What is a nuclear SCRAM?

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In the movie *Shin Godzilla*, the humans came up with a blood coagulant and a plan to inject it into Godzilla in order to freeze him. It’s mentioned in the film that doing so would force him to perform a nuclear SCRAM since he’s fueled by an internal nuclear reactor. The coagulant works, shutting down his circulation (which is his cooling system), and causes him to freeze.

But what IS a nuclear SCRAM? i’ve looked it up before, but I just can’t seem to make heads or tails of it.

In: Physics

12 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I remember my first deployment on a nuclear aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, where they were conducting reactor safety drills, shutting down one reactor as the result of a simulated malfunction, and hearing the voice come over the 1MC (ship-wide comms) saying something to the effect of “Number one reactor failure. SCRAM number one reactor, SCRAM number one reactor!”.

Having spent several deployments aboard a conventional aircraft carrier, that’s when it hit me that I was aboard a different kind of beast, but knowing it was just a drill, it did sound pretty cool at the time.

As others have said, it originally stood for Safety Cut Rope Axe Man, which basically means an emergency drop of the control rods to block neutron transfer between the uranium fuel rods, which slows down, if not stops, the nuclear reaction in a reactor core.

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