To take my mind off the 400+ drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I was thumbing through the international section of the paper, and found this article about nuclear reactors in Russia.
Despite Western pressure to shut them down, there are still 11 Chernobyl-style reactors, also known RMBK reactors, operating in Russia. All of them are on the Western edge of Russia, near the cities of St. Petersburg (pop. 4.8 million), Smolensk (pop. 327,000) and Kursk (pop. 415,000). These reactors originally had a life-span of 30 years; they have now been extended to 45 years.
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| from www.wsj.com |
As per the article: "Many Western nuclear experts believe the RMBK reactors are among the world's most dangerous and still suffer from fundamental design shortcomings." Such as:
- No containment structure to keep in radiation in case of an accident. A containment structure is a standard feature on modern nuclear reactors.
- No central crucible to hold fuel rods. Each fuel rod sits in its own tube, so engineers have to monitor and maintain 1,000 separate tubes, instead of one central crucible.
Although Russia is rich in natural gas, they are reluctant to replace their aging stock of Soviet-era nuclear reactors with natural gas plants, because they prefer to export their natural gas for profit.
I hope that Europe will become less reliant on Russian natural gas soon, and that this will change the equation. In the meantime, let's all keep our fingers crossed.
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