At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry begins when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island fails to close. Cooling water, contaminated with radiation, drained from the open valve into adjoining buildings, and the core began to dangerously overheat.
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was built in 1974 on a sandbar on Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River, just 10 miles downstream from the state capitol in Harrisburg. In 1978, a second state-of-the-art reactor began operating on Three Mile Island, which was lauded for generating affordable and reliable energy in a time of energy crises.
After the cooling water began to drain out of the broken pressure valve on the morning of March 28, 1979, emergency cooling pumps automatically went into operation. Left alone, these safety devices would have prevented the development of a larger crisis. However, human operators in the control room misread confusing and contradictory readings and shut off the emergency water system. The reactor was also shut down, but residual heat from the fission process was still being released. By early morning, the core had heated to over 4,000 degrees, just 1,000 degrees short of meltdown. In the meltdown scenario, the core melts, and deadly radiation drifts across the countryside, fatally sickening a potentially great number of people.
As the plant operators struggled to understand what had happened, the contaminated water was releasing radioactive gases throughout the plant. The radiation levels, though not immediately life-threatening, were dangerous, and the core cooked further as the contaminated water was contained and precautions were taken to protect the operators. Shortly after 8 a.m., word of the accident leaked to the outside world. The plant’s parent company, Metropolitan Edison, downplayed the crisis and claimed that no radiation had been detected off plant grounds, but the same day inspectors detected slightly increased levels of radiation nearby as a result of the contaminated water leak. Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh considered calling an evacuation.
Finally, at about 8 p.m., plant operators realized they needed to get water moving through the core again and restarted the pumps. The temperature began to drop, and pressure in the reactor was reduced. The reactor had come within less than an hour of a complete meltdown. More than half the core was destroyed or molten, but it had not broken its protective shell, and no radiation was escaping. The crisis was apparently over.
Two days later, however, on March 30, a bubble of highly flammable hydrogen gas was discovered within the reactor building. The bubble of gas was created two days before when exposed core materials reacted with super-heated steam. On March 28, some of this gas had exploded, releasing a small amount of radiation into the atmosphere. At that time, plant operators had not registered the explosion, which sounded like a ventilation door closing. After the radiation leak was discovered on March 30, residents were advised to stay indoors. Experts were uncertain if the hydrogen bubble would create further meltdown or possibly a giant explosion, and as a precaution Governor Thornburgh advised “pregnant women and pre-school age children to leave the area within a five-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice.” This led to the panic the governor had hoped to avoid; within days, more than 100,000 people had fled surrounding towns.
On April 1, President Jimmy Carter arrived at Three Mile Island to inspect the plant. Carter, a trained nuclear engineer, had helped dismantle a damaged Canadian nuclear reactor while serving in the U.S. Navy. His visit achieved its aim of calming local residents and the nation. That afternoon, experts agreed that the hydrogen bubble was not in danger of exploding. Slowly, the hydrogen was bled from the system as the reactor cooled.
At the height of the crisis, plant workers were exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation, but no one outside Three Mile Island had their health adversely affected by the accident. Nonetheless, the incident greatly eroded the public’s faith in nuclear power. The unharmed Unit-1 reactor at Three Mile Island, which was shut down during the crisis, did not resume operation until 1985. Cleanup continued on Unit-2 until 1990, but it was too damaged to be rendered usable again. In the four decades since the accident at Three Mile Island, not a single new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States.
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I had absolutely no idea Jimmy Carter was a trained nuclear engineer!The more you know……
OK,further research show Carter in the Navy nuclear program after doing some submarine programs,he did not though finish his nuclear training/work on a nuclear sub due to his fathers death and he resigned his commission to run the family farm
I’ll remember this event, because a day or two before it happened,
I watched “The China Syndrome” in a movie theater.
That was kind of spooky, when it played out in real life just a day or two later.
Here we are 40 years later, and shortcuts in design, rushing into production, and keeping things humming.
All for the bottom line…corporate profits, ignoring potential catastrophic consequences.
Hmmm. Boeing 737 Max, anyone?
The folks near Three Mile Island don’t need microwave ovens. They can use their mail box!
I’d read one time that Three Mile Island was worse than Chernobyl but was not reported that way.
Say whatever you want about nuclear power, the federal government has, as they always do, removed REAL liability and responsibility from the shoulders of those who run these nuclear power plants. They have, as they always do, SOCIALIZED the costs, while privatizing the profits. Nuclear waste has ALWAYS been a problem, and the government, instead of making those who created it, responsible for dealing with its SAFE AND PROPER disposal/storage, has put that burden on the taxpayers.
Are there “safe” nuclear power plant designs? I hear “thorium” thrown around a lot, so maybe. I am no nuclear engineer. But I do know that this source of power, like every other source of power that receives legal protections, direct subsidies, free military protection, free natural resource “acquisition” by the military, and other benefits, has NO INCENTIVE to ever improve anything with respect to safety, cost, efficiency, etc.
At the same time, the government has made it impossible to “dispose” of nuclear waste by refusing to license the Yucca Mtn. waste storage site – thereby mandating that instead of one or two, there are HUNDREDS of nuclear rod cooling pools scattered around the country. It’s hard to imagine how they could screw it up any worse!