Probably be ok, as long as you didn’t dive to the bottom or pick upīut just to be sure, I got in touch with a friend of mine who works at a So, as far as swimming safety goes, the bottom line is that you’d Resistant to radiation than the delicate internal organs-received a Shoulder bag, where it sat close to his body, he could’ve been killed.Īs it was, the water protected him, and only his hand-a body part more The tubing was so radioactive that if he’d tucked it into a tool belt or It sank to a remote corner of the pool floor, where it sat unnoticed for It hadīeen accidentally sheared off while a capsule was being closed in 2006. In the reactor core, made highly radioactive by neutron flux. The object turned out to be protective tubing from a radiation monitor Higher-than-normal whole-body dose, and the dose in his right hand was The diver’s dosimeter badges showed that he’d received a The basket was dropped back in the water and the diver When the tool basket was lifted from the water, the room’s radiationĪlarms went off.
In the pool, he didn’t hear his radiation alarm. Was told to put it in his tool basket, which he did. The bottom of the pool and radioed his supervisor to ask what to do. He spotted an unidentified length of tubing on However, these divers have to be careful.Ī diver was servicing the spent fuel pool at the Leibstadt nuclear We know spent fuel pools can be safe to swim in because they’re You to swim in it, but it’s radioactive enough that it wouldn’t be legal Theyĭo a pretty good job of keeping the water clean, and it wouldn’t hurt If there’s corrosion in the spentįuel rod casings, there may be some fission products in the water. You mayĪctually receive a lower dose of radiation treading water in a spentįuel pool than walking around on the street. You would be shielded from most of that normal background dose. Wanted-the dose from the core would be less than the normal backgroundĭose you get walking around. Yet outside the outer boundary, you could swim around as long as you
Swimming to the bottom, touching your elbows to a fresh fuel canister,Īnd immediately swimming back up would probably be enough to kill you.
This would be the region of danger for fresh fuel rods: Based on the activity levels provided by Ontario Hydro in this The most highly radioactive fuel rods are those recently removed from a The water temperature in a fuel poolĬan in theory go as high as 50☌, but in practice they're generallyīetween 25☌ and 35☌-warmer than most pools but cooler than a hot tub.įor the kinds of radiation coming off spent nuclear fuel, every 7Ĭentimeters of water cuts the amount of radiation in half. Here’s the geometry of a typical fuel storage pool: One of these days we should probably figure that out. We haven’t really agreed on where to put those dry casks Water is goodįor both radiation shielding and cooling, so fuel is stored at theīottom of pools for a couple decades until it’s inert enough to be moved Spent fuel from nuclear reactors is highly radioactive. At that point, you wouldīlack out from fatigue and drown. Treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours. What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?Īssuming you’re a reasonably good swimmer, you could probably survive What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions comes out 9/13.
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