Word: plants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Chrysler announced early this month that it will close the aging Detroit plant where workers assemble the last of the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon models, the situation had ominous parallels to the calamitous early 1980s. Only six years after its fabled turnaround, here was Chrysler embattled again, posting losses on its North American operations for the first time since 1982. Amid persistent auto-industry speculation that Chrysler might be forced to merge with a foreign partner, here was Chairman Lee Iacocca declaring that for the company to survive, it must cut at least $1 billion...
Another legislator, Yuri Shcherbak, notes that the decision to evacuate residents of the town of Chernobyl, which is just 14 km (9 miles) from the plant, was not made until May 2, six days after the accident. By April 30, he says, radiation in nearby Kiev (pop. 2.6 million) had risen to 100 times safe levels. The authorities knew that, according to Shcherbak, but "the population was not warned...
Soviet legislators say officials knew the nuclear plant was unsound and that the truth about the disaster -- including bungled relief efforts -- is still being concealed...
Until recently, it was the problem of tritium replenishment that concerned most nuclear experts. Last year the DOE was forced to shut down its only source of tritium, the aging Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina, when the reactors there developed cracks and other safety problems. The risk that the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal might soon run out of gas provoked long and acrimonious debates in Congress. In the midst of that controversy word came that the DOE had been making millions of dollars a year by selling surplus tritium overseas. Some of the gas, it was revealed...
...tritium in question followed a circuitous route that began at the Savannah River weapons plant. The vast majority of the plant's tritium output ; was purified and stored for use in nuclear warheads. But some 300 grams (10.5 oz.) a year was sent to Oak Ridge, where it was packaged in uranium sponge and sold for commercial use -- primarily as a radioactive marker in biological research or as a source of light in everything from airport runways to luminous watch dials. The apparent losses were discovered when customers complained of discrepancies between the amount of tritium ostensibly exported...