Word: steamingly
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...Curry, Metropolitan Edison's top public relations man, explained initially that a pump had broken down in the reactor's secondary loop, which carries nonradioactive water into the steam generator, where it absorbs heat that is transferred from the nuclear chain reaction in the core by the primary loop, turns to steam and drives the turbine that generates electricity. Lacking the steam's push, the turbine automatically shut down. This, said Curry, was regarded by the engineers as a routine mechanical failure that under the plant's safety rules did not have to be immediately reported to state or federal...
...radioactive steam escaped from the reactor building? Again, said the company spokesmen, this was intentional. The control rods had automatically dropped into the core and stopped the chain reaction. But the loss of water in the primary loop allowed the reactor to get too hot. When more water was pumped into the system, the pressure rose ?and other relief valves opened. These valves vented some of the radioactive steam out of the top of the dome. When the core temperature continued to rise, employees deliberately vented more steam in brief bursts. Some of the spilled radioactive water from...
...reactor room. The third choice was to lower the water level at the floor of the reactor room and pour fresh water in from the top, thus pushing the bubble toward the bottom and away from the fuel rods. Another possibility was to restart the reactor, generating heat and steam that might break up the bubble. But this option was ruled out because of fears that the control rods might be too bent to be lowered again; if so, the chain reaction could not be controlled...
...great quantities of heat in the process. That raises the temperature of the water surrounding the core to nearly 600° F. Under high pressure this water is carried off by the cooling system's primary loop, a complex system of pipes, to a heat exchanger called a steam generator. The heat is transferred from the radioactive water of the primary loop to the uncontaminated water of the separate secondary loop, where the water is quickly heated to steam that drives a turboelectric generator, which in turn produces electricity...
...emergency core cooling system. That system should quickly dump thousands of gallons of water on the hot core, preventing what has become known as a "meltdown," in which the fuel melts through the floor of the containment building into the ground and possibly erupts in a geyser of steam and debris upon hitting the ground water, releasing a radioactive cloud into the air. As the final precaution, the reactor and primary loop are shielded by a thick concrete containment dome, which should prevent the venting of any radioactivity into the atmosphere-as long as a meltdown does not occur...