Word: reactors
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...Because our government was just as stingy with public information about Three Mile Island (TMI) as Moscow has been about its catastrophe. Because the U.S. government's attitude about reactor safety is just about as lax as we've been claiming Moscow's is. And because the same disaster could happen here...
...Like the Chernobyl facility, the Windscale Pile No. 1 plutonium-production plant north of Liverpool, England, used graphite to slow down neutrons emitted during nuclear fission. When workers discovered a fire in the reactor, they sprayed it with carbon dioxide but failed to quench the blaze. By the time the fire was put out with water, radioactive material had contaminated 200 sq. mi. of countryside. Officials banned the sale of milk from cows grazing in the area for more than a month. The government estimated that at least 33 cancer deaths could be traced to the effects of the accident...
...worker's error in removing control rods from the core of the SL-1 military experimental reactor near Idaho Falls caused a fatal steam explosion. Three servicemen were killed, one of them by impalement on a control rod. The deaths were the first fatalities in the history of U.S. nuclear reactor operations...
March 22, 1975. A worker using a lighted candle to check for air leaks at Browns Ferry reactor near Decatur, Ala., touched off a fire that damaged electrical cables connected to safety systems and allowed the reactor's cooling water to drop to dangerous levels. No radioactive material escaped into the atmosphere...
...could take years before the full damage is known, but it is becoming clear that the explosion and fire at a reactor north of Kiev may be the worst disaster in the 32- year history of commercial atomic power. As radiation- laden clouds blow westward, angry Europeans berate the Soviets for failing to alert them earlier. In the U. S., the question: Could it happen here? See WORLD...