E. Teller and atomic power

After a brief introduction on the early history of nuclear age, the paper mentions the role of Edmund Teller in the hydrogen bomb. The main topic of the paper is Teller's work for reactor safety. Teller and his co-workers elaborated the main principles as the role and necessity of the containment in case of hermeticity problem in the reactor chamber. (The modern concept is in depth protection, that is the role of fuel matrix, the cover of heating element, the reactor chamber and finally the containment.) The second safety concept is the negative reactivity coefficients under any circumstances. (As an illustration, the paper compares the reactivity coefficients of the pressurized water reactor and the RBKM reactor.) The third group concepts summarizes the major rules of operation including positioning the regulating rods before any operation, continuous measurement of neutron flux, automatic regulating system that can block the running of the reactor and using redundant regulating components and the foolproofness of operation. The third group of rules refers to the deployment of the reactor. The last group summarizes the safety reconsiderations covering the human factor. Finally the paper describes the modern solution of improving the training of the personnel: using simulators, because otherwise operators have not been trained to work under serious malfunction before they need full knowledge in case of emergency. (T-R.A.)