Newsweek Magazine, and the SL-1 Accident

Folks, I have in my hands here one of the worst examples of news reporting in the history of the news media's love-hate affair with nuclear energy. This new pinnacle -- or is it depth -- has been found by Newsweek in the March 28 - April 4 issue and is penned by someone named Simon Winchester.

There are quite a few sources available on the SL-1 accident. I've read them all. Now, while a number of these require use of the FOIA privileges given US citizens, there are a whole lot that don't. Look in the "fukushima accident" sources given on a separate page on this site, and you will find quite a number of these contain a great deal of technical data on the SL-1 plant and accident. Major design data is found in the book "Boiling Water Reactors" that was sponsored by the AEC, and distributed at the 1958 Geneva Conference. Nuclear data and operating details are to be found in the book "Nuclear Reactor Plant Data - Volume One - Power Reactors" that was put out by the ASME in 1959. Accident data are given both in the AEC's WASH-1250 report (we have a final draft copy here) and are also mentioned in "The Second Nuclear Era." In the earliest sources, the plant is called ALPR which is short for Argonne Low Power Reactor, which is what this plant was called before being given a new alpha-numeric designator as SL-1.

Three military service men were killed in this accident. Their deaths were accidental; in no report that I have ever read which was written by the AEC, Combustion Engineering, or General Electric was any mention of deliberate murder-suicide ever made. It is deeply insulting to me to see this accident, resulting in the death of service members, reported as being driven by extra-marital affair or some such scandal... which of course, true to modern "reporting" style is the last phrase that Winchester leaves us with in the article.

Further, anyone who does even six or ten minutes of research will find out that the SL-1 reactor did NOT have only "one central rod." The reactor had five cross-form control rods installed in the core with design provision for four added "T" shape rods to be used also if the core size were increased from a 40 fuel element load to a 60 fuel element load for increased output. The five rods that were installed weighed 49 lbs each, and had a 32 inch long active neutron absorbing region. The five rods all together had a total reactivity of about 14% delta K (that's for you nukes out there, right from "Boiling Water Reactors") but in normal operation these rods' drive mechanisms limited outward movement to 3 inches per minute, which related to a reactivity addition rate of 0.01% dK / sec. In other words, for you non-nukes out there, although the rods had a very high total potential effect on rapidly raising the fission rate, when they were normally operated their movement was exceedingly slow in the out direction -- the mechanisms simply could not move them any faster than this.

As to the accident, several sources (WASH-1250, "The Second Nuclear Era," "The Atomic Energy Deskbook") relate the inadvertant manual withdrawal of the center rod (one in the middle, four around it) that caused prompt criticality. Right here in "The Atomic Energy Deskbook" is a brief summary done by expert author John Hogerton of the AEC's findings as of June 1961 which to my knowledge were never overridden. Hogerton lists three important points that I'll summarize myself below.

1. The accident was a result of a nuclear reaction.
2. The reaction was a power excursion resulting from abnormally fast and high motion of the central control rod.
3. A variety of conditions had developed in the reactor in its operational history prior to this including STICKING CONTROL RODS and loss of burnable poisons.

During maintenance, the rods had to be lifted a bit to perform work and apparently the operator experienced sticking of the rod, and excessive force caused it to move upward too far. This was not a murder-suicide. It was an ACCIDENT.

Further, the third operator's body was recovered on the 9th of January, not more than a week later (the accident happened at 9:01 PM January 3rd.)

There are a number of other total fabrications in this Newsweek story .. for example, the reactor was not buried but cut up at GE's "Hot Shop."

I recommend going to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory site and finding the excellent history of the facility... called "Proving the Principle - A History of The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949-1999" by Susan M. Stacy. I read this when it was first released to the public and a check just now shows it's still there. The SL-1 chapter will tell you anything you would like to know to debunk the Newsweek article; however, if you want the truth you already have it and need not trouble yourself.

NOW, on the page opposite this one-sheet masterpiece is another one. This one is an adaptation from Helen Caldicott's book "Nuclear Power is Not The Answer." If you have the mag, look at this...

The piece starts by mentioning Indian Point. That's a nuclear power plant (two reactors operating, one decommissioned) at Buchanan, New York. It says that the plant is 35 miles from Manhattan where 17 million people are. It then goes right off into how a meltdown scenario might go, as related by non-nuclear expert Caldicott. Horrific details are given of casualties, and jammed escape routes, and so on.

I have a question.

What started the meltdown? Oh, right. You forgot that part. See.. that's how fearmongering to sell papers or web hits works. You mention a lot of people, like in New York or else in Los Angeles (oh, no! There are nuclear plants there, too!) and then posit a sourceless disaster to get them to want to read more.

If this is about the supposed fault structure near Indian Point and if that hasn't been cleared up already then maybe in another post I can relate all of the data in one of the newest volumes to arrive here; this book is titled "Geology In The Siting Of Nuclear Power Plants" and contains a great deal of data specific to the Indian Point case. There is also data in WASH-1250.

Let's close this post with this point: It's time that the big media stops hitting up their normal hacks for reports on topics they do not, and CAN NOT, understand. It's time to get the bias OUT of the media, and time to get honest reporting of facts without deliberate misinterpretation back INTO the media. Newsweek hasn't gotten that figured out yet. But that's all right - you have this blog for all things nuclear energy related.

11:30 AM Eastern Tuesday 3/29
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW