Word: plante
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sequence of human errors and mechanical failures began two weeks before the mishap. As part of a test, valves in three auxiliary pumps in the plant's secondary loop, which carries superheated water to the turbines that drive the electrical generators, were shut down. Incredibly-and in violation of NRC regulations-they were not reopened before the plant was put back into operation...
...reached a temperature of around 2,500° F., which could have led to a meltdown. Water pouring into the reactor overflowed to form a 250,000-gal. lake on the floor of the reactor building. Some of this water, laden with highly radioactive products, was pumped into the plant's auxiliary building, a structure not designed to handle high-level radioactivity. Gases given off by this water were picked up by the plant's ventilation system and spewed into the atmosphere...
...nature of the need should be clarified first. Fissioning atoms cannot drive cars or heat homes or melt steel, though that may become possible in some distant future. Nuclear power today can be used only to generate electricity. Last year, nuclear plants produced 12.5% of the nation's electricity, or something less than 4% of its total energy. Utilities have cut back sharply on their once ambitious plans for nuclear expansion because of rocketing costs of plant construction, regulatory and legal delays, and uncertainty about how rapidly demand for electricity will grow. President Nixon's energy planners foresaw...
...fuels now available, only coal is abundant and cheap enough to substitute for nuclear power. But it is dangerous to mine and dirty to burn. One study sponsored by the Ford Foundation estimates that a new coal-fired plant meeting current environmental standards produces two to 25 fatalities a year. In addition, there is the threat of the "greenhouse effect," the possibility that all-out burning of coal would pour so much carbon dioxide into the air as to keep heat from escaping out of the atmosphere into space. Theoretical consequences that some scientists like to cite: warming...
Still unsettled-and unsettling-is the question of how the U.S. can safely dispose of garbage from nuclear operations. Spent fuel and other wastes remain radioactive for thousands of years. At present a lot of such waste is stored under water in "swimming pools" at plant sites, but nuclear plants are running out of pool space. Some may have to shut down as early as 1983 unless a more permanent method of disposal is found. Nuclear plants are built to operate for about 35 years. By the year 2000 some worn-out ones will either have to be torn down...