Well a silver lining to this. If they report all these catastrophic conditions, and nothing ends up happening, that will bolster our safety reputation. eating an 8.9 earthquake and coming out on top seems like good publicity in the long run.
Hope they are getting things sorted.
justin are these ads valves you are talking about the "shotgun valves" I heard about?
I don't know, never heard that term. ADS valves at peach bottom were "automatic depressurization system" valves. Meaning, if the sh*t really hit the fan, the reactor would depressurize itself, automatically. However, as far as I know, one of the first things all BWR operators do in the US is defeat the "automatic" part of this system during a scenario because you don't want an uncontrolled depressurization of the vessel and subsequent flooding with cold water. One of the key BWR operator fundamentals then becomes depressurizing the reactor when it becomes necessary, since it will no longer do it itself. So, all things being equal, if the sh*t hit the fan there big time, they should have something similar which would allow them to depressurize the reactor rapidly to the suppression feature, and maintain it that way almost indefinitely, so long as they have the ability to remove heat from containment.
"Shot gun valves?" Almost sounds like the explosive valves used to inject "standby liquid control," the one shot tank of borated water used during an ATWS to help shut down the reactor.
Oh, and to be more in depth, the "ADS valves" are simply a select few SRVs (safety relief valves) that have this extra special purpose. We had 11 SRVs at Peach Bottom, 5 of them were ADS valves. We also had 2 safety valves that lifted higher than the SRVs, for a total of 13 over-pressure protection valves.