Emergency Core Cooling System ECCS failure predicted in 1971

By nuclearhistory March 13, 2011

From “The Menance of Atomic Energy” , by Ralph Nader and John Abbotts, Outback Press, Victoria Australia, 1977, ISBN 0 868880515, Page 103:

“In July 1971, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on its evaluation of the (AEC) Idaho (ECCS) tests. Even under the questionable assumption that tests were not applicable to large reactors, the UCS wrote, they were still a black eye for the Atomic Energy Commission (now DOE). ….UCS called for a total halt to the issuance of operating licences for nuclear power plants until assurance of ECCS effectiveness could be demonstrated, and until a thoroughreview of ECCS had been carried out by an independent qualified group….
…The AEC maintained reactor safety consisted of several lines of defence: that reactor coolant pipes were constructed to high-quality standardsto ensure they would not break; that, should the pipes break, the ECCS would prevent a meltdown accident; that, were any radioactivity released from the fuel, the containment building building around the reactor would prevent it from reaching the public.

But the Union of Concerned Scientists recognized that if ECCS would not function, the same accident that broke a pipe would cause the ECCS to fail, and in turn lead to events that could rupture the reactor building. The controversy continued to escalate…” Guess who won?

The Japanese experience of 12 March 2011 (continuing) in which one building at a reactor reservation has exploded, 160 members of the public have registered as being contaminated at evac monitoring stations so far, in which government and industry sources claim no radiation has been released on minute, at safe levels the next, while exclusion zones grew from zero to ten to 30 kms with 150 kms at risk, shows that the 1971 view of the hazard of reliance upon the Emergency Core Cooling System which relies on pipes and pumps is in fact the correct. Despite the fact that the AEC had sufficient influence with the US governmental process to have its faulty view accepted over that of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

This in in the era of Congressional Members threatening Dr Gofman and shortly after another critic of the AEC, Dr Linus Pauling, had been forbidden from leaving the United States by order of the US State Department. Dr Pauling, who is the only person ever to have won two Noble Prizes in separate fields, believed and expressed the view that Radio Strontium was harmful to life. This was his crime. He, born in the USA, had his passport taken away because he insisted on expressing his views. The US government considered him to be dangeous. The late Dr Pauling must have felt that he would have had an easier time had he been born in China.

HISTORY SHOWS THAT THE 1930s (PATENT DATE) technology known as “nuclear Power” is dangerous.

Noone one in their right mind would buy a car that, on arrival at a destination, had to be kept idling, never having its cooling system switched off in order to prevent overheating, hydrogen emission, explosion, and harm to the innocent.

This however describes the basic fact of all reactors. Even after fission is switched off, heat is generated by radioactive decay of fission products. Fission craps in its own fuel, which becomes more, not less dangerous. More radioactive, not less.

This technical vulnerability was seen in 1971 by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The reactor failures in Japan we watch in horror and grief this very day were foreseen in 1971. The nuclear authorities of the United States at that time were presented with the evidence. Those authorities ignored the evidence and dismissed it many technical responses.

Vulnerabilities within the ECCS were foreseen in 1971. The remedy has been available since 1971. Shut down the reactors.

This in fact is what the Japanese has been forced to do. Far too late. And the knowledge of the need to shut them down precedes the date of their construction.

Safe reactors should be safe in the real world. Mother Nature has never obeyed the AEC, DOE, or the Government of Japan.
See the story of King Canute.

Second System Failure

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/12/japan-nuclear-meltdown-fukushima-reactor?INTCMP=SRCH

Japan nuclear fears as systems fail at second reactor

Officials warn of more radiation leaks as residents panic, jamming city’s exit roads

Fears of another explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant are growing after officials said the cooling system in a second reactor had failed.

Thousands of people were evacuated on Saturday following an explosion and leak from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

end quote.

A systemic, repeatable, predictable, predicted set of design concept failures inherent in the patent dated 1936.
Old Tech. Where’s the Manhattan Project for Renewables? Not there, no bomb in it, so its not there. No profit for politicians and their mates in fuel sales, so its not there.