A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity.[1]
Coverage[]
Nuclear power plants were featured in Toxic Revenge and was briefly mentioned in the documentary.
Documentary[]
The documentary briefly mentioned the nuclear power plants in 1 day after people when it is unlikely to meltdown. While the average reactor holds enough fuel to keep running for two years, the reactors would automatically shutdown into safe mode in little as two days without humans to consume the power generated by the plant.
Toxic Revenge[]
It was introduced in 1 day after people when the nuclear power plants across the world begins to shutdown into safe mode. Jim Riccio stated that once the power is lost outside the reactor, the safety systems shutdown the core as it was designed. A mechanical system automatically engages to halt the nuclear reactions but uranium is naturally radioactive and it is used for fuel in the plants, meaning it releases energetic particles as it decays, and there's more uranium at a nuclear plant than inside the reactors. Uranium in the core stops producing enough energy every 18 months to sustain the nuclear reaction and as it being replaced, the fuel is dangerously hot. Jim Riccio stated that the fuel becomes radioactive waste where it's thousands of times hotter than inside the core by thermally and radioactively and one would put it in the fuel pools to keep it cool. Freshly removed fuel rods reach a scalding 2,000 degrees and it takes 40 feet of water to maintained below 120 degrees to keep them from overheating. Jim Riccio stated that the amount of waste in the pool depends on how long the reactor is operated and he gave an example like the reactors in the United States where it operates between 30 to 40 years where it could have 5 to 10 times amount of radiation in the spent fuel pool that have in the core of the reactor. While the cooling pool continues to be harmless, danger is simmering beneath the surface, foreshadowing the next event.
In 10 days after people, the discarded fuel rods became the prime for toxic reawakening. Spent fuel rods were kept below water for up to 10 years before were cool enough to be removed safely in the time of humans, but after people and the lost of power to the cooling pools, the heat from the rods cause the water to boil away. Once the water level dips below the tops of the rod and temperature hits 700 degrees, the entire pool becomes a bonfire. Jim Riccio stated that would help propel all the radiation worth of 10 to 20 cores of spent fuel pools out into the environment and whenever which way the wind blew, the areas would be contaminated. Nothing is safe across the miles of areas in each direction as the invisible killer is unleashed into the environment.
In 1 year after people, miles wide of dead zones leave a scar across nuclear power plants where the overheated fuel rods burst into flames. It already happens once at Chernobyl in the time of humans, caused by a malfunctioning nuclear reactor in the former Soviet Union, where radiation decimated pine forests within a 2 mile radius wrought by the failure of one power plant. After people, hundreds of sites where spent fuel rods have unleash the deadly radiation. Jim Riccio stated that there are 440 commercial reactor sites including the military that would become irradiated dead zones.
The fate of one nuclear power plant is revealed 175 years after people. The dead zones around this particular facility have finally recovered, and trees dominate the landscape. Still looming over the area are the iconic cooling towers that symbolized mankind mastery over the atom, but plant life clings to the rusting steel lattice frame that surrounds the concrete. Steven S. Ross stated that many nuclear power plants are in agricultural areas ideal for plants, and the wind will blow seeds in and give them the chance they need to grow. A steel lattice ring at the base supports the weight of the 500 foot high concrete structure, but the tower is losing the battle. Steven S. Ross stated that as soon as the cooling towers begin to fail, it will fail spectacularly where the ring would tilt and the tower slide right off the ring and collapse in a heap but it would not come down vertically instead it would slide, tip, and fail. The steel lattice rings at the base of the cooling towers finally fails and the man's once mighty nuclear power plants of the future are reduced to rubble as it slide, tip, and falls into the transformed forest.