Word: nrc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cesium 137 bombards it with gamma rays, killing insects and bacteria and sometimes slowing ripening. The food does not become radioactive. "There's nothing in common at all between a nuclear reactor like Chernobyl and an irradiator," says Karl Abraham, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "It's like comparing bananas to tigers." Treated food "can be immediately eaten," says George Giddings, director of food irradiation at Isomedix...
...fact, several better designs already exist, all of them much less susceptible to disaster than the conventional light-water reactors currently in use in the U.S. But according to M.I.T. Nuclear Engineer Lawrence Lidsky, a consultant on the NRC study, only one of these is truly disaster-proof: the modular high-temperature gas reactor, a prototype of which has already successfully been tested in West Germany. If anything goes wrong, says Lidsky, the MHTGR simply cools down, without releasing any radiation. "It eliminates the accident of greatest concern," agrees Alan Crane, senior associate at the Office of Technology Assessment...
...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...
...vents allowed the bubbles to escape required manual operation. But after the accident no one could enter the building to open them because of the extreme heat. So the NRC task force afterward decided that remote control vents should be installed in all reactors...
...role of the Reagan White House also ensured that the safety measures wouldn't take place. According to Pollard, "Reagan's hope to accelerate nuclear energy development [was] a signal to the NRC that improvement of the plants is a low priority...