From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@mcs.net)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 06:54:02 MDT
At 12:31 AM 6/1/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Windscale. Idaho Falls. Brown's Ferry. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl.
>Who needs terrorists? Another Chernobyl seems far more likely.
>
>jm
Chernobyl was a design for failure, and built without any kind of realistic
containment. To top it all off, experiments to draw power from the energy
stored in the graphite core were run while the cooling system was partially
disabled.
Windscale was an AIR_COOLED reactor, and guess where the air came from?
They did install filters in the exhaust path, but the fire did a number on
them. To the credit of the British, I don't believe they built another one
like that. Along those lines, you forgot a couple of nuclear rocket
experiments in Nevada that had fission products in the exhaust.
Brown's Ferry proved that the safety systems work. Stupidity in using
flammable wiring and a worker using a flame to check for air flow damaged
the cabling, but the reactor remained safe. A success.
Three Mile Island released no significant radiation to the environment. The
containment worked.
We have the technology to produce SAFE reactors, if only someone will allow
them to be developed. Again, I must bring up the IFR at Argonne Labs, that
Clinton's administration killed off so efficiently.
A really scary one that everyone ignores was the Fermi plant outside
Detroit in the 1970's - a liquid sodium cooled fast breeder that actually
had a meltdown due to last minute addition of "safety" devices not in the
original plans. Check out the book "We Almost Lost Detroit".
Chuck Kuecker
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