According to Rhodes A-Bomb book, for the original Pile in Chicago there was a rope, and there was a guy with an axe.
There was a backup to the backup: people with a solution of something (borate?) to pour into the pile to soak up surplus neutrons. This was a really bad thing to do, for the future use of the pile: the carbon would be soaked, useless, the reactivity of the pile would be next to impossible to get back without completely re-constructing it so the Scram by lowering rods, was the preference, and was done by a counter for accellerated scaling aside from the guy with the axe after a while.
Re:Scram Switch
by brandmeyer on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @08:44PM
(#26655330)
ESR's outline is more-or-less correct. Electric current is required to maintain a magnetic field. When the field collapses some mechanical device takes over using stored energy (springs and/or gravity) Here's a practical example to give some more context to the idea:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3721462A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8811561B2/en
Re:Scram Switch
by CobaltFire on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @08:29PM
(#26655192)
As mentioned in the other reply, this was under some bleachers and yes there was a rope and a guy with an axe. No idea what it did to his lifespan.
For my username: I actually started using this name before I was involved in nuclear power, and that’s the first time that’s been asked!
Was there really a rope, and you really cut it with an axe?
What did this do to the life expectancy of the ax operator?
Does any of this have anything to do with your HN username? If there's a story, would you tell?