In 1979, he left a movie called " China Syndrome "a thriller that tells the story of a reporter and cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd , and Wilford Brimley.
The title refers to the concept that if an American nuclear plant melts, it melts through the Earth until it reaches China. But China is a metaphor, because the opposite side of the planet United States is actually the Indian Ocean.
The film was released on March 16, 1979, just twelve days before the accident at Three Mile Island (Harrisburg, Pa.). The accident at the nuclear power plant Three Mile Island helped make this film a blockbuster.
Today, we know that after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, there is already a series of emergency to three nuclear plants Nipponese. Apparently they are afraid of occurrence of a core melt with the dreaded syndrome, China.
But ... What is reality? The media-and I've said before love to terrorize those who listen, read or watch, because on the one hand, they know the media that it sells and that is the business, though in the background are lying or exaggerating to make notes more dramatic. The large
nuclear plant ordered in late 1960, generated new questions about safety and fear that caused the serious accident of a nuclear reactor could release a large amount of radiation to the (media) environment and into the atmosphere.
In the early 1970's there was a continuing controversy in specialized technical press and even the mass media (especially the U.S.) on the performance of emergency systems, cooling water (cooling systems) of the cores of nuclear plants, designed to prevent melting of the core of a nuclear reactor, and may give rise to a syndrome of China.
In 1971, nuclear physicist Ralph Lapp used the term "China syndrome" to describe the casting of a nuclear reactor through its container, and the further penetration of it through the cement layer beneath it, with the consequent emergence of a hot mass of nuclear fuel in the ground surrounding the building. He based his statements on reports of a working group of nuclear physicists led by Dr. WK Ergen, who published their initial report in 1967.
Despite some nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island 1979, or the far more serious meltdown of Chernobyl 1986, the China Syndrome is a theoretical hypothesis certainly greatly exaggerated.
So then, what they call " meltdown" (meltdown) refers to the melting of the reactor fuel. The term has been applied in an irresponsible and even in cases of accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl 2, there was a significant melting of nuclear fuel and only in the latter case, there were some serious difficulties.
To understand more about it, you should know that nuclear plants remain "cool" by using water cooling systems. Why water? Because it possesses one of the largest heat capacity, ie, water can absorb a large amount of heat. (And I called attention to what chemical refrigerant is used instead of water in many internal combustion engines we use in cities. Is it a simple matter of business?).
However, overheating can occur due to loss of coolant in the cooling system of nuclear plant or for failures in the protection system of a reactor to shut it down when there is a major fault.
These conditions are usually out of the question because in the plant design ensures that this can not happen, due to redundancy and diversity protection of the reactor cooling systems and emergency core insulation systems of the container, as well as the structure of the container. Even with all this, there are procedures for cases and contingencies developed in this area.
If a meltdown occurs, there may be leaking radioactive material into the environment, but this can happen ONLY IF there is a major flaw in the structure of the container. For this were to happen, would also have to pass the following: 1. Overpressure in the container 2. system failure isolation contend, systems, and lines and valves by close.
The nuclear plant design attempts to reduce the occurrence of these events, which so far has occurred once in 250 years to the 400 reactors in use. It is impossible to say with 100% certainty that a core meltdown would never happen. Redundancy and diversity of nuclear plant systems, the federal regulations, the mandatory technical specifications, procedures for plant operation and training and professionalism of the operators give a defense to all these eventualities of a disaster.
Still, as any law of Morphy said: " if something can go wrong will go wrong " and this was the case of Chernobyl, where a test procedure, and due to a combination of poor design and operator error, began the following sequence:
- A peak power resulted in a pressure reactor coolant system , which caused a loss of coolant (usually water). This was not a nuclear explosion.
- This peak caused overheating in the reactor fuel
- Steam was generated in the graphite sobrcalentamiento resulted in a fire, which in turn resulted in the burning and dispersal of the contents of the nucleus.
New reactor designs make account of what happened in the Chernobyl accident and now using graphite, avoiding the possibility of another problem similar to what occurred at the time.
So how bad can be a core melt of a plant of this nature? To answer this question, one must know that almost everything on the planet emits some natural radiation. Comes even cosmic rays, power supplies (bananas are the food more radiation), radon gas, granite and other dense rock. So then, if we quantify the damage from the Chernobyl accident, estimating the amount of radioactive emissions that escaped nuclear plant We compare radiation a person receives in a normal environment.
For example, the estimated radiation doses at Chernobyl was 80 000 Sivertsen. A person in Europe is half a million a year sieverts. So then, in the case of the Russian nuclear plant, this is about a sixth. Moreover, the radiation detected in Western Europe by radiation from Chernobyl was 0.02 mrem (in Portuigal) to 38 mrem (in some parts of Germany). Just for comparison, the dose of radiation received by eating a banana a day per year is about 3.3 mrem.
Consequently, nuclear accidents, at least those that have occurred since there Nuclear plants are not as tragic as the media would have us see. Films like China Syndrome simply make the imagination of people and to what is nothing more than a movie with a veneer of fiction, we tend to believe that the world will end almost. Curiously, this phenomenon was repeated with the movie "Jaws" (Shark), which is what finally got the audience to stay with the impression that sharks are bloodthirsty murderers all about people.
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