Faults at Savannah River
The repercussions of the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant were only marginally registered by weapons reactors in the United States. Under the stewardship of the Dept. of Energy (DOE), they went on churning out plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons, shielded from the sterner oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which was radically reforming the country's commercial nuclear power industry. It took the 1986 explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the USSR to blow the lid off the defense reactors, opening them up to inspection by nuclear experts outside the DOE. Those experts, upon finding that the risks of operating these plants were poorly understood, strongly urged that probability risk analyses be conducted, as the commercial industry had been doing for years. But before the analyses were completed, problems arose last August during startup of a reactor at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in Aiken, S.C., leading to congressional hearings on defense reactors in general and the indefinite closing of all three operational reactors at Savannah River. Because the three were the country's sole source of the tritium vital to nuclear warheads, many warned that the rapid decay of the substance would soon reduce the U.S. stockpile of nuclear bombs. The DOE and Westinghouse Electric Corp., which in April took over operation of the Savannah River plant from E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., now face the monumental challenge of assessing risk, improving safety, and judging when, if ever, it is safe to restart the Savannah River reactors - all in the glare of public scrutiny and under the pressure to get production going for the defense of the nation. The knowledge gained from the probabilistic risk analysis now under way could better equip officials to make that decision.
- OSTI ID:
- 5983214
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Spectrum; (United States), Vol. 26:6
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
RISK ASSESSMENT
SAVANNAH RIVER PLANT
CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRIES
COMMERCIALIZATION
DECISION MAKING
NUCLEAR INDUSTRY
PLUTONIUM
PROBABILISTIC ESTIMATION
REACTOR ACCIDENTS
TRITIUM
US DOE
US NRC
ACCIDENTS
ACTINIDES
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
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ELEMENTS
HYDROGEN ISOTOPES
INDUSTRY
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LIGHT NUCLEI
METALS
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
NUCLEI
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POWER PLANTS
RADIOISOTOPES
THERMAL POWER PLANTS
TRANSURANIUM ELEMENTS
US AEC
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YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
220900* - Nuclear Reactor Technology- Reactor Safety
293000 - Energy Planning & Policy- Policy
Legislation
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290600 - Energy Planning & Policy- Nuclear Energy