February 14, 2005
Geek Gripe
So I’ve been sucked in by this season of 24 - the office politics ring true, and there’s no wacky subtext about addiction, whatever. Good stuff.
However, this day’s terrorist plot involves Turks planting code in the control systems of civilian nuke plants, with the intent of melting the plants down. I’m cool with that, even though it’d be unthinkable to build a reactor without a purely mechanical shutdown mechanism. There’s containment buildings, etc. Three Mile Island was an almost comlete core meltdown, and there was minimal radiation released. But it’s good writing, good plot, whatever. Suspension of disbelief.
My gripe, though, was today. The Secretary of Defense was briefing the President on the couple of reactors that were under terrorist control, and said “The reactors will go critical within the hour.” I waited for the bad news, but apparently that was it.
Here’s the dime tour: Critical does not mean that a reactor is going to melt down. Critical is actually a good thing - when a reactor is critical, it is operating at a constant power level. Critical means that the reaction is “self-sustaining’, that for every fission, one and only one future fission is being caused. Even supercritical is not a bad thing - Supercritical just means that the power level of the reactor is increasing. Kind of like stepping on the gas.
I hear “The Reactor is Critical”, and I think “Very well, make the engine-room ready to recieve steam. Raise Reactor Power to the point of adding heat”. Depending on what you want to do, “The reactor is critical” is a very good thing.
Here’s the other reason “The Reactor is critical” shouldn’t raise hackles - Three Mile island was shut down when it melted down. Yeah. Sub-critical. TMI melted down because the operators failed to remove what’s known as “decay heat”, or the heat generated by the decay reactions of the fission products left over after power operations.
But griping about it won’t change it. It’s just a pet peeve. The series is really good.
Posted by jank at February 14, 2005 8:30 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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