Dead Reign vs. Nuclear Reactors

[bigbobsr6000]

In light of recent events, survivers have even more to worry about that the Zombie apocalypse. Without the workers all nuke plants will go critical, releasing radiation into the air, ground, water, etc.

Not only land based nuke plants, one has to consider all the nuke powered ships and subs going awry as well.

I was wondering has anyone considered this for Dead Reign? It would add more urgency to escaping the area nuke plants are in, especially if the campaign starts day one of the apocalypse.

PCs would/could encounter suviviers suffering from radiation sickness, contaminated areas, radioactive fallout, radioactive Zombies, acid rain, etc.

This brings up all kinds of scenarioes of danger. If the plant is not visibly seen, PCs may not know of this danger as the nuke plant could be several miles away. Only the prevailing winds would determine the amount of contamination (if any) they would receive.

Another twist, radiation sickness signs might convince others that person(s) is about/has changed into a Zombie.

The plants would only remain stable as long as the cooling pumps are running. Considering electricity would/could stay on for awhile, then backup generators kick on when power goes out keeping things cool for awhile. Plus the time to go crictial after all this fails, I think 1d4+3 days would be a reasonable time span.

Comments welcome.

[azazel1024]

AFAIK all naval reactors can operate under computer control until their fuel expires. Now if something comes up, they'd possibly need human intervention, but they should be fine if all human disappeared tomorrow.

Civilian reactors would probably vary. It might not be a big deal. Most should operate fine on automatic so long as nothing disrupts them. Even when the grid drops out they should go to safe shutdown mode automatically. Or, since humans didn't just all turn to zombies in a second, I'd think as the situation got worse, most plants would have the skeleton crew who was left there (who hadn't come down with the virus, or stayed home) would likely put the plant in to safe mode.

Now you'll have problems once spent fuel pools dry out eventually. However, the worst you might be looking at is high levels of radiation in the surrounding few miles or drinking water immediately around the plant. Chernobyl was kind of an oddity in its design. My heart weeps over what happened and what is still happening in Japan right now, but even a worst case scenario with the reactors there is a pale immitation of what happened with Chernobyl.

Now that isn't to say there won't be fall out hundreds of miles away, but it is going to be much more minor than Chernobyl was. You also aren't going to have clouds of radiation presisting for years. All of the radioactives are going to burn within a matter of days/weeks of the initial on set (now it might occur months later when the pools have dried enough in some situations, likely within days if steps aren't taken to properly dispose of the spent fuel in the temporary pools). They are then going to precipitate out of the atmosphere down wind at some distance.

Radiation levels from Chernobyl have dropped considerably since then, and it was a lot more wide spread and much higher concentrations because of the design of the reactor than 97% of the reactors around today. You could live a couple of miles from the reactor with possibly no long term health problems if you lived there a few years, maybe not even if you lived the rest of your life there.

That wouldn't make it healthy to be within a few miles of most reactors when things went to pot...but things wouldn't be all that wide spread.

[bigbobsr6000]

Thanks for the comments and info.

[Misfit KotLD]

You might find this useful too.

[bigbobsr6000]

Watch the "Life after people" series. Refineries are going to be blowing up left and right, environmental disaster on a scale you wouldn't believe....

Seen them all, and thanks.

[Severus Snape]

Dead Reign vs. Nuclear Reactors? I think the reactors win hands down, but I'd pay money to watch that.