Word: reactors
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Senior Correspondent Peter Stoler, who wrote this week's cover story on the troubles of the nuclear industry, has a rare firsthand knowledge of the subject, including some hands-on experience running a reactor. During simulated exercises in 1980 at a training center for technicians in Morris, Ill., Stoler recalls, "I undertook a routine drill to bring the reactor back on line. It was supposed to be gradual, but I brought it along too fast and overheated it. If it had been a real reactor, I'd have melted it down...
...March 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. Stoler, who has reported or written most of TIME'S stories on nuclear power in recent years, was one of the first correspondents to reach the scene. Talking to plant officials and technicians, he calculated that the reactor had come within 45 minutes of a real meltdown. Though he was unable at that time to get independent verification, a commission of inquiry later confirmed that he had been frighteningly right. "I had been a nuclear believer," says Stoler. "I had just seen the film The China Syndrome...
...industry started off small: in 1957 the Government beached a submarine reactor at Shippingport, Pa., and converted it into a power station with an output of 60 MW. The earliest American nuclear facilities were built by private companies, such as General Electric and Westinghouse, as loss leaders to convince utilities that atomic power was the future. They needed little convincing. By the end of 1967 the U.S. had 28 times as much nuclear capacity on order as it did in operation. The capacity of plants under construction increased from...
...construction. Industry analysts agree that all too many nuclear projects have been badly conceived, poorly designed and inadequately controlled. Each U.S. nuclear plant is in effect a custom-made affair. The industry has failed to follow the lead of such countries as France and Canada, which have adopted standardized reactor designs. Such blueprints would allow modifications made on one plant to be copied at others in the series. Each American plant must now be checked out individually, and the lessons learned from operating one are difficult to apply to others. The construction of facilities, which is generally done...
SEABROOK. Besieged by members of the Clamshell Alliance and other environmentalists, the two-reactor Seabrook plant was begun by Public Service Co. of New Hampshire in 1976 and was slated to cost $973 million. Unit 1, which stands near the coast, may be ready in July 1985, but the company is making no predictions as to when?or whether?Unit 2 will be completed. The utility is currently revising both its construction schedule and the cost projections for the whole project. The most recent estimate: $5.8 billion...