Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Shelling a nuclear reactor is crazy

I keep seeing pieces about a big nuclear power plant in Ukraine getting shelled, presumably by the Russians.  This will lead to a Chernobyl style nuclear accident.  Reactors need electricity for instruments and lights and control rod positioning.  They also need cooling water and pumps that work.  One unlucky shell hit can knock any of this stuff out, or other essential stuff, and boom, radioactive reactor accident.  Last one (Chernobyl) was so bad they still cannot allow anyone within miles of the reactor site lest the radiation poison them. 

  Here in North America the prevailing winds are out of the west.  So any cloud of radioactive stuff gets blown east.  If prevailing winds work the same way in middle Europe then the cloud of radioactivity gets blown to the east, right into Russia.  Surely they don’t want that.  Even if the radiation stays in Ukraine, the Russians started the war to take over Ukraine.  Do they want to take it over after making a big patch of it radioactive?  How crazy are the Russians?

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