Author | John G. Fuller |
---|---|
Subject | Nuclear power plants |
Publisher | Reader's Digest Press |
Publication date | 1975 |
ISBN | 0883490706 |
621.483 | |
LC Class | TK1344.M5 |
We Almost Lost Detroit, a 1975 Reader's Digest book by John G. Fuller, [1] presents a history of Fermi 1, America's first commercial breeder reactor, with emphasis on the 1966 partial nuclear meltdown. [2] [3]
It took four years for the reactor to be repaired, and then performance was poor. In 1972, the reactor core was dismantled and the reactor was decommissioned. America's first effort at operating a full-scale breeder had failed. [2]
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists felt it was "a significant book and it is well worth reading." They felt it explained how the accident happened but not why. [4] Kirkus Reviews called it "the heaviest broadside against the Atomic Energy Commission in years". [5]
Spoken word and rap pioneer Gil Scott-Heron has a song titled "We Almost Lost Detroit", [6] dealing with the same issue. The song appeared on his 1977 album, Bridges . The song is covered by Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. on their album It's a Corporate World.
This song was also covered by Ron Holloway on his album, Groove Update, which features Gil Scott-Heron on vocals. [7]
Scott-Heron’s song, in turn, provides the reference to the 2020 documentary We Almost Lost Bochum about the hip hop group RAG from Bochum in western Germany. [8]
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as Voyager 2. Generating electricity from fusion power remains the focus of international research.
Gilbert Scott-Heron was an American jazz poet, singer, musician, and author known for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson fused jazz, blues, and soul with lyrics relative to social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles. He referred to himself as a "bluesologist", his own term for "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues". His poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", delivered over a jazz-soul beat, is considered a major influence on hip hop music.
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be fueled with more-commonly available isotopes of uranium and thorium, such as uranium-238 and thorium-232, as opposed to the rare uranium-235 which is used in conventional reactors. These materials are called fertile materials since they can be bred into fuel by these breeder reactors.
Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, Harvey Wasserman and John Hall. The group advocates against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979. MUSE organized a series of five No Nukes concerts held at Madison Square Garden in New York in September 1979. On September 23, 1979, almost 200,000 people attended a large rally staged by MUSE on the then-empty north end of the Battery Park City landfill in New York.
Wald is the German word for forest.
The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, in Frenchtown Charter Township, Michigan on approximately 1,000 acres (400 ha). All units of the plant are operated by the DTE Energy Electric Company and owned by parent company DTE Energy. It is approximately halfway between Detroit, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio. It is also visible from parts of Amherstburg and Colchester, Ontario as well as on the shore of Lake Erie in Ottawa County, Ohio. Two units have been constructed on this site. The first unit's construction started on August 4, 1956 and reached initial criticality on August 23, 1963, and the second unit received its construction permit on September 26, 1972. It reached criticality on June 21, 1985 and was declared commercial on November 18, 1988. The plant is connected to two single-circuit 345 kV Transmission Lines and three 120 kV lines. They are operated and maintained by ITC Transmission.
Fermi 1 was the United States' only demonstration-scale breeder reactor, built during the 1950s at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station on the western shore of Lake Erie south of Detroit, Michigan. It used the sodium-cooled fast reactor cycle, in which liquid sodium metal is used as the primary coolant instead of typical nuclear reactor designs cooled by water. Sodium cooling permits a more compact core, generating surplus neutrons used to produce more fission fuel by converting a surrounding "blanket" of 238U into 239Pu which can be fed back into a reactor. At full power, it would generate 430 MW of heat (MWt), or about 150 MW of electricity (MWe).
Nuclear safety is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "The achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents or mitigation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and the environment from undue radiation hazards". The IAEA defines nuclear security as "The prevention and detection of and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear materials, other radioactive substances or their associated facilities".
A liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor, or LMR is a type of nuclear reactor where the primary coolant is a liquid metal. Liquid metal cooled reactors were first adapted for breeder reactor power generation. They have also been used to power nuclear submarines.
John Grant Fuller, Jr. was a New England–based American author of several nonfiction books and newspaper articles, mainly focusing on the theme of extraterrestrials and the supernatural. For many years he wrote a regular column for the Saturday Review magazine, called "Trade Winds". His books include We Almost Lost Detroit, The Ghost of Flight 401, Incident at Exeter, and The Interrupted Journey. He also served as writer, producer, and director on a number of TV shows and documentary films.
No Nukes: The Muse Concerts For a Non-Nuclear Future was a 1979 triple live album that contained selections from the September 1979 Madison Square Garden concerts by the Musicians United for Safe Energy collective. Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall were the key organizers of the event and guiding forces behind the album.
Pieces of a Man is the debut studio album by American poet Gil Scott-Heron. It was recorded in April 1971 at RCA Studios in New York City and released later that year by Flying Dutchman Records. The album followed Scott-Heron's debut live album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (1970) and departed from that album's spoken-word performance, instead featuring compositions in a more conventional popular song structure.
Winter in America is a studio album by American vocalist Gil Scott-Heron and keyboardist Brian Jackson. It was recorded in September to October 1973 at D&B Sound Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland, and released in May 1974 by Strata-East Records. Scott-Heron and Jackson produced the album in a stripped-down fashion, relying on traditional African and R&B sounds, while Jackson's piano-based arrangements were rooted in jazz and the blues. The subject matter on Winter in America deals with the African-American community and inner city in the 1970s.
The United States Government Accountability Office reported more than 150 incidents from 2001 to 2006 of nuclear plants not performing within acceptable safety guidelines. According to a 2010 survey of energy accidents, there have been at least 56 accidents at nuclear reactors in the United States. The most serious of these was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979. Relatively few accidents have involved fatalities.
Bridges is an album by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, released in the fall of 1977 on Arista Records.
Spirits is the 1994 album by Gil Scott-Heron. The title track is an interpretation of the John Coltrane piece Equinox, and "The Other Side" is a live version of Scott-Heron's 1971 track "Home is Where the Hatred Is" with a new arrangement and many new verses that expand the original to nearly twenty minutes. It was later sampled for "Home" on the 2011 Jamie XX collaboration album, We're New Here.
Moving Target is a studio album by American spoken-word poet and blues musician Gil Scott-Heron.
Secrets is a 1978 studio album by American vocalist Gil Scott-Heron and keyboardist Brian Jackson.
1980 is a studio album by American singer-songwriter Gil Scott-Heron and keyboardist Brian Jackson. Their ninth album together, it was recorded from August to October 1979 during a period of creative tension between the two musicians and released in February 1980 by Arista Records.