jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

The nuclear power industry never recovered from this disaster, which took place forty-one years ago today. "The Great Courses Plus" has a brief presentation about it.

ggab Loc: ?

I wish they would do one near where I live.
I could use a man made lake nearby.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

For the first time in decades, permits have been issued for new nuclear power plants. Regardless of some fringe theories, no one in the US has ever died from a nuclear power plant event or “accident”, yet many are still afraid. As a Nuclear engineer once told me, people prefer to be killed by something they can see (cars, guns, ...).

pendennis

The entire TMI incident had as much to do with human error in ignoring warnings from the reactor gauges. They also got conflicting signals which resulted in the reactor core to be exposed to air.

However, we can't lay all this off on operator error. In 1984, I took a required course in business writing through my company. One of the case studies was the TMI incident. The documentation from the supplier Babcock & Wilcox, was nearly unreadable, and we had mechanical and hydraulic engineers in our class. The instructor stated several times that the prime cause of the problem was the arcane language used in documentation.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, Three Mile Island, like most accidents, had multiple causes. One that was addressed by B&W after the accident was the valve open indicator for the valve in question. Prior to the accident, the open-closed indicator for the valve was controlled by the switch controlling the valve, so that if the valve control switch was closed, the indicator showed closed. After the accident, the design was modified so that the indicator light showed the actual position of the valve, not the position of the control switch.

joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

It’s probably twice as easy to catch a two headed fish. 😊

jerseymike

Chernobyl and Fukushima were much worse than Three Mile Island. No one died that day. There were later deaths attributed to leaded radiation. Fortunately not as many in comparison to Russia and Japan's accidents.

hippi Loc: Sedalia MO

on a lighter note how about Jimmy Carter stat night live skit on three mile

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

A quick interesting story about TMI: When I was still teaching and mentioned TMI for some reason or another, I learned that many of today’s young people think there were hundreds of deaths involved and wouldn't believe me until I urged one of them look it up. They were still suspect.

jsmangis Loc: Peoria, IL

As a Journeyman Wireman and retired member of the IBEW, I spent nearly half of my 40 year career building, repairing and updating nuclear power plants in three states. As all of us who have worked in the industry know, happened at TMI was entirely human error. The proof of this is that the automatic systems eventually shut TMI Unit 2 down when the operators quit trying to override the system. American Nuclear plants are the safest in the world because they are continuously being serviced and upgraded. There are six nuclear power plants with a total of nine reactors in my state of Illinois with the oldest facility, Dresden NPS first commissioned in 1953, still operating. While we are gradually changing over to renewable power sources (wind and solar), nuclear power still provides more power to our state than all other sources combined.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Three Mile Island, Bopal India, and Chernoble all had their disasters occur around 4:00 AM, when people are at their least efficient.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Storage of the waste is a major problem.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-radioactive-nuclear-waste-storage-20190614-story.html

Remember the kitty litter disaster in NM? There are still 500 drums of that in storage, waiting to explode.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/23/315279895/organic-kitty-litter-chief-suspect-in-nuclear-waste-accident

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Sorry, there have been NO deaths attributed to the radioactive gas release from TMI (either during or after the event) reported by reliable sources. There have been a couple of doomsday rabid anti-nuclear blogs (one in particular) that have stated that there were deaths after the event, but they are not credible unless you believe in conspiracy theories. If one doesn’t trust the NRC or want to wade through the govt. documents, Wiki has a good section on both US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States) and worldwide (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents) that is informative and comprehensive. You’ll find that there have been a handful of exposures and deaths in the US and Europe from research reactors and nuclear research, but none from a commercial power plants. What’s worth noting in both the TMI and Brown’s Ferry incidents is that the inherent safety of water moderated reactor designs and the extensive safety features worked. The plants were safely (and automatically) shut down, without injury or death.

It’s also worth noting that although tens of thousands died in the Japanese tsunami, not a single person has died from radiation from the meltdown of the Fukushima plants. Chernobyl is a different story entirely. The Russian use a different graphite moderated reactor design than other countries (which use water as a moderator). It is cheaper to build, but unlike water moderated designs, inherently unstable. That, combined with the Russian lack of a containment building (such as used in US reactors), really egregious operator error while running a test on the reactor, and initial underreporting of the accident by the Russian government led to the many past (and potentially future deaths). The Russians have a history of nuclear accidents involving their nuclear submarines as well. With respect to nuclear plant design and safety, they are an outlier in the world, and not in a good way.

Regardless of whether we want it or not, lacking some breakthrough in power production, there are probably more nuclear plants in our future. Despite advances in solar and wind power, we will still need the base generating capacity, and there is a finite limit to the amount of fossil fuel available on earth. Waste storage is certainly an issue, but can be addressed by finally opening the national nuclear waste depository.

Blaster34 Loc: Florida Treasure Coast

I just wish they hadn't shot Jack Lemon....