ML19208A333
| ML19208A333 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 05/02/1979 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS (OPA) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| PR-790502, NUDOCS 7909130403 | |
| Download: ML19208A333 (1) | |
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OFFICE OF PUBl.!C AFFAIRS NEWS
SUMMARY
HAY 2.1979 3
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m WASHINGTON--Tne NRC's Roger Mattson told the Advisory Connittee op Reactor; Safeguards ' -
that a few hours into the accident at Three Mile Island the plant operators had all the information they needed to prevent a serious nuclear
- accident!. The op'erators my have failed to spot what was really happening, he said, because of the " hassle factor"--a roorfful of flashing lights, sounding alarms and sometimes contradictory instrumencs. Mantson revealed that the hassle factor may have kept anyone from noticing for two days that there had been an explosion inside the reactor containment a butiding that lasted six minutes. Washinoton Post, S/2 ing HArJllSBURG--Spillage of suspected radioactive water into the Three Mile Island reactor containmtnt building has doubled since March 28 and pc<es se.ne threat to plant instruments. NRC spokesman Xen Clark said another 200,000 gallons of water has spilled into the containment. He said the containment was scaled and no radiation
$vas being emitted from the building. Wrshington Star. 5/1 CHICAGO--A leak of radioactive water at the Zion 2 nuclear power plant caused a "very slight" leak into the atmosphere Monday afternoon.
About 700 gallons of radioactise water leaked onto the floor of an auxiliary building when a rubber gasket on a secondary water system broke.
Radiation, measured at 3,000 microcuries per second, leaked into the atmosphere through the building's ventilation system.
Wall Street Journal, S/2 SUCHANNAM, NY--Con Edison, State and iocal officials are in auch disagreement about, who is st.pposed to do what, where and when in the event of a major accident at the Indian Point nuclear power complex. The State says it cannot act unless Con Edison informs it that there is a dire emergency, and the company's two-volume plan centains the nurrber of a telephone hot line that does not answer after nonnal business hours.
Three of four counties within five miles of the plant have not put together any fermal resoonse to a possible emergency because officials in those counties had not considered the need for a plan or thought it should be a Federal responsibility.
New York Times, 5/2
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s WASHINGTON--a State Department official told Congress that Pakistan has the capability to make nuclear weapon.i within two to five years. He said Pakistan acquired enough I
E special equipment for producing weapon-grade uranium by making "end runs" around
. international export restrictions before it was discovered and the flow stopped.
Pakistan last year bought from a California company several electrical devices, known as inverters, that can be used in manufacturing nuclear weapons. Officials at the hearing said the NRC did not put inverters on its export control list until March, several months after the Pakistani purchases, despite being urged to do so sooner by members of its staff.
New York Times, Washington Post, 5/2 Editorially, the Washington _ Post today says "if solar energy seems altogether irpractical to you, reflect for a moment on the unappealing choices amono the mre familiar sources of heat and power.
Burning coal in large volumes creates serious health hazamis. Nuclear reactors offer dangers of another kind."
An op-ed article in the Washington Star, S/l, by an independent researcher, James M. Ackerran, points out that "Three Mile Island demonstrated our ability to deel with severe reactor distress even when the initial response to the crisis was wholly inadequate, if not downright incompetent, and the preventive systems were faulty."
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