Word: coolant
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...riveting entertainment. It is hard to recall a movie of recent years as absorbing, or as much fun, as The China Syndrome. That rather obscure title, by the way, refers to the theoretical destination of a plant's super-hot uranium core if it somehow lost its liquid coolant and burned through the floor, into the earth and onward to China...
...suggested that the plants are unsafe. But engineers from Pennsylvania's Duquesne Light Co., which operates one of the plants, and the Boston firm of Stone and Webster, which designed all five, found a mathematical defect in the computer program used to design some of the plants' coolant pipes so that they would be strong enough to withstand a major earthquake. The firms promptly reported their discovery to the commission. Even though it recognized that the probability of earthquakes in the area is small,* the commission ordered the shutdown until a new analysis could be undertaken...
...accident is possible has dictated safeguards that make the probability of its occurring infinitesimal. Nuclear reactors are enclosed in reinforced-concrete "containment vessels" capable of withstanding tremendous pressures from within. All reactors are equipped with automatic shut-off and multiple back-up systems so that any "loss of coolant" that could start a system on the slope toward a meltdown can be quickly corrected. The NRC maintains resident inspectors at many plants, makes unannounced inspections of others and, as last week's action demonstrates, is willing to shut down a plant for as long as necessary if there...
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...
...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° F), still far short of zir-caloy's melting point, soon settled back to 149° C (300° F). Exclaimed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Thomas Morley: "I pronounce this experiment...