We Almost Lost Detroit

297 Pages·2011·1.09 MB·English

by  Fuller John G

WE ALMOST LOST
DETROIT
JOHN G. FULLER
READER'S DIGEST PRESS
Distributed by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1975
FOREWORD
Nuclear power is an unforgiving technology. It allows no
room for error. Perfection must be achieved if accidents that
affect the general public are to be prevented.
WF ALMOST LOST DETROIT is a valuable addition to
the literature of the debate swirling around nuclear power.
The book is well researched; it provides fascinating reading
for anyone who is interested in the history of the nuclear
program. The author provides an in depth review of the
development of the Fermi liquid-metal fast-breeder reactor,
using the Fermi accident as a vehicle to discuss the
significance of the entire nuclear power industry, both in this
country and abroad. In the course of this absorbing story, the
causes and consequences of a number of nuclear accidents are
described in a manner that is easily understood. For this is not
a "technical" book meant only for the scientific community. It
is written in a free flowing style that can be easily followed
by the layman.
This book deals primarily with the accident at the Fermi
No. 1 liquid-metal fast-breeder reactor and the safety
problems the accident posed. One result was to set back the
liquid-metal fast-breeder program by many years. However,
the government is still promoting new designs of these
reactors for use in the next decade, and the problems exposed
in this book will not disappear. Meanwhile, the light-water
reactors that are currently being used in this country have
safety problems of their own, as this book demonstrates. For
example, a light-water reactor cannot undergo a low-order
nuclear explosion as can occur in a breeder reactor. But a
loss-of-coolant accident in a light-water reactor could lead to
a core meltdown. Thus, while the accident sequences are
different for the two types of reactors, the end result, the
possible release of radioactive material into the environment-
is the same.
The developers of the Fermi breeder reactor were very
sincere, diligent, and highly qualified individuals to whom the
safety of the reactor was paramount. Extreme care was taken
to insure against the possibility of a serious accident
occurring. The scientists involved were most confident that
they had covered all possible problem areas. They had built
safeguards on top of safeguards. Yet in spite of the
precautions in the design and construction of the Fermi
reactor, and in spite of the reassurances by the scientists that a
serious accident could not happen, one did occur. The results
far exceeded the expectations of anyone involved with the
project. Fortunately, at the time of the accident, the reactor
was operating at a very low power level or the consequences
could have been much worse.
The Fermi accident and the others described in this book
demonstrate the fact that no matter how much diligence is
exercised in the design, construction, and operation of a
nuclear reactor things can and do go wrong. Design errors
occur, the unexpected happens, human error is a very real
possibility.
The nuclear industry in this country today is
experiencing many safety-related dilemmas. Several recent
problems have raised questions about the mechanical integrity
of the piping systems. Construction quality control has not
been good. Emergency diesel generator units have failed
frequently during tests. In one recent instance, two out of
three such safety units failed during a test: one because of a
faulty timer switch and the other because of water in the fuel
tank. In one incident the high-pressure emergency-core-
cooling system failed to operate when called upon because
several diodes had burned out. In that same incident a four-
foot-long piece of pipe that had been inadvertently left in the
reactor during construction jammed in a valve and prevented
it from closing. In another, and one of the most serious
accidents to occur in a large commercial power plant, a fire in
an electrical cable duct knocked out numerous electrical
circuits, many of them redundant circuits. The emergency-
core-cooling-system was incapacitated. If it had been needed
it would not have been available. These examples are listed
merely as an indication of the type of problems that can arise.
It is interesting to note the recent shift in the nuclear
industry's position about the possibility of nuclear power
plant accidents. For many years, the industry vigorously
defended the nuclear power program as being essentially risk-
free. Nuclear power was claimed to be perfectly safe. It was
said that no serious accidents would ever happen. Such a
position was of course necessary to promote the acceptance of
nuclear power by the general public. It has not been until just
recently that the proponents of nuclear energy have admitted
that accidents can and will happen, and the public should
prepare itself for such eventualities.
What is forgotten is that the public had a right to know
these risks years ago, when the initial decisions regarding the
acceptability of nuclear power were being made. Only now
are we learning that the public was deliberately misled and
deceived by the former Atomic Energy Commission regarding
the possibility of major nuclear reactor accidents and the
potential consequences of such accidents.
The discussion in this book of the WASH-740 update
report of 1964 is very enlightening. The reader is provided an
insight into the internal workings of the AEC by the quoting
of letters and memos of the AEC officials and consultants
who were involved in the study. What this book shows is that
the estimated consequences of a major accident were so
frightening the AEC and nuclear industry did not want them
revealed to the public. It was the fear of an adverse public
reaction that prompted the AEC to suppress the report, and
this is a good example of the attitude that has prevailed in the
nuclear power program. The public has been deliberately
misled into believing that there are no problems with nuclear
power, whereas there are very real problems. In addition to
the issue of reactor safety, other problem areas include
transportation, fuel processing, waste disposal, nuclear
material diversion, and sabotage.
In more than seven years of working with the AEC's
safety research program for light-water reactors, I had an
excellent opportunity not only to become familiar with the
AEC's research programs and safety analysis methods, but
also to observe the basic underlying philosophy of the AEC.
This attitude was primarily one of trying to prove that
existing reactors were safe rather than one of independently
assessing the adequacy of the safety systems. While many of
the scientists working on the safety research were
conscientious and tried to point out valid problems regarding
reactor safety, their questions were largely ignored. The
decisions regarding safety research programs were made by
the AEC in Washington, not by the scientists in the
laboratories. Worse, many of the managers in private industry
that ran the laboratories for the AEC were more interested in
keeping their contracts than they were in doing the research
as it should have been done. The managers' philosophy was
that the AEC was always right.
I left my job with Aerojet Nuclear Company, the AEC's
major safety contractor at the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory, because of a growing frustration with the safety
program. I became particularly concerned about the way in
which the AEC had continually misled the public about the
safety of nuclear reactors. Only favorable results regarding
the safety research were reported. I knew well the large
number of uncertainties and problems that were not freely
publicized; only a continuing pressure from citizen groups has
made these uncertainties known to the general public. And I
am concerned that the safety systems on the reactors
operating in this country have not been tested, and the
adequacy of these systems has yet to be proven.
The AEC, as a government agency, had an obligation to
serve the public in an unbiased manner. It did not. The new
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been formed specifically
to regulate, and not promote, the nuclear industry. But after
the first several months of operation, there does not appear to
be a truly unbiased view prevalent in the NRC.
The public has a right to know all the pertinent
information regarding not only the safety involved in nuclear
reactors, but all the other related problems. Only then can a
rational decision regarding the acceptability of nuclear power
be made.
Carl J. Hocevar
Union of Concerned Scientists
Cambridge, Mass.
WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT
ONE
The phone call came in sometime in the mid-afternoon of
Wednesday, October 5, 1966. The exact time is not recorded,
because it was never entered officially on the log of the
sheriff of Monroe County, Michigan. Sheriff Charles
Harrington, known as Bud, a lanky man with a lean, craggy
face, received it. An unidentified voice on the other end of the
line spoke sharply and briefly, saying it was Detroit Edison
calling-the major utility company in southeastern Michigan.
There was something wrong at the new Enrico Fermi Atomic
Power Plant, which Detroit Edison operated at Lagoona
Beach just a handful of miles away from the town of Monroe.
The cause of the problem was uncertain, but the caller said
that the situation should not be publicized, that no public alert
should be given. More information would follow.
Sheriff Harrington hung up the phone in his tiny office,
over-crowded by just one desk and his radio-communications
equipment. He went directly into the next door office of the
chief of police of the town of Monroe. Both agreed they
would not enter the information on the blotter, and would
keep it to themselves. Both men knew that a nuclear power
plant contains within it more potential radioactive fallout than
dozens of Hiroshima-type A-bombs. The Fermi plant was no
exception: It was new, it was untried, it was being tested. And
both knew that the ultimate action in case of a major atomic
plant accident was evacuation. Yet, if the public was given
any hint of the problem there could be mass panic. The two
officers decided to wait it out.
At about the same time, some one hundred miles away,
Captain Buchanan of the Michigan State Police in Lansing
was alerted by a similar phone call, again from a Detroit
Edison representative. The state police are responsible for the
civil defense of the state. But neither Captain Buchanan nor
Sheriff Harrington-nor even the nuclear experts-knew all the
possible consequences of a civilian atomic power plant
accident. In 1966, there were only four commercial nuclear
power plants in the entire country. There was no experience
to act on.
The only certainty was that the escape of radioactive
poisons due to a major reactor accident could be catastrophic.
The Atomic Energy Commission's (Ace’s) own figures were
already available in a study known as WASH-740. In the
worst case, for a relatively small reactor, the AEC estimated
3,400 people could be killed, 43,000 could be injured or
stricken with radiation poisoning, $7 billion in property
damage could occur, and an area the size of Pennsylvania
could be contaminated. These figures, however, were already
outmoded. A new study that nestled in the "Official Use
Only" files of the AEC went far beyond these estimates.
In any case, the only action specified by the AEC in the
event of such an accident was evacuation of the population
from the surrounding area. This was not a source of comfort
to Sheriff Harrington, Captain Buchanan, or anyone else
responsible for coping with the situation.
Hardly anyone in Monroe County was giving any thought that
day to the spanking new Enrico Fermi Atomic Power Plant at
Lagoona Beach on the shore of Lake Erie. The citizenry was
apathetic about it, except for the jobs it provided and the new
tax revenues it brought in. Everyone living in the clustered
towns of Monroe, Frenchtown, and Newport, surrounding
Lagoona Beach, had grown used to the old cumbersome
Detroit Edison coal-fired plant near the lake. They had come
to ignore the almost grotesque procession of giant
transmission towers that seemed to promenade across the
flatlands alongside the Dixie Highway, like skeletons of
enormous scarecrows dragging festoons of high-tension
wires.
The tang and wild beauty had long since gone out of the
marshes and wetlands near Lagoona Beach, once smothered
with lotus and wild rice. The wastes from paper mills and
steel companies joined with other sewage in the lake; Unsafe-
for-Swimming signs were everywhere.
Monroe and its satellite towns were undergoing
economic doldrums. Only an occasional festive muskrat
dinner brightened things up. Legend has it that when
Monroe's favorite son, General Custer, had left town on his
way to the disaster at the Little Big Horn, he had admonished
the citizens not to do anything until he got back. Some of the
more dour residents today claim that these instructions have
been followed to the letter. About the only occurrence of
public note that October 5 was that Hubert Humphrey, on a
mission to dedicate the Monroe Public Library, had arrived
fifty-one minutes late at the Custer Municipal Airport. Aside
from that, the community was listless.
An early morning frost had covered the corn and
soybean crops throughout the county, but the county
extension agent didn't seem too worried about it, though he
was concerned about the tomatoes and peppers. Dan Warner