Talk:SL-1

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Just starting out - more on SL-1 and other topics to come.

Brian Rock 03:03, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Just found an entry for SL-1_Reactor_Accident, as I've learned to better navigate. I'll be merging this article into that one. --Azazello 02:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC) Brian Rock 04:26, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The SL-1_Reactor_Accident article doesn't follow the Wikipedia naming convention, so it's better to merge that description into this one and make it redirect here. Nothing links to it, perhaps because of the name. This one gets several links, probably because it has the most obvious naming. Jamesday 12:05, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

What are the names of the three victims? --Mizchalmers 22:32, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Zdv,

Why have you removed my open link to prompt criticality in SL-1? I understand removing a redirect to nothing, but highlighting an obviously non-trivial term is deliberate and done to prompt the writing of a new article with that name.

Your actions are not good editorial practice. --Azazello 02:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Suicide-homicide

I think it is now proven fact that the explosion happened due to sabotage (homicide-suicide), because one operator learned that his wife is cheating with the other operator and decided to take the amoroso with him to the afterlife. The third, unconnected operator was just "collateral damage", so to speak.

Human passion is stronger than the atom.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.70.32.136 (talk • contribs).

One of the theories, but hardly a proven fact. Read Idaho Falls for what I think is the definative public account. The operator who pulled the rod out too far, John Byrnes, was recently separated from his wife (crashing at friend's places for the last several nights) and had money problems. Byrnes was mostly at fault in the marital strife: he was a philanderer and drunk.
Richard Legg's wife was a local Mormon girl, several months pregnant, and by all accounts hardly likely to be engaged in any kind of relationship with Byrnes. Most likely, they never met. Both the widows Legg and Byrnes have denied there were any extramarital affairs among them.
The murder suicide rumor had swirled around the industry for years following the accident. It became a semi-official claim when a nuclear safety researcher repeated the rumor in a memo stressing the importance of making reactors operator-proof. Previous reactor safety guidelines always assumed the operators were in their right minds when at work, and instead concentrated on commies with grenade launchers.
The most plausible reasoning I've read was Byrnes resented Legg because Legg was recently given a supervisory role. They had fought some months earlier at a bachelor's party (both men were drunk, and Byrnes had just fucked a whore--Legg probably taunted him about it). Byrnes had a temper, and had been known to throw shit around inside the reactor control room when frustrated. He was recently passed on the same supervisor job Legg now held. The men were several hours behind in their night's task list. Legg (a pranskter and under scrutiny for poor performance as a supervisor) probably said something to chide Byrnes (perhaps officiously restating the rule that the control rod mustn't be raised too far, or telling him to "excersize it" to prevent sticking), and Byrnes just had a "to hell with this" moment and raised the rod too far to piss everybody else off. Kaboom.
There's no evidence anybody, least of all the poorly trained operators, knew that withdrawing the rod too far would lead to an explosion. They guessed it could possibly melt down the core, but that wouldn't constitute a murder-suicide.
Tafinucane 21:30, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Causes ideas

From the article:

The three most common theories proposed for this discrepancy are sabotage or suicide attempt by one of the operators, inadvertent withdrawal of the main control rod, which was known to be "sticky," or an intentional attempt to "exercise" the sticky rod, to make it travel more smoothly within its sheath.

Suicide is right out, since the designers didn't even know you could cause an explosion by withdrawing the control rod too far. The main control rod was the only control rod that didn't have a history of sticking. Not to say that it didn't stick that night, just that it hadn't before. AEC investigators made extensive trials to reproduce the accident by having men pull on mock-control rods and releasing the rods suddenly. They also tried goosing the men (giving the test lifters an unexpected pinch in the rear, as Legg was suspected of having done), but never were the 100-lb bars lifted more than a few inches. Similarly, the "exersizing" the operators had been doing previously only consisted of sliding the rod up and down a few inches.

The article's statement remains true, however, that those are the three most common theories. The article needs to also mention that the reactor design was also to blame. The control rods could get stuck, as mentioned. Withdrawing a single control rod could send the core to critical (which is a reactor flaw unique to the SL-1 design). Boron "poison" meant to quell the excessive radiation when the uranium fuel was new was supposed to be alloyed into the fuel itself. This proved to great a metalurogical challenge for the time, so they just tacked on boron-alluminum allow strips to the fuel. The strips flaked off over time, so the degree of control the operators had over the nuclear reaction was narrowed and partially unknown. Tafinucane 21:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

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