Word: reactor
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...sudden power failure struck New York State's Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station like a sucker punch last week, knocking out vital instruments and warning lights. When backup power systems also failed, operators were unable to monitor the reactor core for 20 chilling minutes. "It was like losing your speedometer, dashboard lights and headlights when you're going down the road at 70," said Peter Slocum, a spokesman for the State Disaster Preparedness Commission. Plant officials declared a "site area emergency," the second highest level of alert under federal regulations. It was only the third time such an emergency...
...withstood the two great shocks of the atomic era. The 1979 near meltdown at Three Mile Island spawned new safety regulations. The catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 set off a public outcry in most of Western Europe, forcing some governments to curtail nuclear programs -- but not France. Five reactors will be added to the national grid in this decade. The Superphenix fast-breeder reactor, a joint venture with Italy and Germany, is working, though it has been dogged by technical problems and will never recover its $4.5 billion development cost...
...openness, Western officials were stunned by the breadth of the Iraqi enrichment effort, and suspected that Saddam's disclosure only hinted at his actual nuclear capability. Indeed, the intelligence failure is almost as frightening as the prospect of Saddam's bomb. After Israeli jets destroyed Iraq's Osirak research reactor in 1981, Baghdad embarked headlong on a secret enrichment program that relied on an old-fashioned method called electromagnetic isotope separation. Used by Manhattan Project scientists in the 1940s, the technology is considered so obsolete that it is discussed openly in scientific literature and can be built from relatively common...
During the night, in the worst nuclear power disaster ever, a catastrophic series of explosions had shattered the reactor, blowing the roof off the containment chamber. Firemen had extinguished the initial fire but could not quench the combustion of the molten core that was now spewing 50 tons of radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. Despite the lush beauty of the springtime scene, everything for miles around was drenched with lethal radiation...
...Soviet nuclear power program in secrecy and lies for 35 years added to the human and environmental cost. In a country where nuclear accidents had never been reported, the pressure to cover up the monumental disaster at Chernobyl was enormous. Plant managers misinformed government officials, insisting that the reactor was intact. Even as the radioactive cloud was spreading over thousands of square miles of Europe, Soviet bureaucrats were still denying the accident. At the same time, Moscow bosses quashed early requests by Chernobyl officials to evacuate the area, dooming many compatriots...