This superheated core must be cooled with water to prevent overheating and an excessive buildup of steam, which can cause an explosion. In the event of a cooling failure, water gets injected to cool the fuel rods, and pressure builds. It contains boiling water and steam, and as temperature rises, so does pressure, since the steam can’t escape. “Basically, each uranium atom splits into two parts, and you get a whole soup of elements in the middle of the periodic table,” said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear engineer and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.Ī reactor is like a pressure cooker. In a working nuclear reactor, water gets pumped into the reactor’s heated core, boils, turns into steam and powers a turbine, generating electricity. These are radioactive fragments, such as barium, iodine and Cesium-137. As uranium atoms split, they produce heat, while creating what’s known as fission products. Under normal circumstances, energy is generated by harnessing the heat produced through an atom-splitting process called nuclear fission. Inside the core of the boiling water reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi facility are thousands of zirconium metal fuel rods, each stacked with ceramic pellets the size of pencil erasers. “But there are different steps along the way.” “This term ‘meltdown’ is being bandied about, and I think people think that you get the fuel hot and things start melting and become liquid,” said Charles Ferguson, physicist and president of the Federation of American Scientists. Which raises the questions: What exactly is a nuclear meltdown? And what is a partial meltdown?
#REACTOR MELTDOWN FULL#
After a powerful explosion on Tuesday, Japanese workers are still struggling to regain control of an earthquake and tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant amid worsening fears of a full meltdown.
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