Nuclear Power Plants and Enrichment Facilities

Nuclear war simulator is a detailed realistic simulation and visualization of large-scale nuclear conflicts with a focus on humanitarian consequences. It lets you design conflict scenarios and estimate the consequences using a population density map and realistic weapons effects.
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Zuxius
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Nuclear Power Plants and Enrichment Facilities

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Just curious if this simulator takes these facilities into account. As military/economic targets it is very understated just how these particular facilities pose an even worse “nuclear emergency” than a nuclear war. Unlike the “one-off” of atomic detonations and fallout, these destroyed or offline facilities would continue generating radioactive isotopes that’d make traditional ground-burst fallouts look clean by comparison. There is no doubt in my mind that a nuclear simulator must take nuclear power plants “melting down” into account to reveal the full carnage of a nuclear war, given nuclear power plants have longer lasting/ongoing disaster effects of the two.
Governments are pretty inept at quelling Nuclear Power Plant Disasters, even on a good day, but how well would they respond after a nuclear attack? I would say very poorly. So, is this a consideration?
I mean if your simulator is good enough to predict safe passage for prepper planning, what can it tell us about the nuclear power plant problem?
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EwaldvonKleist
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Re: Nuclear Power Plants and Enrichment Facilities

Post by EwaldvonKleist »

Zuxius wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 7:02 pm Just curious if this simulator takes these facilities into account. As military/economic targets it is very understated just how these particular facilities pose an even worse “nuclear emergency” than a nuclear war. Unlike the “one-off” of atomic detonations and fallout, these destroyed or offline facilities would continue generating radioactive isotopes that’d make traditional ground-burst fallouts look clean by comparison. There is no doubt in my mind that a nuclear simulator must take nuclear power plants “melting down” into account to reveal the full carnage of a nuclear war, given nuclear power plants have longer lasting/ongoing disaster effects of the two.
Governments are pretty inept at quelling Nuclear Power Plant Disasters, even on a good day, but how well would they respond after a nuclear attack? I would say very poorly. So, is this a consideration?
I mean if your simulator is good enough to predict safe passage for prepper planning, what can it tell us about the nuclear power plant problem?
After detonation of a nuclear warhead or a severe accident of a nuclear power plant, they are not qualitatively different. The continued danger of them results from their radioactive isotopes and their decay products if they are again radioactive, and the concern is more about particles that are absorbed by life than about the radiation going through the air.
Unless the nuclear power plant is deliberately targeted with a close explosion that leads to the core material being reduced to fine dust that can spread*, I would be more scared about chemical factories and pollution from combusting material and nuclear weapon induced fallout to be honest.
Nuclear materials tend to be not well soluble in water and the radioactive isotopes in reactor are protected by thick concrete and steel, so you are most likely only facing a meltdown due to destroyed reactor cooling. Which certainly is not good, but only involves corium melting into the ground (where it can't travel that well), without creation of fine particles.



As Dr. Strangelove has wisely counselled us, you want to have nuclear power plants prepared in mineshafts so a nucleus of the human race can survive the nuclear winter!
https://youtu.be/zZct-itCwPE?feature=shared


*Chernobyl in many ways was the absolute worst case. The explosion emanated from inside the reactor core, which lead to many small particles blown into the air by a kind of steam cannon. The Fukushima meltdowns were orders of magnitude less severe, since as far as the core was concerned, only a meltdown happened, though the weather structure of the reactor building was ripped by hydrogen explosions.
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