Chernobyl-Type Reactor to Be Closed for 6 Months

The only U.S. nuclear reactor with a design similar to the Soviet Chernobyl plant will be shut down for six months to make safety improvements recommended by an expert panel, the Energy Department said Friday.

During the shutdown, to begin in three weeks, $50 million in modifications will be made to the aging N reactor at the Hanford reservation, Energy Undersecretary Joseph Salgado said.

Also Friday, the department awarded a $5-billion, five-year contract to Westinghouse Electric Corp. of Pittsburgh to be the contractor for management work at Hanford.

In addition to the shutdown, the panel’s 88 recommendations included closing permanently the N reactor within five years.

Two of the panel’s six members recommended that the 23-year-old reactor be shut immediately and permanently unless its plutonium is needed for national security, Salgado said. The other four consultants said the reactor could be operated for the next five years if the modifications are made.

“I will tell you today that national security reasons do not allow the permanent shutdown of the N reactor,” Salgado said. “N reactor is a critical and unique facility in the nation’s defense program. We do not have the excess capacity in our weapons production system that would allow us to shut down N reactor permanently at this time.”

The N reactor, operated for the Energy Department by UNC Nuclear Industries, is the only one in the United States to be graphite-moderated and water-cooled, like those at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Ukraine near Kiev. A second reactor in Colorado uses graphite but is not water-cooled.

One of several reactors at Chernobyl exploded and burned April 26, sending a radioactive cloud around the world. More than 30 people have died from radiation exposure there in the world’s worst nuclear plant accident.

Like the Chernobyl plant, the N reactor lacks the thick concrete and steel containment dome used on most U.S. commercial reactors. The N reactor produces plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Sen. Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, ranking Republican on the energy and water subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urged that the N reactor be closed immediately and permanently, despite the wishes of the Energy or Defense departments.

‘They Are Addicts’

“One is forced to wonder just how much danger these people would be willing to allow in the absence of public and political pressure,” he said. “They are addicts. They are addicted to nuclear weapons, and they will apparently go to any length and take any risk to get more.”

After the Chernobyl disaster, Energy Secretary John S. Herrington assembled the panel to review safety at Hanford.

Louis H. Roddis Jr., panel chairman, said the N reactor should be shut down permanently “unless a positive determination is made” that national security interests require the plutonium. Roddis, a consulting engineer, is former president of Consolidated Edison Co. of New York.

His report said the graphite in the reactor will continue to become distorted and will touch the reactor’s roof by 1990 or 1991, years earlier than expected.

Additional Pressure

The graphite expansion will put additional pressure on reactor tubes, which will exceed safety standards by 1991, the report said.

Salgado said the distortion eventually will force the N reactor’s permanent closure. “When that growth becomes a safety factor, that reactor will be shut down,” he said.

The commission’s report was delivered to the department 45 days ago but had been kept secret, said Mike Lawrence, Hanford operations manager.

The selection of Westinghouse as managing contractor--in a consolidation of three major Hanford contractors that employ 9,400 workers--will have little impact on most rank-and-file employees but will mean the loss of about 600 management jobs, according to the Energy Department. The contract begins Oct. 1.

Bids Submitted

Three companies submitted bids for the contract: Bechtel Inc., San Francisco; Rockwell International Corp., El Segundo, Calif., and Westinghouse.

Rockwell and Westinghouse already have subsidiaries at Hanford. Rockwell Hanford Operations is the largest single contractor, employing about 5,300 people.

Rockwell has been sharply criticized since the recent disclosure of internal audits showing safety problems at its two plutonium processing plants at the reservation, in south-central Washington.

Among the recommended modifications to the N reactor are an upgraded emergency cooling system, equipment to control the buildup of explosive hydrogen and installation of a remote control room.

Test Called For

The recommendations also call for a test of the confinement system, which is designed to slow the release of radioactive steam during an accident.

A shutdown of the reactor would halt all weapons production at Hanford. Two facilities on the reservation that process plutonium from the reactor have been closed for safety reasons since Oct. 8.

The Energy Department and a separate General Accounting Office report concluded earlier that the N reactor was being operated properly and that an immediate shutdown was unnecessary.

The Energy Department contended that an accident like that at Chernobyl could not happen at the N reactor because it had many safety features that the Soviet plant lacked.