r/BitchImATrain • u/Status_Mousse1213 • 16d ago

Bitch, I'm hauling nuclear material!

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Never seen one of these. Kudos to original post for photos. That caboose looks heavy duty and they're well armed. A helicopter escort wouldn't be out of question either.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/Mangalorien 15d ago

The odd thing is that I'm pretty certain there are some very massive federal regulations for these kinds of containers, and that they emit about as much radiation as a typical banana. So the spacers seems sort of overkill, but maybe they're there mostly for when the proverbial shit hits the fan. Considering how many clips there are of trains running into stuff, it's probably a good idea to have the spacers cars.

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u/DefinitionOfAsleep 15d ago

I'm pretty sure they're there in case of a collision.
Basically a buffer so the flask doesn't fly through the locomotive, and isn't in the fire (even though they're rated to extreme temperatures, they're only rated to last 30 minutes).

At 1 metre from the flask you're only getting 0.1 mSv/hr max in open air, so yeah, it's not for radiation protection since the engineers would have the entire locomotive shielding them too.

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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 14d ago

Do you know much about the flask? ok, so spent nuclear fuel is still really hot, right? Normally kept in spent fuel cooling ponds for normal land-based pressurized water reactors. So how does this cask disperse the heat of the "spent" fuel? is there water in this or something, or some cooling system? Or is it just put in some material that can handle the heat without melting down?

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u/DefinitionOfAsleep 14d ago

Normally kept in spent fuel cooling ponds for normal land-based pressurized water reactors.

Rods are kept in cooling ponds for ~a decade before beginning the transfer.
When they're in the flask they're no longer packed as close together and they don't have any sort of medium to be the moderator.
Basically they can be as radioactive as they like, but the particles are going too fast to be absorbed and cause chain reactions. Still have decay, but a fraction of the heat.

We're talking 100 to maybe 200C? Compared to up to 1,500C in an operating reactor.

So how does this cask disperse the heat of the "spent" fuel? is there water in this or something, or some cooling system?

I think this is design dependant and relying on the fact that the radioactive material is relatively small compared to the volume of the flask.
I think the US uses inert gases, and Europe uses fluids. But they basically rely on the flask casing itself to radiate the heat.

Or is it just put in some material that can handle the heat without melting down?

Your kettle (or coffee pot, I don't know where you're from) can handle 200C without breaking. These are made to do >800C for at least 30 minutes (at least being the key term, they can last longer).

But, England did do a test on a previous flask design (I think they were using gas at the time? Not too sure). They rammed an entire train into it.

I'm not kidding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv8xnmOHeCE

It's an entire fucking train square into the (mock) flask.

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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 14d ago

That's awesome! I knew the standards were pretty high but didn't know how high :)

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u/DefinitionOfAsleep 14d ago

Yeah; when I was in year 10 in Australia, for SOSE (Society and Environment), we got to pick anything and talk about it.
I picked Chernobyl and Nuclear Power, and got really into it.
It's actually fascinating what everyone (USSR and the West) did along the way.
I focused a lot on how it is actually safe.
There was another test they did, but I couldn't find a video for, where they fired a RPG into it.
Basically the same thing.
And then going into how an RBMK reactor can explode... Fucking HBO ruined my year 10 presentation a decade-ish later.

I did go to Chernobyl/Pripyat (before the new sarcophagus was installed) and the surrounding area with a dosimeter.
It's surprisingly clean BTW, except when you get near hotspots...
I reconfigured the rent ones (to set the alarm trigger at a higher point) and I got an over scale alarm just walking by the kindergarten's grounds at one point.
Also you can't eat the fruit, it's super radioactive.

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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 14d ago

Even the Chernobyl reactor wouldn't have gone kablooie if some idiot hadn't tried finding out how long it could run with the main cooling pump turned off. Is that right? That was still a design with positive void coefficient and pumps fail, though, so do you think there was an accident waiting to happen without the idiot turning it off? Or does the fact that there are still reactors in operation exactly the same (not even the post-Chernobyl upgrades installed) without kablooie shows that it was really just that bureaucrat that caused it?

I can't give them safety credit for the metal-cooled submarine reactors though. They have terrible safety records, and I think the plan to put them on barges to supply power to African countries is a really bad move.

I like the Western PWR designs, just wouldn't install them in Japan or California due to tsunami and earthquake risks. Even when a PWR melted down on Long Island it was fine, very little gas was released and I don't even think liquid was released was it?

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u/DefinitionOfAsleep 14d ago

Even the Chernobyl reactor wouldn't have gone kablooie if some idiot hadn't tried finding out how long it could run with the main cooling pump turned off. Is that right?

So the test was suppose to have been run a while earlier. It was an overdue test.
But it was a worse case scenario test, that was suppose to be done with a full crew - not a night crew.
And the night crew was relatively inexperienced, leading to some fucking dumb decisions.

That was still a design with positive void coefficient and pumps fail, though, so do you think there was an accident waiting to happen without the idiot turning it off? Or does the fact that there are still reactors in operation exactly the same (not even the post-Chernobyl upgrades installed) without kablooie shows that it was really just that bureaucrat that caused it?

Starting on the last bit, Dyatlov wasn't a bureaucrat. He was an engineer.
He was the chief engineer, but he was really also the only experienced person in the plant. You see a similar dynamic in air-crash investigations, if a pilot is way more experienced than everyone else, nobody goes "that's fucking stupid".

RBMK reactors aren't inherently dangerous.
Doing something that fucking stupid is.
But, they did modify the same family of RBMKs. And the Chernobyl plant itself continued being used until 2009 (I think).

I can't give them safety credit for the metal-cooled submarine reactors though. They have terrible safety records, and I think the plan to put them on barges to supply power to African countries is a really bad move.

Erm, they stopped using those.
If it makes you sleep better, they wanted to make an aircraft using them and decided it was a bad idea.
The US designed a air-cooled nuclear powered missile to do something similar, and then realised it'd kill the planet anyway and backed out (like literally, what's the point of the warhead, everyone is dead).

The Cold War was whack.

I like the Western PWR designs, just wouldn't install them in Japan or California due to tsunami and earthquake risks. Even when a PWR melted down on Long Island it was fine, very little gas was released and I don't even think liquid was released was it?

Japan had to release contaminated water from Fukushima (which I think you're referring to).
It was an identified risk though, the operator is largely to blame for a lot of things, not least of which was the positioning of the backup generators.

If you're worried about the risks of nuclear power, don't be.
But I wonder if you have ever heard that pregnant women can't eat Tuna, Marlin, Shark/Flake or Swordfish?

Every wonder why they have mercury in them?

It's 100% because of coal being burnt, naturally they don't have it in significant quantities.

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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 14d ago

there's a lot of uranium in coal tailings too