Word: blowdowns
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Animals are also reappearing. Pocket gophers, once regarded as pests because they eat young conifers, may prove to be man's allies: their labyrinthine burrowing improves soil aeration and helps water flow through the compacted ash. Elk and deer have been spotted around water sources in the blowdown area. Though fish are unlikely to be seen in Spirit Lake for years, bacteria and algae have colonized the lakes to become the first link in a developing food chain. The insect population was heavily damaged, but scientists are now finding ladybugs feeding on the sap of green bracken ferns, which...
...computer is programmed to drop the control rods back into the core. That curtails the core's chain reaction, but heat is still given off. If the core's temperature rises precipitously as a result of the problem, possibly a loss of cooling fluid (a "blowdown"), the computer will activate an emergency core cooling system. That system should quickly dump thousands of gallons of water on the hot core, preventing what has become known as a "meltdown," in which the fuel melts through the floor of the containment building into the ground and possibly erupts in a geyser...
That gloomy scenario is, happily, still no more than hypothetical. But could such a blowdown, as scientists call it, really occur? Most officials say the risk is infinitesimally small. Even if a loss of coolant did occur, the reactor's back-up emergency core cooling system would presumably swing into action. Critics remain unpersuaded. They point out that there has never been a real test of a core cooling system in the 27 years of atomic power...
Last week, near snow-swept Mud Lake, Idaho, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission undertook to allay fears. It staged a nuclear accident in miniature, deliberately sabotaging a small test reactor's primary cooling system to see if the back-up system would avert a blowdown...
...million exercise was officially dubbed a Loss of Fluid test (LOFT). It was held in the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. As some 200 scientists and technicians paced anxiously, the countdown began. On signal, two blowdown pipe valves snapped open, simulating a rupture. In a flash, reactor cooling fluid escaped. As the core's temperature soared, the secondary cooling system also failed, again according to plan. Then after only 17 seconds, the third system's coolant began pouring hundreds of gallons of water on the hot core. Its temperature, which had jumped to 516° C (960?...