Word: nrc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...NRC shuts some plants
Ever since the near disaster at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been debating whether to order the shutdown of other nukes designed and built by the same company, Babcock & Wilcox. Some of the watchdog agency's critics have had no doubts about what the NRC should do: they want a shutdown of all nuclear plants in the U.S. Cooler heads, however, pointed out that most of the plants have relatively good safety records. Besides, any major loss of generating capacity at the onset of the summer months-when electrical consumption...
...water through pipes and into the plant's auxiliary building, from which it could leak into the atmosphere. The technicians also point out that the pumps themselves produce heat, and could increase water pressure, cause vibrations or otherwise disturb the reactor's touchy, damaged core. As Robert Bernero, the NRC's on-site decommissioning expert, told TIME Correspondent Peter Stoler: "When you've got a napping tiger, you don't want to rattle its cage...
...rattling that cage is proving more difficult than anyone anticipated. But the NRC and its newly recruited experts from almost all over the nuclear map think they finally have a "non-textbook" solution that may succeed. For starters, they have settled on a series of complex, interlocking steps, some of which have already been initiated...
Every degree will be a battle. Even under the best of circumstances, Operation Teakettle will take at least five days to lower the core temperature the final 28° C. But the NRC team is determined not to hurry the process with pumps or other heavy-duty machinery. All in all, the technicians at Three Mile Island are cautiously optimistic. But even after cooldown, their job will not be done. They must still purge the stricken and perhaps permanently wrecked plant of its overburden of frighteningly dangerous radioactivity, a process that could easily go on for months. Then they must figure...