Word: reactor
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Scientists at the Common Market's Euratom research center in Ispra, near Milan, are working on a process that they say can cut the cost of hydrogen in half. This process subjects ordinary water to the 800° C. heat of a nuclear reactor. At such temperatures, the hydrogen and oxygen in the water begin to separate; each can then be combined with other chemicals and eventually extracted from them. Dr. Cesare Marchetti, head of Euratom's materials division, predicts: "By improving the technology through experience, we can push the costs of hydrogen fuel down by perhaps...
Partly in response to such fears, the AEC has insisted on extensive safety precautions. Before the Portland General Electric Co. could start building its Trojan reactor on the Columbia River, for example, it had to choose a site that would remain safe during an almost inconceivable catastrophe: the simultaneous bursting of the Grand Coulee Dam upstream plus the largest natural flood that had occurred in the area during 10,000 years...
Skeptics, including many distinguished scientists, remain unconvinced that every precaution has been taken. During a reactor's operation, the worst possible contingency is the uncontrolled melting of its nuclear core. To preclude such an occurrence, which the AEC calls "the maximum credible accident," the core is continually bathed in cooling water; the AEC even requires an emergency set of pipes and valves to continue supplying the water if one set is severed. Unfortunately, simulated tests by the AEC itself have shown that the reserve pipes, the "emergency core cooling system" (ECCS), may also fail. What would happen...
...decades to come, and Congress last month voted to give the builders of nuclear plants an 18-month exemption from having to make environmental reports on the plants' effects. Looking ahead. President Nixon has committed the U.S. to developing a new and still untried generation of nuclear reactors, now receiving the bulk of the U.S. energy research budget ($260 million). Nixon told Congress last year: "Our best hope today for meeting the nation's growing demand for clean energy lies with the fast-breeder reactor...
...tricky substance that explodes on contact with water and burns in air) as a cooling medium. Others concern the fuel, plutonium, the basic ingredient of the hydrogen bomb and one of the deadliest substances known. Finally, the critics wonder how to get rid of radioactive wastes from any nuclear reactor, some of which remain lethal for 500,000 years. At present, the AEC plans to store them in large concrete containers at an as yet unspecified location. Then they must be watched (and watched). "We are committing future generations," reported a British commission last month, "to a problem that...