Aucbvax.1356
fa.energy
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!OAF@MIT-MC
Fri May 15 17:09:21 1981
energy digest
two messages, the first a shortie - digestified
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Date: 13 May 1981 10:58 edt
From: Janofsky.Tipi at MIT-Multics (Bill Janofsky)
Subject: Digest or Direct Mail?
To: ENERGY at MIT-MC
Due to the low volume of traffic on this mailing list, I'd like to
suggest that we return to a direct mail mode of distribution. Do I hear
any NAYs?
Bill J.
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Date: 14 May 1981 03:00 edt
From: Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject: Clipping Service - Three Mile Island Accident, part 3
To: energy at MIT-AI
This is the third in a many part series about the Three Mile Island
Accident and the nuclear industry in general. This is taken from the
March 30 issue of the Phoenix Gazette, by Andrew Zipser, Gazette
reporter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mishaps fan public fears
--
Three Mile Island was the world's most dramatic and most
publicized nuclear accident. But it wasn't the first; it wasn't the
last; and it certainly was not the worst.
Three reactor accidents in particular have fanned the public's
fears. The first occurred in 1957 when a reactor at Windscale,
England, released 1,000 times more radioiodine than was released at
TMI. Although enough radiation passed up the food chain to produce
human thyroid doses up to 13,000 millirems, surveys 20 years later
showed no public health consequences.
The second took place nine years later at the Fermi plant near
Detroit, a demonstration breeder reactor unlike the commercial
reactors being built today. A piece of metal inside the reactor
vessel broke loose and partially blocked the flow of coolant,
resulting in the partial melting of two fuel elements. The reactor
was shut down without injuries and without a radiation release, but
with considerable speculation -- including a book titled "We Almost
Lost Detroit" -- on how narrowly a tragedy had been averted.
Another nine years later, in 1975, the Brown's Ferry complex in
Alabama was shut down by, of all things, a candle. the site's two
operating plants shared a common instrument and control cable area
with a third plant still under contruction; a construction worker
testing for air leaks with a candle inadvertantly set the control and
instrumentation cable on fire.
Of 11 cooling systems, two were completely destroyed and four
were seriously damaged, but the remaining five were enough to permit
a shutdown. While damage was severe there were, again, no injuries.
The incident at Kyshtym, however, was altogether different.
Located in central Russia, at the edge of the Siberian plain,
Kyshtym was the site of one of the Soviet Union's first nuclear waste
dumps. In late 1957 something happened: The wastes were evidently not
properly contained, migrated toward each other and set off an
explosion.
The destruction was awesome. Hundreds, perhaps thousands died
within the first year, primarily from radiation sickness. Many
thousands more became critically ill, only to die years later of
cancers and other problems. Entire villages were evacuated and razed.
The main north-south highway through the area was closed for nine
months, and when it reopened drivers were warned to travel through a
30-mile stretch at top speed with windows closed.
The Kyshtym accident was kept secret for almost two decades. In
the Soviet Union, where accidents are never officially recognized,
the affair became highly classified. When the Atomic Energy
Commission learned of the accident, it, too, classified the
information, fearing it would deter domestic development of nuclear
energy.
When the story finally broke in a British magazine in 1976,
official reaction was fast and sharp -- and came not from Moscow but
from London, which had just negotiated a contract with the Japanese
to reprocess that country's nuclear wastes. The reprocessing plant
was to be built, of all places, in Windscale.
The magazine's version of what happened may have remained in
doubt if not for a final, ironic twist. Exiled Russian scientist Lev
Tumerman, a firm proponent of nuclear generating plants, became
alarmed at the thought that news of Kyshtym would turn public opinion
against such plants. Tumerman, then living in Israel, announced that
Kyshtym had indeed been devastated -- but not by an explosion at a
reactor.
Confirming that the accident had occurred as described in <NEW SCIENTIST>, he described the area as it had appeared when he drove
through it almost a decade later: "Only chimneys remained of towns
that once were there. As far as the eye could see there were no
villages, no towns, no people, no cattle herds."
Other accidents have occurred periodically, although never of
such proportions. The sequence of events that produced Three Mile
Island had happened at least twice in the past, once in 1974 at a
Swiss reactor, and once in 1977 at the Toledo Edison Co.'s
Davis-Besse plant in Ohio. In both those cases, however, the
operators recognized what was happening early enough to avoid the
mistakes that were perpetrated at TMI.
And as recently as six weeks ago, a mistake in valve settings
resulted in 13 workers being showered with radioactive water. An
assistant, non-licensed operator opened three valves instead of two,
flooding the containment building of Sequoyah-1 in Daisy, Tenn., with
105,000 gallons of the poisonous liquid.
This time, as before, there was no known effect on the public,
aside from the loss of power when the reactor had to be shut down.
But what is worth noting, in an industry struggling to regain its
credibility, is that Sequoyah-1 is operated by the Tennessee Valley
Authority -- and the TVA, the country's largest utility, also has the
reputation of having the nation's best training for its plant
operators.
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End of quoted text
End of energy nondigest
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