MANILA, Philippines—Experts say a nuclear meltdown is no “China Syndrome,”—a reference to the 1979 movie starring Jane Fonda in which a melting reactor core breaks through the containment barriers below it.
In this fictional Hollywood scenario, the process goes out of control and the fuel eats through the steel floor and goes through the core of the Earth all the way to China.
Nuclear consultant Lake Barrett told USA Today that this “didn’t even happen at Chernobyl,” referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster in the Soviet Ukraine described as the worst in history. A power surge in the Chernobyl plant led to explosions and a reactor fire, sending radioactive material into the air.
Station blackout
Physicist Ken Bergeron in Scientific American describes the emergency in Japan’s nuclear plants struck by Friday’s massive earthquake and tsunami as a “station blackout.” This is the loss of power off-site leading to “a subsequent failure of emergency power on-site—the diesel generators.”
Without the electricity to pump and circulate the coolant through the reactor core, the core starts to overheat.
The core is located inside a reactor, which is inside a containment vessel. Bergeron says the worst-case scenario is if a core melts, it will melt through the steel vessel onto the containment floor, spreading like lava. This will result in a containment failure “in a matter of less than a day.”
Radiation effects
Radioactive material will then escape to the environment.
Exposure to a lot of radiation during a short period, such as from a radiation emergency, can cause burns or radiation sickness. Symptoms of radiation sickness include nausea, weakness, hair loss, skin burns, and reduced organ function.
Other long-term effects of radiation exposure include genetic mutations that affect fetuses or unborn children (smaller head or brain size, poorly formed eyes, abnormally slow growth and mental retardation), and genetic effects that are passed from parent to child.
Large enough exposure can cause premature aging or even death. Compiled by Eliza Victoria, Inquirer Research
Sources: nucleartourist.com; world-nuclear.org; Stanford University (Professor Emeritus John McCarthy); Scientific American; USA Today; “Radioactivity and Radiation” (US Environmental Science Division); “Radiation Exposure” (US National Library of Medicine); US Environmental Protection Agency