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
It’s an emergency shutdown of a reactor.
In normal circumstance, control rods are inserted into the reactor core somewhat slowly. This allows the power level to come down, heat to dissipate, and so on.
In a scram, the rods are basically slammed into the core as quickly as they can be to immediately stop the reaction. The important part is heat – the rods (and nuclear fuel) may be damaged (melted) in a scram, and you may not be able to restart the reactor later. That doesn’t matter though, because you’ve avoided the crisis that caused you to scram in the first place.
It’s kinda like the difference between shutting down your laptop via the start menu vs popping the battery out. The second method will shut it down very, very quickly, but not necessarily in a way that’s good for the laptop.
Edit: this is ELI5. I’ll concede that in a normally functioning, controlled and stable reactor, a scram does not guarantee damage. However, in a normally functioning, controlled and stable reactor, a scram is not the usual shutdown method. Scramming a reactor is likely to cause damage to the reactor, precisely because it is not likely to be normally functioning, controlled and stable.
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