Learning How to Run a Nuke

Technicians are taught to prepare for--and avert--the worst

By the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 's reckoning, some of the responsibility for the near miss at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant lay with control-room personnel: they were not able to cope with a crisis. Just how should reactor operators learn their jobs? To find out, TIME Correspondent Peter Staler visited a nuclear training school near Chicago, where emergencies are programmed into the curriculum. His report:

Since 8 a.m., Paul Higginbotham, 32, a fiercely mustached Kentuckian, and Michael Helton, 28, a stocky Ohioan, have been slowly, methodically bringing the 850-megawatt nuclear reactor back on line after a routine shutdown for maintenance. Now, with the plant operating at 21% of capacity, they begin to relax.

Suddenly, a shrill alarm shatters the control room's silence. Red lights flash on the instrument panel. One of the reactor's steam condensers has lost its vacuum, causing a turbine "trip," or shutoff. No longer is the reactor able to shed heat produced by its radioactive core. Ominously its temperature climbs, threatening to boil away the coolant. Unless something is done fast, there may be a meltdown, spilling lethal radioactive gases.

But automatic safety systems come quickly to the rescue. Control rods that had been pulled out earlier to bring the plant back on line are now reinserted. That "scrams," or shuts down, the reactor. Higginbotham and Helton move swiftly too, throwing switches, isolating complex plumbing and carefully monitoring critical meters as the emergency cooling system pours hundreds of gallons of cold water into the core. "Pressure's holding pretty good," says Higginbotham. Sighs Helton: "I think we're all right."

Real as it seemed, the taut control-room drama was only a training exercise. In fact, "emergencies" are daily happenings at General Electric's Boiling Water Reactor Training Center in Morris, Ill., 50 miles southwest of Chicago. Since it opened eleven years ago, it has been instructing more than 400 people a year in the fine art of running and maintaining G.E.-built reactors. Says Don Janacek, the school's "dean": "Our aim is to produce people who can operate their plants not just efficiently but safely."

The B.W.R. Training Center has all the marks of a topnotch engineering school. Cutaway reactor models line its cinder-block corridors. Classrooms contain charts, overhead projectors and closed-circuit TV systems. Instructors, identified by the hand calculators in their shirt pockets, lecture on everything from nuclear physics and chemistry to radiation safety. But students look older, more intent than most collegians.

Many, like Higginbotham and Helton, have had more than five years' experience running gas, oil-or coal-fired power plants before completing the two years of training required of reactor operators. Now they are undergoing advanced training to become shift supervisors. All reactor operators must be high school graduates. Senior operators, who direct whole reactor crews, must be college graduates with degrees in engineering; many are also veterans of the Navy's nuclear training programs. All must pass NRC examinations before they can be licensed.

A typical day for Higginbotham and Helton begins with a lecture, then moves on to mathematical exercises--say, computing the rate at which heat will be produced by withdrawing control rods from the reactor's core. But the most important training is the "hands-on," or practical, instruction. The classroom is a gleaming, $3 million air-conditioned simulation of the control rooms in 42 G.E. reactors now in operation around the country. With one important difference: the training center's controls are connected to a computer, not a reactor. Jokes Instructor Jerry Maher: "We have everything but Jane Fonda."

Picking up from the previous day's noisy interruption, Higginbotham and Helton resume the tediously slow job of getting the reactor back into action. One by one they withdraw control rods, watching as the reactor temperature rises. The work must proceed with agonizing care, and the morning is nearly gone before Maher says, "O.K., guys, we're taking her up. Let's shift her onto line and make money." But Janacek stops to check his students' progress. "We've got damn good safety systems," he says. "But they're only as good as the operators."

To prove his point, Janacek moves to the rear of the control room, glances at a panel with such legends as FEED-WATER PUMP FAILURE, STEAM-LINE RUPTURE and RELIEF-VALVE FAILURE, and presses a button. The effect is jarring. Alarms give off an almost hysterical shrill. Control-panel lights flash, and overhead lights dim. He has simulated the rupture of a 21-in.-diameter water line, which can empty the reactor of vital cooling water in less than a minute.

Higginbotham and Helton bring the situation under control before the lapse of that crucial minute. Then, as they would if such an accident had really happened, they begin cooling down the reactor for repairs and, momentarily at least, reflect on what might have been. Just before Janacek had pressed the button, the reactor was nearly up to full power. Now they must start all over.

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