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Darwin Awards
2011 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
Should I include it in the archive?
Vote to tell me what *you* think!

Candle in the wind

2011 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

In my humble opinion, some people deserve a 'Honourable Mention' on pure merit.

One of these people was an electrician, working under the floor of the control room for reactor 1 and 2 in the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Station, Alabama, at noon on March 22, 1975. Both reactors were at full power, and delivered 2.2GW of electricity.

There is always a small underpressure in a reactor building. The electrician had found out that there was a leak next to the enormous bundles of cables leading to the reactor, so a lot of air was sucked in. He attempted to stop the leak by stuffing styrofoam into the hole. I guess he must have been out of duct tape, else he would have done a truly professional repair. Happy with his craftmanship ("There, i fixed it!") he tested his handywork.

In short, he lit a candle and held it up to the styrofoam.

The hole was not _quite_ sealed, though. The air draft sucked the flame into the hole and lit the styrofoam. This in turn lit the polyurethane foam that had been used to fill the cable tray instead of firestop mortar.

The fire burned for seven hours, in spite of all attempts to put it out. All control over reactor 1 was lost. Equipment turned random on and off, as the control cables - that all led trough the same hole (yes, the one on fire) - burned through. Luckily the reactor scrammed before control over the control rods were lost, but all cooling was temporarily lost. The water level over the core dropped to 1.2 meters - normally there is 5 meters of water over the core.

Reactor 2 had to be shut down as well, as smoke and fumes from the fire entered the control room, and the power supply became erratic. First 9½ hours after the fire started, normal shutdown cooling could be established.

Repairs took months and cost untold millions. Of course.

One man and a candle. I'm impressed. I really think he deserves his HM.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Power_Plant http://www.ccnr.org/browns_ferry.html "The Greenpeace book of the Nuclear Age", John May, ISBN 0-394-58553-4 & ISBN 0-679-72963-1

Submitted on 08/30/2011

Submitted by: Kim 'The Pirate' Christensen
Reference: Several, please see below.

Copyright © 2011 DarwinAwards.com

>> Moderator Scores <<

Bruce said:
Definitely Toss: No Self-Selection
Thanks, Kim, but unless this worker injured/killed himself and nobody else then there simply isn't any self-selection here. And my guess is that a fire in a nuclear power plant like that likely would have injured a lot more people than just the worker if it had gotten out of control, and as the rules clearly state any injured bystanders result in an automatic toss. Thanks just the same.


Candi said:
Definitely Toss: No Self-Selection
What Bruce said.


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