Word: coolant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...long as a coolant (water in most reactors) keeps flowing around the reactor core, it carries heat away, and the temperature stays under control. If the coolant is lost, the core begins to overheat, like a car with a broken radiator. The chain reaction promptly ceases because rising temperatures cause the fuel to expand, which increases the distances between individual atoms and makes it less likely that the neutrons emitted by one will hit the nucleus of another. But the spontaneous radioactive decay of nuclei goes on. The uncooled reactor core could eventually get hot enough to melt through...
...EXAMPLE of this negligence, according to the former project manager of the NRC, Robert Pollard, is the plan for new vents in reactor cooling systems. If a reactor overheats, hydrogen bubbles or steam form in the cooling system and prevent the coolant from flowing to the core. This happened...
...elsewhere were gradually piecing together the probable sequence of events that led to disaster (see diagram). The trouble seems to have begun Saturday, April 26, when a mishap caused a loss of the water that continuously cools the uranium fuel rods in the reactor's core. With the coolant gone, superheated steam could have triggered ) a series of irreversible reactions leading to a meltdown of the fuel and a blast that ripped through the roof of the building that housed Unit...
March 28, 1979. In the biggest U.S. mishap, one of two reactors at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa., lost its coolant because of equipment malfunctions and human error. The loss of coolant caused the radioactive fuel to overheat and led to a partial meltdown. Some radioactive material escaped, but a potentially major disaster was averted. Although no one is known to have died as a result of the accident, the hazard posed to local residents is still being debated...
With its black frame, red Naugahyde base and transparent plastic panels, it looks like a cross between a recreation-room bar and an aquarium. Its blue- tinted towers, washed by 200 gallons of liquid coolant, bubble and shimmer / like over-heated Lava Lites. Its nickname is "Bubbles," and it bears little resemblance to the computers that most Americans have seen. But the $17.6 million Cray-2 is a computer -- a supercomputer at that -- and it is the fastest one in operation today...