– Former Senior Reactor Operator: You can get a recriticality in Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — “Never ending fountain of particulates and gas” (VIDEO) (ENENews, May 20, 2012):
Subscription Only? Interview with Chris Harris
Nutrimedical Report, Host Bill Deagle
May 18, 2012Chris Harris, former licensed Senior Reactor Operator and engineer
His extensive career in the industry spans over 3 decades, and special training in severe accidents and mitigation strategies. Chris now works in Maryland for a consultant firm.
In the case of Unit 4… you can get a recriticality.
Here’s how that happens. To prevent criticality, you are depending on spacing of spent fuel in the racks. If you damage [fuel racks] where you’ve got a reduced spacing between assemblies, you’ve eliminated a guard against spontaneous fission. There’s still neutron emitters and water in the area to moderate… You could actually get a criticality in the fuel pool.
That would be a never ending process threes no way to shut that down.
Some of the fuel doesn’t have control blades, a boiling water reactor has control blades not control rods, so some of them are unbladed. Those would be ones where you may get a fission… of course if you have a fission and you’re going to generate more fission products, there you have another never ending fountain of particulates and gas.
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