Word: plante
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Modifying the plant's entire cooling apparatus so engineers will have five back-up systems (vs. two normally) for quick mobilization should new trouble develop...
...evening last week, technicians at the big nuclear plant in Wiscasset, Me., felt the floor vibrate under their feet. A minor earthquake had struck. It measured only 4.0 on the Richter scale and did no damage to the plant or much of anything else in New England. But the temblor must have caused shudders of delight in Washington. For once the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had guessed right. Maine Yankee was one of five power plants on the East Coast, not known for its seismic risks, that it had ordered temporarily shut down last month ?only two weeks before...
...removal system, essential to the final temperature drop, is not "canned." In nuclear-engineering jargon, that means it is not designed to handle coolant as radioactive as Three Mile Island's. If the elaborate plumbing system were turned on, it would flush contaminated 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...
...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 out a way to dispose of tons of unprecedented high-level nuclear waste left by the nightmare. Even Yankee ingenuity has not come up with a solution to that...
...very efficient; the 1,500 sq. ft. of units required to power a typical one-family home would cost at least $40,000. Electrical power is measured in the number of watts that can be generated from a single power source. The cost of building and maintaining a plant to generate a single watt is about $1 from a coal-powered utility and about $1.25 from a nuclear power plant. The cost of a watt from photovoltaic cells has come down from $22 in 1975 to between $8 and $10 today. The Department of Energy has set a goal...