Word: breaking
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When Discussion Leader Tom DiBacco of American University announces a refreshment break, the others ignore him; they are busy drafting policy proposals at the corners of the room. DiBacco walks alone out to the foyer and picks up a Coke from the silver tureen...
...amount of hydrogen in the reactor kept growing, it could reach a level at which only a spark would be needed to set off a hydrogen-gas explosion. If the explosion were powerful enough, the core vessel might rupture and the concrete walls of the container building might break, exposing the surrounding area to the reactor's escaping radioactivity. One NRC official saw this eventuality as in some ways worse than a meltdown. Said he: "With a meltdown you get a warning of four to five hours that it has begun. There's no warning at all of an explosion...
...third choice was to lower the water level at the floor of the reactor room and pour fresh water in from the top, thus pushing the bubble toward the bottom and away from the fuel rods. Another possibility was to restart the reactor, generating heat and steam that might break up the bubble. But this option was ruled out because of fears that the control rods might be too bent to be lowered again; if so, the chain reaction could not be controlled...
...plumbing goes, nuclear power plants exceed Rube Goldberg's wildest fantasies. The basic idea sounds simple-unstable heavy atoms, like those of uranium 235, break up (fission). Scattered in all directions are electrically neutral particles called neutrons as well as fission products such as shortlived radioactive xenon, krypton and iodine. The neutrons hit still other atoms like errant billiard balls in a chain reaction that produces heat. But obtaining useful energy from this process can be extremely complex. Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant has two pressurized water reactors. Such reactors are based on a design pioneered...
...Crimson duo came back from a three-love deficit to even the final set at three-apiece, then threatened to break Navy's serve when it won the first three points of the seventh game...