Is This What They Want?

were apparently functioning properly. The pressure-relief valve, however, stuck open, and steam continued to pour out of the reactor into a blow-down tank, causing the pressure in the reactor vessel to continue to fall.

Three auxiliary pumps should have sustained the water pressure. And when the first feedwater pump failed at the beginning of the accident, they did kick in automatically. They failed to drive any water into the cooling system, however, because the valves which would have allowed them to do so had been closed for maintenance. It was this error which made the accident far worse than it otherwise would have been. As Harold Denton of the NRC put it, “There would have been an entirely different outcome if [the pumps] had been operational, as they should have been.”

About the Author

William Tucker

Mr. Tucker is author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey.

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were apparently functioning properly. The pressure-relief valve, however, stuck open, and steam continued to pour out of the reactor into a blow-down tank, causing the pressure in the reactor vessel to continue to fall.

Three auxiliary pumps should have sustained the water pressure. And when the first feedwater pump failed at the beginning of the accident, they did kick in automatically. They failed to drive any water into the cooling system, however, because the valves which would have allowed them to do so had been closed for maintenance. It was this error which made the accident far worse than it otherwise would have been. As Harold Denton of the NRC put it, “There would have been an entirely different outcome if [the pumps] had been operational, as they should have been.”