Civil.Savage said:
Nuclear plants use power to run their systems. They do not produce energy for their own consjmption. So the reactors cooling systems for example. Or the systems you would use to shutdown the reactor....
So coal plants can output power for maybe 4 days without human input. The auotmatic coal loaders would just run out of coal.
The NP's would receive prioritt for energy if people are prepared. And could shutdown reactors safely. But worst case scenario if no one is going to coal plants or NP. About 30 days till a lot of ***a
Eh, kind of. I could be wrong on this - not an expert on nuke plants by any means - but my understanding is that offsite power for a nuke plant is more about maintaining grid stability than provision of actual power. The grid is one big system. If the nuke plant is receiving power from the grid at one point and providing at the other, it surely is contributing to its own stability. But my understanding is they aren't designed to operate as power islands - ie, regulate the grid frequency themselves (tho surely this is possible with some designs - line naval nuclear reactors?).
But anyway I think most plants are sized to have sufficient power to do a completely shutdown during a LOOP event, no? Barring some kind of damage to the onside black power system, even an unplanned forced shutdown is possible.
If the whole grid goes down nuke isn't going to be the only problem. That's like level five zombie apocalypse kind of stuff. That means we've been screwed for quite some time.