• Question: What would happen if there was a nuclear station was suddenly abandoned? (Over yeas and years)

    Asked by Nicolaslamelas17 to Stuart, Richard, Lauren, katy, Anais on 10 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Anais Kahve

      Anais Kahve answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      If the power station was still working and producing power when it was abandoned then there would probably be some problems! People that work in nuclear power stations are highly trained scientists that know how to fix problems if things go wrong. So if all of the scientists suddenly left the power station and a problem occurred then no one would be able to fix it. Having said that, even if scientists are on site there can still be fatalities. Just look at what happened in Chernobyl on 26 April 1986. The power plant was in full operation and there were many scientists working there. Some problems were detected but the scientists wouldn’t solve the problem so the power plant exploded. The radioactive material that landed in the surrounding areas was cleaned up but you are still not allowed to go too close to the power plant because it is too radioactive and potentially dangerous.

    • Photo: Lauren Laing

      Lauren Laing answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      Anais is right! This would be bad! If radioactive material is left at the sitefor years and years and is not disposed of corrected, this can cause serious harm to wildlife and humans in the area. Nuclear waste can have drastically bad effects on life, causing cancerous growths, for instance, or causing genetic problems for many generations of animal and plants.

    • Photo: Stuart Atkinson

      Stuart Atkinson answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      If the core of the reactor was cooled and left alone then I imagine it would remain safe for a period until the control rods failed. The nuclear fuel is intended to generate lots of neutrons. When these collide with other atoms they create the nuclear chain reaction and ultimately generate electricity. The rods are moved in or out of the reactor core to increase slow down the reaction as required. The are constructed of neutron absorbing material. Once the rods became used up the core would start to over-heat and you would have a serious problem. It was a failure of the control rods that caused the Chernobyl disaster.

    • Photo: Richard Friend

      Richard Friend answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      I think we’ve learnt from disasters like Chernobyl and three mile island, and the reactors that are built now are much more advanced than they used to be, with a lot of safety mechanisms built in. I think if everything was OK and people just left a reactor then it would shut down by itself safely. It’s when problems happen, like in Fukushima, that you end up with a lot of nuclear material escaping. On the plus side, people have been back to Chernobyl recently to look at the wildlife there and it’s doing a lot better than they were expecting. Nature’s a lot more resilient than we give it credit for.

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