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
Integral reactor Integral reactor In the nuclear power field, an integral reactor is a nuclear reactor design principle where the reactor core, primary cooling loop, steam generators and any required emergency cooling are contained within a single reactor vessel. The concept can be applied to any sort of underlying reactor design, there are examples of integral pressurized water reactors, sodium-cooled fast reactors, and others. The main goals are mass production of the reactor, as the entire working design can be delivered as a single unit and then connected to the non-nuclear generation sections of the overall power plant. Integral reactors are also