Word: reactor
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...Pennsylvania accident, an advisory panel recommended installation of expensive new monitoring instruments at all 43 of the U.S.'s pressurized-water reactors?the type in use at Three Mile Island. The NRC also heard a complaint from a nuclear analyst for the Tennessee Valley Authority that the reactor's builder, Babcock & Wilcox, had brushed off his warning of a "serious" design problem. Perhaps of greatest immediate import, officials conceded that it may take several more weeks, possibly months, to achieve a "cold shutdown" of the crippled reactor, meaning bringing it down to the minimum possible temperature. Said NRC Operations Boss...
During routine maintenance or refueling of a nuke, lowering a reactor's normal operating temperatures of about 315° C (600° F) is as simple as the binary code of the computer that does most of the work. Control rods are automatically dropped into the fuel core, which in effect douses its nuclear fires by stopping the fissioning of uranium atoms. Within several hours the temperature drops to 140° C (280° F). Then fresh coolant water is pumped through the reactor's heat exchanger (or steam generator) until the reactor's temperature dwindles to a still warm 65° C (150?...
...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 Correspondent Peter Stoler: "When you've got a napping tiger, you don't want to rattle its cage...
ADELMAN: If we had not been in such a rush, the reactor accident might have been avoided, but nuclear is now back to the drawing boards. We need less regulation and more development of low-sulfur coal. Solar will grow only slowly, but that is where a lot of R. and D. money ought to be put. Energy R. and D. spending won't help solve anything for ten years, but something may come in big and leave us in a better position at the end of the decade...
Technicians yesterday continued to cool the reactor core slowly as they prepared for an eventual cold shutdown. The main coolant water temperatures had fallen to 249 degrees by afternoon, a drop of one degree since Saturday...