.\u00a0 Melted transformers taking weeks, months, maybe years to replace.\u00a0 The end of civilization as we know it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Something not mentioned, so I’m going to mention it here, is the effect such an event would have on nuclear reactors.\u00a0 Nuclear reactors require constant cooling water flow.\u00a0 Even when a plant is shut down, control rods in place, it still generates a tremendous amount of heat because most of the fission products continue to decay for some time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nuclear power plants get the power to cool the reactors off site because even if the reactor is not operational it still requires cooling to prevent a melt-down.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This off-site power is delivered via high voltage lines that have transformers at each end of the circuit.\u00a0 These lines are subject to induction of huge low frequency currents that could burn out said transformers in the event of a large solar event.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In a massive event it may not be possible to keep the backup generators fueled.\u00a0 When they run out of fuel you have a meltdown like Fukushima.\u00a0 A large solar event taking down our power grid could result in hundreds of Fukushimas right here at home.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We’ve all heard about the potential disaster another Carrington Event like solar flare could cause to our power grid.\u00a0 Melted transformers taking weeks, months, maybe years to replace.\u00a0 The end of civilization as we know it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Something not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eskimo.com\/~nanook\/future\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}