Here's a chilling fact about nuclear reactors - I got this from the "A World Without Us" series, so take it with a grain of salt (I'm not sure how true it is but if it's true then, as I said, chilling):
"Spent" nuclear fuel is put in a cooling pond in a building on the facility where it cools for a long period of time. The pond's water is circulated by a pump that draws power from the NPP.
As the grid fails (due to EMP, wild load spikes, etc.) assuming the operators die or are evacuated or so forth, the untended systems will eventually fail-safe to a low power state. The cooling pond pumps in the spent fuel storage facilities will switch over to generator power which will last days, possibly weeks.
When the pumps fail, the water over the spent fuel rods will begin to boil off very, very quickly.
Within a few weeks, every completely untended nuclear power plant will be experiencing a mini-Chernobyl as the containment buildings catch fire, various gases build up and explode, and so on. Very nasty stuff.
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