Word: reactors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...have many of his neighbors. Jo Ann Kirkland, 42, was arrested and taken away in handcuffs. When a pesky bureaucrat called on Tom Cartier, 41, a retired nuclear reactor construction worker, he tossed the official into a pond where his pet alligator Pocketbook holes up (the man was unharmed). Vows Cartier: "I won't be threatened on my property...
...heart of the Clinch River debate are not its finances but its technology; the 375-megawatt plant to be built is a breeder reactor, which creates more atomic fuel than it burns. The physics behind this alchemy is not new. A few light bulbs were powered by the first tiny breeder 30 years ago, and a 200-MW breeder plant was fired up-and failed-near Detroit in 1966. Conventional nuclear reactors also create fuel, but about 35% less than they consume, rather than, like breeders, about 20% more. Says A. David Rossin of the American Nuclear Society: "Breeder reactors...
...fueled by uranium or Plutonium, but they produce only the latter. Plutonium is a far handier substance for making bombs, and some skittish critics are afraid that Clinch River might become a target for terrorists seeking to cadge a few pounds of plutonium to make an atomic weapon. The reactor is designed to be cooled by liquid sodium, a highly volatile substance, and there are some doubts about the ability of the reactor to control a catastrophic leakage in the sodium ducts. "It is a much more dangerous and complex device than other reactors," says Vanderbilt's Barach...
...into breeder technology." President Jimmy Carter, worried about the proliferation of plutonium, tried to stop Clinch River. Even Budget Director David Stockman, while he was a Michigan Congressman, opposed Clinch River, contending that the Government should not underwrite nuclear development for the private sector by building the reactor. He called the project "totally incompatible with our free-market approach to energy policy...
Stockman argued within the White House for denying Clinch River further funds, but was overruled. What sealed the Administration's commitment to the reactor was geography-and politics. The plant is to be built in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. Already 458 Baker constituents work on the project, and there is the promise of 4,000 more jobs for the seven-year duration of construction. "In large measure," says one congressional aide, "the Reagan support is due to the fact that Baker is for it." Yet Baker barely had to enter the fray. Admits...