# Are US Navy Nuclear reactors "Fail Safe"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-us-navy-nuclear-reactors-fail-safe/289494>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 11, 2005, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-us-navy-nuclear-reactors-fail-safe/289494 "2005-02-11T00:47:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-us-navy-nuclear-reactors-fail-safe/289494/21 "2005-02-14T01:34:54Z")

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I thought K-19 had a loss of coolant casualty (I.E. reactor coolant leak) not a loss of flow (I.E. loss of coolant pumps).

So long as there is liquid water present in the core, no major fuel element failure is expected. Thus the mantra “keep the core covered”. In practice this means it’s possible to pump the contents of pretty much any tank or system into the reactor coolant system by one means or another. Granted you’d be having an incredibly bad day if you were hooking up firehoses to the sanitary systems (which, incidentally, is the step you get to after you _run out of seawater_… that’s right, they have a scenario for when you’ve pumped the entire ocean into the reactor compartment :dubious:), but at least you’re not sitting in ankle deep glow-in-the-dark water two feet away from a steam leak in a rubber suit trying to finish before the lenses of your eyes turn opaque and the cataracts make you too blind to see what you’re welding.

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**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-us-navy-nuclear-reactors-fail-safe/289494/22 "2005-02-14T02:00:42Z")

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Well, that’s an interesting smiley parsing error in that last post.

The red wine thing is a bit of the russian folklore built up out of the folks living around Chernobyl. It does contain iodine and alcohol is a diuretic, so it might not be completely bunk… but it would definitely be a “give them whatever they want if it will give them comfort” sort of deal. There are better ways to preload iodine.

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**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-us-navy-nuclear-reactors-fail-safe/289494/23 "2005-02-14T02:38:20Z")

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KI tablets being a very cheap and effective one.

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