So what is the official amount of time that it takes to properly shut down a reactor?
I read somewhere on-line that it was 1-week.
Can anyone verify this?
I read somewhere on-line that it was 1-week.
Can anyone verify this?
What you have is a shut down reactor that is only producing decay heat but that is substantial enough to melt the metal fuel rods if the heat is not removed.
You have a simple heat exchanger that has reactor coolant flowing through it on one side and you typically have another cooler fluid on the other side of the heat exchanger. You of course have to have pumps circulate the fluid and of course you have to have electricity.
In practice though you use two heat exchangers because you don't want have sea water (or lake water)getting into the Reactor Coolant (if your heat exchanger developed a leak) as it would cause severe corrosion problems.
A typical plant can normally cool down at somewhat less than 100 deg F in an hour so starting at 500 some odd degrees it normally takes just a few hours once you start cooling down.
Cold in nuclear terms is less than 200 deg F so there can be no boiling at atmospheric pressure.
It took much longer to cool down because of loss of electric power. To cool then you have to boil off reactor coolant to remove heat and if you don't replace the water, the metal gets very hot, very quickly.