This article is to warn of a basic safety problem with virtually all nuclear power reactors all over the world. We are currently witnessing the terrible results of nuclear a plant disaster now taking place in Japan with even more dangerous results possible from the same reactors in the near future. Why did the Japanese reactor(s) fail? Or course there was first a very large quake which caused physical damage to some of the plants and this was quickly followed by the tsunami that stopped the cooling pumps and back-up pump power generators. Now two problems developed. First, the main reactor core begin to heat out-of-control because of the loss of cooling. Second, the spent fuel storage tank located above and to the side of the main reactor also lost its cooling system. The spent fuel tank also contained new fuel rods in a reactor that was "shut down" for maintenance. So now the real disaster to come was beginning. There was now no good way to cool the nuclear fuel, and it continued to heat-up becasuse of the loss of active cooling. If these older plants had the so-called "passive" water cooling system they would supposedly have been safe. But I submit to you that no cooling system, active or passive, that depends on water will be safe if there is a large enough earthquake, Why? Because the struture of any cooling system is subject to physical damage and loss of cooling fluid. There is no physical system that cannot be damaged by a quake or its aftermath especially plants that are located in coastal areas. Another danger to the older reactors that do not have passive cooling, is the extended loss of electrical power and fuel to power the back-up generators. What could possibly cause this? Well in the first place, all electrical systems and fuel delivery systems in the world depend on a fragile technical net of computers and other complex machinery that is now critical to our civililzation. What if a large meteor hits our planet causing widespread destruction? There are probably a lot of things that can happen to a civilization that is built like a house of cards ready to collapse with the slightest disturbance. But I am digressing. The main point I am trying to make is that there is only one real way to stop the chain reaction that takes place in a fission ractor core to stop a meltdown: You have to have a means, automatic or manual, of rapidly dispersing the fuel rods from each other so that they are no longer close enough to each other to be critical or even sub-critical in nuclear reactor engineering terms. So what is this way to stop the nuclear reaction permanently? It is actually a very simple solution. It is to simply to blow the reactor apart with a large high explosive charge that is activated either automatically or manually if (1) the reactor is over-heating, (2) the reactor cooling system has failed, and (3) there is no human over-ride signal received or possible. Yes this is an extreme measure, but it will be effective and used only as the last resort. Everyone thinks in terms of "core containment" when at the last resort they should be thinking in terms of "core dispersal". One thing that would make the explosive method more palatable perhaps is to make the final external continment structure large enough and srong enough to also contain the core dispersal explosion. Then you would have the more desirable situation of totally stoping the nuclear chain reaction but also containment of all of the remnants of the exploded core. So you people that believe that I am a "waco" or a deranged scientist, think about it and see if you have a better solution! Good luck!
