Atom-plant fire ‘near melt-down’

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34093, 4 March 1976, Page 13

Atom-plant fire ‘near melt-down’

(By KATHRYN of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.) ATLANTA (Georgia), March 3. An American nuclear engineer has revealed that a fire at a nuclear power plant in Alabama last year came hair-raisingly close to sending one of the reactors “on its way to China in a melt-down.”

Mr Gregory Minor, in am interview before he addressed the American Nat-1 ional Council of Churches in; Atlanta. Georgia, said that; he had resigned on February; 2 as an engineer at General; Electric’s nuclear power di-; vision in >an Jose. California. parth because of the Alabama incident. Mr Minor was referring to, a fire vhich burned for; seven hours at two nuclear; reactors at the Brown’s; Ferry plant in Alabama last March. He said cables that; control the cooling and; safety systems of the reactor core were burning and might have caused a meltdown. “This incident is a perfect example of how vulnerable we are to nuclear error,” Mr Minor said . . . “The core melts into a glob, that glob of molten core and material has a tendency to melt through any container. “It mav go straight down 1 into the earth in what is called the China syndrome’ or it mav spread out and rupture rhe container and into the environment."

In a report last week, the United States Nuclear Regulatorv Commission said that, the Brown’s Ferry fire and its aftermath had revealed some significant inadequacies

in design and procedures related to fires at the plant.

It added, however, that in spite of it>e blaze, the reactors had been shut down and cooled down successfully: no-one had been seriously injured: no radioactivity above normal operating amounts n?d been released: thus there had been no radiological impact on the public as a result of the fire. At issue before the council of churcnes meeting is a proposed statement on the use of plutonium to fuel vastly - expanded nuclear power plants. The statement would reverse the council’s position on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Charles Birch, a biology professor at the University of Sydney, also told 140 delegates that expanding nuclear power before solving problems jf handling radioactive waste would be a threat to human survival.

He warned the governing board that “the world is a Titanic on a collision course.

There is grave division; among experts about build-; ing more nuclear power sta-< tions before we have solved; the problems of protection against sabotage and theft, and of how to store lethal; radioactive waste for thousands of years," Professor j Birch said. 1