Mr. Rawles,
Bill W. recently wrote about some of the possible consequences of nuclear power plants when the SHTF. Although I agree that a minimum safe distance during an individual plant emergency is 50 rather than 20 miles, I have to wonder if distance is that important 4 – 6 weeks out during a continent-wide event. I work for an electric cooperative and live less than 25 miles north of the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant in Virginia. During last summer’s earthquake, an electrical engineer told me the plant had tripped offline. I could not find this out from any news outlet on the internet. Nor could the engineer answer my real concern: did the backup cooling systems work? The lack of information left my wife (who was at home and scared from the house’s violent shaking) and I who was another 50 miles northeast at work, in an information blackout.
Nuclear plants have many backup systems from distribution electric facilities to generators and batteries, but in the event of an EMP, what are the chances for all of us on this planet? Obviously, the distribution electric system will be down. Are the generators EMP hardened, will they come online? They did not at Fukushima, and the mainstream media has elected to ignore the ongoing problems at this plant. Are the vents mechanical or do they require electricity that may not be available to operate? I count +/- 36 nuclear plants east of a line due south of Detroit to the Gulf of Mexico. If no safety systems are working and no one is there during a catastrophic event to operate them, will the +/- 36 plants (and a lot more counting all the nuclear plants in the U.S.) melt down, implode and spread an insane amount of radiation into the jet stream condemning everyone to a month-long agonizing death by radiation poisoning except for the political swells in the world’s capitols who will be evacuated to underground bunkers created at our expense? Given no secondary events like an earthquake, are most containment building strong enough to contain an uncontrolled chain reaction? Will the radiation be so strong that potassium iodide pills will not be enough? Would living in our basements for a year be adequate or simply too little too late?
I think it would be invaluable if one of your readers, a professional nuclear engineer could address the truly worst case scenario of an EMP attack over the entire country. Given that most plants store used fuel rods within the containment pools, the meltdown effects of each plant are intensified almost beyond imagination. – George C.