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The first fatal nuclear reactor accident in American history
- bell-cot 3y agoReaction I: Given how many workers died during the construction of the Empire State Building, Hoover Dam, etc. - I'm thinking they probably have tailored their definition of "nuclear reactor accident" somewhat carefully, to push the first death all the way out to 1961. > The Atomic Energy Commission instantly realized that the triple fatality could be enough to undermine the entire commercial nuclear enterprise [...] As part of the reactor’s startup procedure, they found, one of the operators had to manually lift the 48-pound central control rod about four inches so it could be connected to a mechanical driver which raised and lowered it into the core to control the nuclear chain reaction. For some reason, though, it looked as if Byrne had lifted the rod some twenty inches–almost all the way out of its channel. Without the control rod [...] the water coolant inside instantly flashed into steam, and the immense pressure tore apart the reactor. The steam explosion blasted Byrnes and McKinley against the cement walls, ejected the reactor head, and blew Legg, who had been doing some work atop the core, all the way up to the roof and impaled him there, while at the same time flooding the room with a lethal dose of radiation. Reaction II: Whatever the CYA reactions of the AEC's bureaucrats, to me this sounds closely analogous to an old-fashioned steam boiler explosion. Which would have been an all-too-familiar type of industrial accident in 1961. So why not downplay it, with "wood-fired, coal-fired, oil-fired, or nuclear-fired - when the steam can reach over 1,000 degrees, a major mistake can result in fatal tragedy...". Appropriate to the mindset of the period, and only a Marketing Dept. idiot would imagine that "nuclear" could mean "never have any accidents".