Tenn. Nuclear Fuel Problems Kept Secret

Source: AP

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A three-year veil of secrecy in the name of national security was used to keep the public in the dark about the handling of highly enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing plant - including a leak that could have caused a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

The public was never told about the problems when they happened. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed them for the first time last month when it released an order demanding improvements at the company, but no fine.

Some 35 liters, or just over 9 gallons, of highly enriched uranium solution leaked from a transfer line into a protected glovebox and spilled onto the floor. The leak was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid "running into a hallway" from under a door, according to one document.

The commission said there were two areas, the glovebox and an old elevator shaft, where the solution potentially could have collected in such a way to cause an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. "It is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death," the agency wrote.

Read more: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070820/D8R4VNS01.html

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and what does the company (Nuclear Fuel Services) have to say about it? "We are in a position of strength,"

abandoned elevator shaft and collect there. From what I remember for Navy Nulcear Power School: water + HE Uranium = step one of a chain reaction. Of course one needs the proper geometry, to compensate for buckling, leakage, etc. but the potential . . . oh, yeah.

Now it would not be a bomb, rather a mini-reactor with no containment at all. Releasing fission particle gasses to the atmosphere, especially Cs and Rb, which mimic Calcium when they decay and can cause bone cancer in those whose bones are still growing.

This is almost if not as bad as the Hanford Pu plant that had Pu particles floating around in its ventilation system!

This is a bomb factory, not a power reactor processing facility, hence the lack of supervision at the level the NRC provides. They are able to cloak everything under the aegis of "national security."

Just read the full story in the local paper. So that makes TWO, one at Oak Ridge and this one.