Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States ordered during the late 1960s raised new safety questions and created fears of a severe reactor accident that would send large quantities of radiation into the environment. In the early 1970s, a highly contentious debate over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown that could lead to the "China syndrome", received coverage in the popular media and technical journals. In 1976, four nuclear engineers —three from GE and one from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission— resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming. They testified to
Behavior of nuclear fuel during a reactor accident up to temperatures in excess of the normal operating temperatures, the fuel in question is in a special channel which is in a toroidal nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor is used as a "driver core" to irradate the test fuel. While the reactor is cooled as normal by its own cooling system the test fuel has its own cooling system, which is fitted with filters and equipment to study the release of radioactivity from the damaged fuel. Already the release of radioisotopes from fuel under different conditions has been studied. After the fuel has been used in the experiment it