After the apocalypse ??

[Jonas]

I have a question for you all in the UK. If you have a total grid failure and meltdowns of your nuclear power plants seem to be a certainty within a week or two, can you escape by boat? I was browsing around used boat sites and found several 30' "fixer-upper" sailboats available for really cheap prices here in the US. While I wouldn't look forward to the trip, I'm an old sailor, and a 30' sloop rig sailboat with a full keel and a reasonably competent master and family members for crew has a whole lot better chance of crossing the Atlantic Ocean intact than the same people have surviving in a nuclear wasteland. Cost for such a boat here would be in the $10,000 category, plus the work to fix her up, replace all the sheets and halyards, and maybe mend the sails.

[I-K-E]

if total grid down and a global SHTF then it would be possible to think about just taking a boat the question would be actually surviving a crossing (assuming you've got an ocean going yacht rather than a coastal one).

not sure how many on here would know how to cope if a storm hits or even sail the thing or know when the best time to sail across the atlantic to avoid the hurricane season and picking up the right currents to get across... we've got some very, very limited experience and it would be touch and go if we get across ...... There would be plenty to learn on the way

mind you I'm sure that a meltdown wouldn't happen just due to how much safety systems are installed the biggest issue would be the gradual decay of the infrastructure over the following decade that will eventually lead to leaks

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should be decades not just one

[Tartar Horde]

There's a huge marina full of weekend Gin palaces near me and I have given it some seriouse thought on getting out by boat. The easiest option for me would be to head out across the North Sea to the continent, I could operate an engine and have used sat navs for fishing at sea, but I would have no idea at all how to sail a ship. This would limit me as I would only be able to carry so much fuel. And to be honest I don't know where I'd go.

[I-K-E]

but in a global power out it would have to a EMP solar flare thing and gps would be be fried not sure about the boat engines

it would be back to sail and hopefully hitting a library to find out how to use a sextant and stars

[Binnie]

Been watching some doomsday preppers on tv. I'm getting good at spotting flaws in plans lol.

You'd have to sail faster than the wind to outrun the cloud of nasty stuff you are trying to outrun.

Worst case scenario, 30kt northwesterly wind, are you really gonna outrun that cloud??? I'm sure your 10k would be better spent elsewhere to be honest.

I don't think our whole grid would fail, from what I've read our grids lattice design offers some protection from emps etc.

[Tartar Horde]

That's a good point about outrunning the radiation. Any distance from the radiation would help, and given the wind directions in the UK anyone on a boat would be wise to head SW into the Atlantic when the plants go boom. The majority of Nuclear power station in the UK are Magnox reactors, the little piece below explains a little about their "safety" features.

The Magnox reactors were considered at the time to have a considerable degree of inherent safety because of their simple design, low power density, and gas coolant. Because of this they were not provided with secondary containment features. A safety design principle at the time was that of the "maximum credible accident", and the assumption was made that if the plant were designed to withstand that, then all other lesser but similar events would be encompassed. Loss of coolant accidents (at least those considered in the design) would not cause large-scale fuel failure as the Magnox cladding would retain the bulk of the radioactive material, assuming the reactor was rapidly shutdown (a SCRAM), because the decay heat could be removed by natural circulation of air. As the coolant is already a gas, explosive pressure buildup from boiling is not a risk, as happened in the catastrophic steam explosion at the Chernobyl accident. Failure of the reactor shutdown system to rapidly shut down the reactor, or failure of natural circulation, was not considered in the design. In 1967 Chapelcross experienced a fuel melt due to restricted gas flow in an individual channel and, although this was dealt with by the station crew without major incident, this event had not been designed or planned for, and the radioactivity released was greater than anticipated during the station design.
Now there are a lot of assumptions here given by the Nuclear industry, but not one of them has figured in a total breakdown and loss of power to all primary and secondary systems. It doesn't matter if the core is water cooled or gas cooled, there has to be circulation of coolant to stop rods heating up. In a total collapse and power failure the only thing controlling the time it takes for the Nuclear power station to melt down is the amount of back up fuel supply TPTB have to keep the secondary systems running. What happens when the power goes off and stays off? the "cores" may well be "shut down" but this is a misleading phrase as it implies there is no activity within the core, even if the core is shut down it remains extremely radioactive, hot and deadly to all life.

[Mortblanc]

If one looks at the location of reactor generating plants in the U.S it becomes obvious that there is a trend.

Whenever possible the designers locate the plant west of the city it will serve and no more than ten miles away. Often the urban sprawl cozies up right next to the plant walls.

In event of a meltdown the radiation will track across the population dense area within minutes of the event.

After our own 3 Mile Island incident many of these reactors were converted to natural gas.

It is quite odd to drive across the countryside and spot these converted cooling towers and knowing one would have been living in their shadows but for public outcry.

However, many of the most dense urban areas are still served by nuke plants, and almost every one of them is west of the city, upwind of the plant or there are a series of plants that completely encircle the city.

It is as if they intend to wipe out the urban population in any intense natural disaster.

[Highlander]

I am surprised that the plants are to the west of your cites, the prevailing winds are West to East arnt they?, so any contamination blows across the cities, if they built them to the East, then the wind would blow any contamination away,..... towards us..

[Jonas]

(26 April 2013, 20:51)Binnie Wrote: Been watching some doomsday preppers on tv. I'm getting good at spotting flaws in plans lol.

You'd have to sail faster than the wind to outrun the cloud of nasty stuff you are trying to outrun.

Worst case scenario, 30kt northwesterly wind, are you really gonna outrun that cloud??? I'm sure your 10k would be better spent elsewhere to be honest.

I don't think our whole grid would fail, from what I've read our grids lattice design offers some protection from emps etc.

Binnie, don't believe everything you see on TV!

The winds in the northern hemisphere are predominately out of the west - radiation clouds would be blown east. That's why my question was framed as sailing westward into the Atlantic. 30kt winds out of the NW with me tacking WSW or even SSW into the Atlantic from, say Padstow in Cornwall would be blowing the bad stuff in the opposite direction, away from me and my boat, so, yes, in this situation I really will outrun that cloud, since it's behind me and going in the opposite direction from me.

With this in mind, my original question still stands.

[Millwall_Dave]

even if our own reactors do not fail and release deadly levels of radioactive materiel there is a little country to the south of us inhabited by cheese eating surrender monkeys who produce 80% of their electricity from 50 ish operational nuclear reactors