03-09-2022, 08:29 PM
Lux Interior wrote:
These reactors have been shutdown for over twenty years. Their heat output would be minimal at this point.
https://medium.com/extremetech-access/ch...1eb3689cb7
Chernobyl Is Heating Up Again, and Scientists Aren’t Sure Why
Recently, engineers completed the construction of the New Safe Confinement (NSC). The NSC was supposed to stabilize the site, which is still highly radioactive and full of fissile material. However, some worrying signals have emerged from the sarcophagus covering the Unit Four reactor, suggesting the remains could still heat up and leak radiation into the environment all over again.
...Meltdowns such as the one at Chernobyl, and more recently at Japan’s Fukushima, are the result of a runaway chain reaction. As uranium fuel nuclei split apart, they release neutrons that strike other uranium atoms, causing them to split as well. The ISPNPP monitors neutron levels in the wrecked Unit Four building, which still contains a molten slurry of uranium fuel rods, zirconium cladding, graphite control rods, and melted sand. The room below the Unit Four reactor was once known as 305/2, but now it’s a vat containing tons of this semiliquid nuclear material. The team estimates half of the reactor’s original fuel is still locked up inside 305/2, so it’s not great news that neutron levels have doubled in the past four years...