Nuke Plant in Critical SItuation - in the Carolinas?

[HassleCat]

2. Why this sounds serious

OK, let's translate some of the technical gobbledegook. The disturbing part of this report is that it sounds like the system that circulates coolant through the reactor core is not working because the electrical system that supplies the coolant pumps has failed. That's why the diesel generators started automatically. I expect the system is set up to automatically switch the coolant pumps to the diesel generators when they start, so coolant should be flowing through the reactor core, I hope, as long as they keep the diesel generators running.

SCRAM just means they shut down the reactor by driving or dropping the control rods into the reactor core very quickly. The problem is, a reactor continues to produce lots of heat, called "decay heat," after it's shut down, so it has to be cooled or it will melt. The initial event sounds like what the tech geeks call a CLOFA, catastrophic loss of flow accident. In spite of the word "catastophic," this is not the worst kind of accident, and things will be OK if they can keep cooling the reactor after the SCRAM.