The Enviromental containment building is designed to take a light aircraft wanging into it, its double skinned. And can take a blow out of the secondary cooling system which is a serious amounts of high pressure steam.
Then within that there is the reactor containment vessel which is the bit you see pics of folk walking over which has all the primary coolant sytems in it and the heat exchanger for the steam generator in it. Then there is the reactor vessel itself which isn't exactly under engineered. The PWR's are at something like 150bar. If the primary coolant water leaks out of them the reaction stops because thats the moderator gone.
If you see how little damage that occurs when a light aircraft hits a normal building?
The current western Nuke's are a completely different kettle of fish compared to the ones currently in service. Some of the old eastern jobs are plain shocking.
If you stand in the middle of red square there are actually meant to be something like 16 reactors within a half mile radius. All of them zero energy jobs though like the one in Glasgow. Which always makes me laugh when I see the nuclear free zone signs. Should have a line under it say well apart from one nuclear reactor and all the nuke missles that get transported up to the store near Faslane.
Last edited by mad_jock; 2nd May 2012 at 19:59.