Especially when they may be sunk in coastal water or the port?
In: Engineering
When it comes to sunken nuclear vessels, there’s a whole bunch of safety measures in place to keep the ocean safe from any contamination. First off, these vessels are built with super strong containment structures that can handle all sorts of accidents without leaking any radioactive stuff. Plus, the fuel inside these reactors is designed to stay intact even under extreme conditions, so there’s less chance of any leaks happening. On top of that, they’ve got monitoring systems onboard that keep an eye on everything, so if something does go wrong, they can spot it right away and take action. Sometimes they even purposely sink these vessels in specific spots on the seabed where the risk of contamination is low, just to play it extra safe. And if, by some rare chance, there is a leak, there are cleanup and remediation plans ready to go to minimize any environmental impact. So yeah they’re designed with this in mind, which means we’re gucci.
Radiation does not leak out like a popped dye pack in water, running everywhere and spreading. Water is an excellent barrier to radiation. If you’ve ever seen a photo of a nuclear reactor, you’ll notice that it’s submerged in water, and standing above the reactor, looking down into the water, you are perfectly safe.
There are very, very few sunken nuclear vessels, the nine nuclear submarines are the only ones that come to mind. Water is an excellent moderator, that’s why we use it in reactors, so you have to be very close for a long time to be harmed. The oceans are so huge, covering 3/4 of the Earth, that a tiny fraction of ocean life gets close to one. Over time, some nuclear particles leak out, but again the tremendous volume of the ocean works pretty effectively to disperse the atoms very widely. Certainly there is contamination, but it’s only harmful when it gets above the background level.
The long and short of it is that it’s diluted to the point of not being relevant, especially because the sea is radioactive already.
Compared to a nuclear factory, the nuclear power generator in a warship is tiny. It’s also very well protected because if there were to be a breach in the nuclear generator, it would be catastrophic for the vessel. It’s basically a core of radioactive material, which gives off heat, and that heat is turned into electricity. So basically, it’s quite possible and even likely that a vessel of this type will have a catastrophic accident, and sink, without damaging the nuclear core, which is probably the most protected part of the ship. The nuclear cores are incredibly strong. It will probably degrade over time and eventually fail, but that will probably take a century or more if it’s intact when it sinks. At that point it’s at the bottom of the ocean and there isn’t enough radioactive material to cause an issue.
If it is indeed sunken in a port or shallow waters, the navy would most likely extricate the nuclear core. But like I said, it’s a relatively small amount of nuclear material so in most cases, it wouldn’t be catastrophic.
Until it was banned by international treaties in 1993, several nations routinely dumped their nuclear waste in the middle of the ocean. As others have said, water is pretty good at containing radioactivity, but sunken nuclear vessels probably make up a tiny fraction of the total nuclear waste that’s sitting at the bottom of the ocean.
Everyone in comments is saying how strong and protected the casing is around the radiation…
If the ship sunk deep enough, wouldn’t the pressure from the ocean cause it to eventually implode no matter how strong it was?
One thing to keep in mind is that there are about 4.5 billion tons of uranium dissolved the earths oceans. A sub is not going to make a blip being a very localized area.
I recall a story about a fuel rod pool diver. He saw some metal parts in the pool and decided to put them in his basket. When he came above water, his radiation detector went off, and he dropped them back into the pool.
The water between his hand and his chest where the detector was is enough to stop the radiation detector from going off. Fortunately, his hand/arm was the only thing that got irradiated.
Water is a really good insulator against radiation. The radiation from fresh fuel rods can be made indistinguishable from the radiation from the environment with ~2.5meters of water.
Compared to the vast size of the oceans, nuclear subs are very, very small. The contamination that they may leak does basically nothing.
The solution to pollution is dilution. This is why the Japanese decided to dump nuclear waste into the ocean after the incident at Fukushima. It was the best option to get rid of it without having much impact on the environment.
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