We Almost Lost Detroit

By the way, Nuclear Plants can explode. Certainly not in a mushroom cloud . . . but when the fuel rods are extremely hot and they come into contact with the cooling liquid they are bathed in (usually water) a violent steam explosion occurs. As the book explained, this is probably what happened at the Idaho Falls facility when a steam explosion propelled a graphite rod out of the reactor and impaled a technician through the chest pinning him to the ceiling of the containment vessel overhead. Neither did he nuclear fuel at Chernobyl explode, yet there were 56 direct deaths and an estimated 4,600 will die from cancer related deaths. A steam explosion there lifted the 2,000 ton lid off of the reactor. As far as I can make out, one of the major problems with the Fermi 1 plant and Nuclear Energy in general is the huge ego's Nuclear Physicists and engineers have. They think they can take a monster as dangerous as a nuclear reaction and keep it perfectly safe. Throw politics into the stew and their is a recipe for disaster in EVERY nuclear plant every where in the world. This book clearly illustrates the bone head decision to use molten sodium as the coolant in Fermi 1 and the inherent difficulties it presents. Anyone who has taken high school chemistry knows that elemental sodium is extremely unstable and can only be stored under special conditions. A quote from Wikipedia, "Extreme care is required in handling elemental/metallic sodium. Sodium is potentially explosive in water (depending on quantity) and is a corrosive substance, since it is rapidly converted to sodium hydroxide on contact with moisture. The powdered form may combust spontaneously in air or oxygen. Sodium must be stored either in an inert (oxygen and moisture free) atmosphere (such as nitrogen or argon), or under a liquid hydrocarbon such as mineral oil or kerosene." It is also extremely corrosive. I suppose that is why they decided to use zirconium to protect the container vessel. The second bone-head decision as explained by this book was the independent decision made my the lead engineer without consulting or telling anyone. He had zirconium plates installed at the bottom of the containment tank. This was an after thought and was not documented in the engineering plans. One came loose from it's fastenings and blocked the circulation of the sodium coolant thus raising the temperature of several of the fuel rod sub-assemblies. Subsequently, it was determined that the reactor had undergone a partial meltdown. The book describes the difficulties presented by the monumental miscalculation to use molten sodium in the container.This made examination of the interior of the container extremely difficult, and the improvisation of specialized tools were required. It took EIGHT months to drill a hole in the container wall, devise procedures to insert the improvised camera and take pictures of the inside of the vessel. Finally, they were astonished to find a undocumented zirconium plate bloc

As another reviewer notes, there was almost NO public attention paid to the incident at Fermi 1. Yes, Mr Fuller takes somewhat of a 'cautionary tone' - but it is hardly 'shrill' or 'anti-corporation', mostly just very informative. I grew up 40 miles from Monroe and was a child when this occurred. Our farm was downwind of the site, and for over a decade the University of Michigan maintained a 'clinic' in our town to 'monitor childhood development' as part of an 'on-going study'. My folks never knew why they were asked to participate until I sent them a copy of this book. How would that make YOU feel as a parent??? As another reviewer touched on, the fast breeder high pressure sodium plants have been 'upgraded' and most all other/new plants are an entirely different type of reactor altogether. I'm afraid folks missed Mr Fuller's real point - people are people and we ALL make mistakes at one time or another, and ANY mistake with nuclear material is simply ONE too many. Nuclear generated power currently represents less than 20% of energy consumed in the US - is that REALLY worth turning Detroit or Corpus Christi into Chernobyl?

I really don't understand why so many people gave this a low rating, don't they care about ceasing to exist? Don't they care if all future generations are degraded genetically because we keep allowing our big bloated corporations to rule us, to control us, to make life and death decisions about us without telling us the truth about what they are doing to our environment, our food and our water? This book is a good expose of how corporations (although it's not written specifically to slam corporations) will screw things up if allowed to decide how to earn money no matter what the risks to others. One other reviewer mentioned how no one heard of this until this book came out, good point, it apparently was covered up quite well, until this writer investigated and exposed the story. This should be required reading for all science majors & all business majors!

Granted the book is a bit sensational - then again I lived in Detroit at that time and you can bet I would have been hyper-ventilating had I known the China Syndrome was potentiating less than 60 miles away. Here's the key point: if this was such an itty-bitty bang why was it NEVER mentioned until this book was published? Rancho Seco, Celilo Village, the Hanford site, 3-mile Island, the USS Thresher -- all nuclear events that blew up in the press for days or weeks - yet NEVER CALLED FORTH A SINGLE MENTION OF FERMI #1. Sounds like a cover-up to me - and the casual mention that 'a little bit of the core melted' is no small matter - if a little melts, a lot is not far behind and Bang! There goes Detroit! Worth a read? Yeah. Worth paying attention to the neighborhood, too.

Fuller deals very well with the complexities and the failures of the US's first commercial liqiud metal fast breeder reactor. In particular, he is very careful to contrast this advanced but inherently more dangerous design with the common light water reactors nearly everywhere else in the US and abroad. This book IS dated - post 3 Mile Island many reactors in the US had their entire controls systems updated to avoid operator errors and inefficiencies - but the failure of design and operation processes that occured (such as non-documented design changes that didn't make the "final" plans and eventually resulted in the accident!) are still with us today. A good book, and fairly even in treatment, despite a highly cautionary tone.