Gladimnotdaonly1 - I was thinking more along the lines of nuclear power plants with reactors and cooling pools not being monitored. 5% of Chernobyl's core produced enough radiation to contaminate the Northern Hemisphere. And look at how many plants we have. As of 1999 there were 436 plants in 32 countries, 104 of which were in the United States.
Zuzak: I would assume that the power plants would simply stop working, instead of exploding. The power would only go out when the generator stopped working, so the fail-safes would never be off when the generator is on. Chernobyl is a bad example, because nuclear power plants have since been modified for safety, and even at the time, US plants were safer than Soviet ones.


BanditJack:
It's not so much the plant, but the nuclear waste it produces. The waste has to be stored in cooling pools, so that they don't overheat, rapidly decay, and go critical (big boom). The pools cannot properly contain the heat unless cool water is constantly pumped through the system. When Z-day hits, the power plants operators are not going to be more immune than anyone else. Without those guys (and gals), the shit hits the fan. And the decaying uranium fuel rods that are in the plants themselves are producing enough heat to create enough steam to turn the turbines. When these decay enough to no longer do that job, they go into the cooling pools. That means that the active fuel rods are still a major threat, even if things...die smoothly? I'm not sure, but I thought that casks were relatively safe, in that they can be left alone without much maintenance, but it would seem that the materials would need to be re-layered every once in a while. I, living in Detroit, am utterly screwed if the local power plants can't be secured against the zed.

The fallout possible from the catastrophic failure of a nuclear power plant or cooling pool station, is a major, long term area denial. The radiation will have the same decaying effect on dead tissue as it does live tissue. This could increase the rate at which some zeds decompose. However, they're too stupid to stay out of the area.


McSkullcracken: Wow...I had not thought of this at all. This will certainly change some plans. Hopefully someone with some sort of nuclear authority already thought of this and the power plants have some non-electric dependent fail-safes to contain this. But any survival plan you may have had should probably still take these into account. Hopefully Z-Day isn't a total surprise, and somebody qualified will try to keep things from going catastrophic. Still, plan for the worst, hope for the best, remain realistic.


Thrawn5:I would say head for WA. (where I live), we only have a couple of reactors and they are all at Hanford (I should hope that the people there know how to turn their reactors off, they have had over 60 years experience with them).


Quickrace89: I'm guessing that there would be fail-safes that don't depend on electricity, hell, if we can think of stuff like that, I'm sure a $200,000 government guy can.


Mehillus: thank god i live in northern Canada.....


Dooran: Around here (Canada) we use CANDU reactors. The reaction is controlled by heavy water, but when that water is gone, the reaction ends. It CANNOT continue without the water medium. So the pumps stop, leaving only what is currently in there, and once that vaporizes off, the reaction is over. Chernobyl was using graphite, which catches fire, sending radioactive smoke into the air once it blew the lid. So, maybe the power plant itself will be contaminated, but there is little chance that these particular reactors will explode.


Biohazardouswithin: Almost all of the worlds active Nuclear power plants use an RPS (Reactor Protective System), that initiates what is called a SCRAM. The SCRAM is the control that keeps us all safe from meltdowns. It's tripped either by the operators or by any two of the following events: "High Power", a balancing between High nuclear power and a temperature level; "High Startup Rate" Activated below 10-4 percent power; "High Pressurizer Pressure"; "Low Reactor Coolant Flow"; "Thermal Margin/Low Pressure"; "High Containment Pressure"; "Low Steam Generator Level"; "Low Steam Generator Pressure"; "Loss of Load" (Main Turbine Trip). All of those different things causes the whole plant to go on SCRAM and shut down.

Yes, there are certain dangers involved in the use of nuclear power, but that’s WHY there are the aforementioned failsafe; Those are what shut down the reactor in the event of a problem.
Further, as a mass-level disaster occurs, reactor staff will in all likelihood shut the reactor down themselves; In the event they ARE the problem (that is, they’re skin jobs), the militry will forcibly, if necessary, take over and shut down the plants (that’s one of the leftover effects of Cold War-Era “Mutual Assured Destruction” thinking).
And stop the doom-and-gloom speak that has nothing to do with the realities (not EVERY reacotr was build out of half-baked bricks with no containment and manned by three guys so hung over on the vodka they still qualify as drunk).
Panic WILL kill; Calm will save your ass(ets).

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Lucifer'sHammer: I'd be less worried about Nuclear Reactors that Nuclear Bombs. The Nuclear Reactor at Three Mile Island barely released anything at all and look how big of a deal that was to the government? Sure the government would have other problem during Z-Day, but they wouldn't up nd just forget about the Nuclear Reactors. Any that looked like they were going to be overrun would probably be shutdown in enough time to avert meltdown. I'd be alot more scared of governments using Nukes as a last ditch effort to destory an overrun city. I case any one wants to read up on radiation and nuclear bombs go to this site: http://www.nukepills.com/docs/nuclear_war_survival_skills.pdf

It tells how to survive nuclear war and the effects of fallout, which by the way would be signifcantly less than any or even multipe reactor meltdowns...