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When The Electricity Goes Out In The Apocalypse |
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When an zombie apocalypse (or alien invasion, natural disaster, deadly contagion, etc.) happens the power grid will eventually go out. The reason for that is that the people who work in such places would want to go home to their families too. It would be their first priority so they wouldn’t show up to work when an apocalypse is happening and if they were already there they would want to leave. But that would be a huge problem if they were to suddenly stop working or to not show up at all.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that the employees may be force to continue working by the security, government, military, or whatnot to provide electricity for as long as possible. Or they’ll shut them down before they’re evacuated from the power plant. But again, that doesn’t seem likely because it is dangerous to leave a nuclear power plant unattended.
The power station, also referred to as a power plant (or generating plant), is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Most power stations in the world burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas to generate electricity. Others use nuclear power, but there is an increasing use of cleaner renewable sources such as solar, wind, wave and hydroelectric.
The problem is the nuclear power plants have a huge possibility in having a meltdown a few days after power loss. Of course, there are fail-safe mechanisms (SCRAM) put in place that triggers the nuclear plants to safety shut down in the absence of human maintenance. But they don’t always work because there could be other factors that could get in the way of it. A good example of this was the recent disaster in Fukushima Japan when a earthquake and tsunami caused compound equipment failures that resulted in coolant loss and subsequent reactor meltdown.
Also, the fail-safe system is run with emergency battery (which last long enough for the diesels to kick in) and backup diesel generators (there’s several weeks worth of fuel onsite – enough to last for 7 days or 30 days). It’s purpose is to keep the reactor cool after shutdown. However, that won’t last because nuclear plants (with very few exceptions) were only designed to survive local failures, not a full system by several weeks or years. So it would only be a matter of time, which some say it’d be a week or at best a month (it depends if there are any other complications) before the power plant begins to go critical.
When it does it won’t be like Chernobyl. That had explosions, in which the raging fire spread to consume large swaths of land and it released radioactive plumes that swept over Europe and ravaged a whole city unusable. Any living thing near ground zero during or soon after the meltdown got a lethal dose of radiation within minutes. Even til this day, which is three decades after the explosion it still leaks radiation and it will continue to do so in many more years. But despite the high radiation levels the wildlife is thriving in the area because the absence of humans. It is still not clear how badly the local wildlife has been affected by the radiation. However, what we do know is that the animals, plants, and mushrooms still contain so much radioactivity that they are unsafe for human consumption.
Instead the meltdown would probably be more similar to Three Mile Island accident, in which the cooling malfunction and human errors at the plant caused it to have a partial meltdown, that released dangerous radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. About two million people were exposed to small amounts of radiation as a result of it. The public was assured that there wouldn’t be any significant health impacts from the accident. However, some of the locals believe that the state of Pennsylvania hid the truth, such as the deletion of cancers (from the public record, abolition of the state’s tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide and including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.
Unfortunately, people might not know that they’re sick until it’s too late. The symptoms don’t happen quickly, unless they were expose to a lot or were too close to the source (in which case their radiation sickness would occur faster and be much more intense). After all, radiation is invisible; you cannot taste it, or smell it, or feel it on your fingers. So depending on the survivors location their exposure levels could differ.
Someone at the edge of the fallout may not have noticed anything was wrong with them until years later (in the discover of cancer or something else). Others may feel flu-like symptoms (expect nausea and vomiting, headaches, fatigue, and fever). A little bit of radiation can be treatable (but sadly, it might not be easily available or accessible in the apocalypse).
If they were closer to the radiation zone or within it, their symptoms would be worst. They would suffer a sunburn which would look like red patches, peeling skin, and sometimes blistering – which would show up within 24 hours (and hair starts falling out too). But at lethal levels the route to death would be miserably painful. They would suffer severe vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, and fever. Possibly unconsciousness and seizures too. Death would inevitable be within 48 hours.
If it all goes well, the loss of power would switch the system to backup generators which allows SCRAM to begin the progress of shutdown to the nuclear power plant This is done by lowering control rods and cooling the system with water. The system continues to do that until there’s no more water or fuel, but that should be enough time for it to cool down to safer levels so that it won’t meltdown.
If it doesn’t work, it should give people plenty of time to evacuate the area. The containment domes around the reactor cores would contain most of the radioactive release (unless something were to happen to them or something else went wrong). But I doubt anyone would want to go in to check just to be sure that it all went well. So to be on the safe side, it would probably be best that the survivors keep their distance from all nuclear power plants (10 miles or more). It would be good idea for them to prepare in advance and mark the location of each of the nuclear power plants on a map. And to also measure out the 10-mile to 50-mile zones around them, so that they can figure out safe routes to travel.
I’ve notice that in many zombie apocalypse stories (and those that have an zombie apocalypse plan) they tend to forget the danger of power plants, especially those that are nuclear. They don’t just shut off quickly with a flip of a switch. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), anyone living in a 10-mile radius of the plant would need to evacuate immediately because they would be hit with radiation plume. Outside the 10-mile zone, the NRC identifies a second zone that stretches out to 50 miles. Within this 50-mile zone, people won’t necessarily be directly affected, but food and water may become contaminated.
It’s important to know if you’re within the danger zone of a nuclear power plant and if so, where to go if you are. It’s also good to know what to wear to shield yourself from the radiation or what to take if you do get sick. This applies for your characters too because they would need to keep this in mind in the apocalypse. It would be another danger for them to deal with and it could also result in irradiated zombies.
Did you know that there are 61 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 99 nuclear reactors in 30 U.S. states? Of these nuclear plants, 36 have two or more reactors. They’re located mostly in the east coast, which majority are at risk for core damage (that can lead to water loss which can lead to a meltdown) from earthquakes. These nuclear plants were not designed for the serious stresses of a large quake.
Currently, there are 450 nuclear reactors in operation in some 30 countries around the world. And 60 plants in 16 countries that are under construction. The United States has by far the most, followed by France, Japan, China and Russia.
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 DamnBlackHeart · Sat Aug 18, 2018 @ 01:00am · 0 Comments |
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