Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...revelations were enough to curl the hair on the neck of the most seasoned nuclear engineer. Last April a reactor at the Federal Government's sprawling Savannah River Plant near Aiken, S.C., was shut down to upgrade safety systems -- with partially irradiated tritium still in its core. In August technicians, oblivious to the decaying radioactive material inside, tried to restart the reactor but were unable to keep it going. The next day they tried again. Ignoring procedure, they set off an abnormal jump in nuclear fission, usually a sign of imminent trouble. Workers ignored the warning, forcing plant officials...
...decades, such incidents have been alarmingly frequent at the aging facility, which manufactures materials for nuclear bombs. Moreover, officials at the Department of Energy, which oversees the plant, conceded last week that dozens of such near accidents and nuclear mishaps have gone largely unreported for more than 30 years. Admitted DOE safety chief Richard Starostecki: "If this had been a civilian plant, it would have been shut down...
...Savannah River facility has operated behind a barrier of secrecy so impenetrable that officials in Washington were often in the dark. In recent months Government investigators have begun to turn up internal memos that are shattering the silence. The result: a congressional hearing that revealed a stunning list of nuclear incidents caused by a combination of primitive instrumentation, inadequately trained personnel and a management meltdown by both DOE and E.I. du Pont de Nemours, which runs the plant for the Federal Government. The impact on the environment is not yet fully known, but thousands of gallons of radioactive material have...
...though two of Savannah River's five reactors are shut down permanently, and the others are not allowed to run at full power in part because of deficiencies in their emergency cooling systems. Still, the plant is the sole supplier of plutonium and tritium, the flint and steel of nuclear warheads. While the nation probably has all the plutonium it needs, tritium, which enhances plutonium's yield, has a half-life of twelve years and must be continuously produced to maintain the nation's nuclear stockpile...
Earlier, Stephen Comley, an anti-nuclear activist, was removed by security guards when he held up a "Chernobyl" poster...