You will also find out there the concrete-sealed site of a reactor criticality involving small reactors designed for Army use in remote areas. The reactor was designed to be operated by a crew of three. Sometime in the 60’s, I believe, the criticality alarm went off at the central operating area of the lab. There were various contractors working on nuclear power at sites separated by a few miles within the laboratory perimeter. All sites were serviced with emergency response from the central operations area.
When the central ops people got to the Army remote reactor site, they found all quiet. Only problem was as the responder approached the reactor silo, his radiation detector pegged out. He banged it against a wall and continued on into the building. Only when he got to the door of the reactor room did he realize something was wrong. The reactor vessel had obviously “leaped” out of its floor containment and it now sat askew in the hole, like a peg not quite properly in the hole. He also saw at least one body on the floor.
Eventually all three bodies of the crew were found and they finally pieced together the story. The reactor itself was not at fault. Apparently it was a murder/suicide situation where one crew member was having an affair with the wife of another crew member. The third member of the crew was caught in the conflagration when the wronged husband pulled the control rod out of the reactor to cause the uncontrolled reaction. That man’s body was located pinned to the ceiling of the reactor building by the control rod he had pulled. How do I know this? I used to work there and met some of those who had to clean up the mess.
I do hope this one really is failsafe and safe from failed human relations.
Ouch! The first nuclear murder-suicide?
This is a very bad description of the SL-1 accident. The operators made an error during a maintenance evolution where they were required to manually cycle the control rods due to previous problems with the control rods sticking during operations. The operators cycled the control rods too far which caused the reactor to go prompt critical causing a steam explosion, ejection of the control rod, and a reorganization of the core. All of the operators were killed by either blunt trauma or acute radiation exposure.
The initial response team did not proceed into the building as their radiation sensors pegged high. They waited for additional personnel with higher scale sensors. Then they sent in teams with a 1 minute limit.
I think you had better not listen to people who describe a nuclear accident from hearsay. You will certainly get all the facts wrong.
It happened in early January of 1960, if I recall correctly, and the design of reactors everywhere was changed afterwards so that none of them could go critical with only one control rod retracted, even if fully withdrawn.
What the manufacturers could do is build in communication technology that contacts authorities with GPS location if any tampering occurs.
With a polling communication contact system with the units, any non responsive unit is investigated quickly.