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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci
Subject: Nuclear power: the fast breeder
Message-ID: <554@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Aug-86 19:57:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.554
Posted: Fri Aug 22 19:57:57 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Aug-86 03:02:27 EDT
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Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 63
Xref: watmath net.politics:18588 net.sci:1542

[Michael Stein]
> [Carnes]
>>"Ralph Nader says nuclear reactors can blow up in a
>>nuclear explosion" (Nader merely echoes the views of nuclear experts
>>such as Brian Flowers who assert that fast breeders can undergo a
>>nuclear explosion, although such an event ["Hypothetical Core
>>Disruptive Accident"] is highly unlikely),...  
>
>Completely wrong.  If Nader was actually aware of Flower's work then
>he was engaging in deception.  If he was unaware of his work (the
>most likely scenario), then he was simply ignorant.  

Sir Brian Flowers writes ["Nuclear Power", *Bull. Atom. Sci.*, March
1978, p. 24]:

  With any reactor employing a liquid coolant there is the risk that
  if, due to some malfunction, a substantial amount of fuel should
  melt, it could react with the coolant causing this to evaporate
  explosively and the core to be disrupted.  It is highly improbable,
  but possible; and it is particularly serious for the fast breeder
  reactor because of the consequent risk, peculiar to this system, that
  the core somehow reassembles in a more reactive state than before.
  The result would be a very inefficient nuclear explosion, which if it
  also succeeded in breaching the reactor containment could cause
  damage one or two orders of magnitude more extensive than is
  envisaged for thermal reactors undergoing similarly improbable but
  disruptive malfunctions.

This seems clear enough.  The possibility of nuclear explosions in
fast breeders is also acknowledged in two AEC documents:

--AEC, Argonne Natl. Lab., *Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Program
  Plan*, Aug. 1968.
--AEC, WASH-1535, Proposed Final Environmental Statement, *Liquid
  Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Program*, Dec. 1974.

The former document estimates the energy yield of the accidents as
equivalent to 300-500 pounds of TNT.  

>Energy scholar Nader made the following quote back in 1974:
>
>	How many atomic explosions in our cities would you accept
>	before deciding that nuclear power is not safe - no
>	complexities, just a number!

Mr. Stein gives no reference that would enable one to verify that
Nader made this statement, and if so, what he meant by it.  In *The
Menace of Atomic Energy*, revised edition, p. 46, Nader states: "A
water reactor cannot explode like a nuclear bomb -- its fuel does not
contain a sufficient percentage of U-235 to make it weapons
material."

>This was long before breeder reactors were in our cities, since
>breeder reactors aren't in US cities today.

But it was long after the October 5, 1966, fuel melting accident at
the Fermi breeder reactor near Detroit, which was more serious than
the "maximum credible accident" for the plant.  The title of the book
*We Almost Lost Detroit* is a quotation from a nuclear engineer who
was working at the plant.  A 1957 University of Michigan study had
concluded that a reactor accident at Fermi could kill 60,000 people.

Richard Carnes