Word: safes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...week's end officials insisted that while the danger of a meltdown had not vanished, it was receding. Nevertheless, suspense as to the eventual outcome buttressed the claims of nuclear power's foes that all the wondrous fail-safe gadgets of modern technology had turned out to be just as fallible as the men who had designed and built them. Declared Nuclear Power Critic Ralph Nader: "This is the beginning of the end of nuclear power in this country...
...final outcome and the precise causes of the failure at Three Mile Island are known. By the company's own version of events, there were at least five equipment breakdowns?of valves, pumps and fuel rods. Moreover, the engineers should have been able to cool the reactor to a safe level within twelve hours. Only after the reactor core has fully cooled and the abnormal radiation levels within the container building have been reduced will investigators be able to pinpoint the sequence of mechanical failure, as well as any human mistakes that might have been made. On that issue?human...
...until 6 a.m., said Curry, did workers notice that "a small amount" of radioactive water had leaked onto the floor of the containment building. That meant the primary loop, which brings cooling water into direct contact with the radioactive reactor core and keeps its temperature at a safe 600° F., had been affected in some unexplained way. Curry insisted that an emergency was declared almost immediately and the proper state and local authorities promptly notified. State police immediately blocked off the two bridges leading to the 600-acre island, letting through only plant officials...
...core temperature continued to rise, employees deliberately vented more steam in brief bursts. Some of the spilled radioactive water from the primary loop was automatically drawn from the containment dome's floor into the neighboring pump-house building, which does not normally handle radioactive material and is not radiation-safe. The water gave off radioactive xenon and krypton gases that escaped through the plant's ventilation system into the atmosphere...
Enter Charlie Fuchs, a base umpire with either poor circulation, intense hunger (it was well past 6 p.m. at the time), or a Princeton degree. Fuchs called Miller safe at first, and the shaken Stewart and incredulous Harvard squad could not recover...