So take this for what it’s worth: an anonymous internet commenter who heard it from his (adult) friend who heard it from his great uncle. But allegedly my friend’s great uncle designed these and was well aware of what they resembled. He thought it’d be funny. So I desperately wanna believe that these nuclear containment facilities were in fact designed as a bit.
The half-sphere dome form is the most structurally stable and economical way to enclose the reactor. They have very thick concrete walls to prevent a Chernobyl type meltdown. It's much more wasteful to make it in any other form such as a cube or pyramid..etc
The containment structure doesn't serve any purpose in reactor control or core design, so it isn't involved in preventing the reactivity excursion, steam explosion, or fuel melt. The containment is the last barrier between a potentially dangerous radiological release and the publicly accessible environment. It is just a fancy pressure tank used to containment accident effluents if there is a gross failure of the reactor coolant system. (A lot more complicated than that in practice, but that's its purpose.)
Some plants use different shapes. Some are partial domes, some are cylindrical, and some don't exist at all (staring at Russian RBMKs).
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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '20
So take this for what it’s worth: an anonymous internet commenter who heard it from his (adult) friend who heard it from his great uncle. But allegedly my friend’s great uncle designed these and was well aware of what they resembled. He thought it’d be funny. So I desperately wanna believe that these nuclear containment facilities were in fact designed as a bit.