Reply #16: Suppression pool

[benburch]

All of the BWRs here in Illinois have them. That much I know for sure. I assumed that all nuclear power stations had them, except possibly some of the "tiny" 50 MW and smaller plants like the long-closed Dresden-1 plant here. I am aware of some other plant designs that have a "core catcher" instead of the suppression pool. I am not an expert on PWRs.

The fuel cooling racks in the spent fuel pool are moderated by gap, that is the space between rods in the rack, physical moderation material built into the rack, and by the borated water, which also serves to remove heat from them. (They are quite physically hot when removed from the reactor, and remain so doe some time due to decay of the short half-life byproducts.)

Hitting the spent fuel pool as I described could remove all three sorts of moderation from the equation; by destroying the racks and by draining the moderating fluid. This would most likely result in criticality.