Runaway Reactor

Early in the subzero night, alarms flashed in three fire stations dotted across the lonely Idaho Falls test site of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Fire crews raced toward the gloomy silo housing the experimental nuclear reactor that the Army calls SL-1 (Stationary Low No. 1), suddenly ground to a halt at the silo door when their detection equipment registered lethal radiation. Lead-suited rescue workers took over, but inside the reactor room radiation was up to 1,000 roentgens an hour (450 is a man-killing dose). They could stay inside for just a few moments at a time--long enough to haul out one man who still showed signs of life. Moments later he was dead. Two others were already beyond help, their bodies shattered by an explosion that had wrecked the reactor.

The SL-1, designed to supply heat and power for Arctic DEW-line outposts, had been running successfully and efficiently for 2 1/2 years, had been shut down for overhaul for two weeks. It was equipped with every built-in safeguard, every "fail safe" device known to science. What went wrong with SL-1? Although technicians could stay in the building for only brief periods, everything they saw suggested that the impossible had happened: the reactor had suddenly boiled up in a runaway atomic reaction. In thousandths of a second, its water coolant had been turned into superheated steam that ruptured the reactor tank. Best guess was that some of the cadmium control rods (which are inserted to stop the nuclear reaction) had somehow been lifted out of position.

The answer to the explosion was more than a matter of passing interest. Private light and power companies believe that atomic power will never be economically feasible unless reactors can be built close to cities to reduce power transmission costs. Many a city is chary about admitting this forerunner of the atomic future. As they searched for explanations, AEC agents ran up against another sorrowful problem of the atomic age: What to do with the bodies of Seabee Electrician Richard Legg, 26, Army Specialist John Byrnes III, 22, and Army Specialist Richard McKinley, 27? Since they will long be radioactive, they will have to be buried in lead coffins in some secluded area or consigned to the sea.

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