What happend
In the mid-1950s, nuclear physicists confidently predicted that nuclear energy would usher in a new age for humanity. The cost of energy would be so low it would be almost too cheap to meter. They predicted that by the year 2000 there would be thousands of commercial reactors producing unlimited amounts of power. Like the horse and buggy, oil and coal would become little more than historical curiosities. With such a bright outlook for the future the engineers and scientists started to get careless. Then on March 28, 1979, an event took place that rocked the nuclear power industry so badly that it has yet to recover. That event was the partial meltdown of one of the reactor cores at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania. The accident at Three Mile Island was a combination of equipment failures, design problems, and human error. It was even more that though it was a complacent attitude that the industry had as a whole as Harold Den!ton former Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said, " We thought the plant was too well designed to have a serious accident." "It was kind of like the Titanic."(CNN) It may surprise some people to find out how close we came to a major disaster and the
oactivity. As the radioactivity increases a general emergency is declared. The high heat being generated by the core prompts some to think that the core is at least partially uncovered. Realizing that the core is indeed uncovered the plant operators once again turn the emergency water injection system. The plants operators once again turn on the pumps for the primary loop this starts the water circulating again. By doing this the cores temperature is finally brought back into line. For the most part the crisis was over. This is when things start to go wrong. The back up pumps for the secondary loop had had a test run on them 42 hours before the indent. Part of this test included a valve being closed and then reopened at the end of the test. But this time the valve was not reopened after the test. The valve being closed prevented the backup system from functioning. The plant workers discovered the valve closed in about eight minutes and reopened. Once the valve was open the back up system started to work correctly. Cooling water then flowed into the steam generators. (NRC) This solved one problem but a bigger one existed. The crisis at Three Mile Island did have an interesting effect on the community's mental health though. After the Three Mile Island event the community had "a transient but pounced demoralizing effect on TMI vicinity residents. Continued demoralization of Three Mile Island Nuclear Station employees. And continuing problems of trust among both groups that stem directly from the accident."(Diamond) A lot of the stress on the residents was from disagreements on weather the family should leave or stay. Most of the stress and mental problems that were caused by this event went away with time. The incident Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, but it was far from the worst in the world. "At Three Mile Island the fail safe system worked. The power station switched itself off. There was a scare but no disaster."(Raso) It was however a disaster for the power industry. By damaging the publics trust of nuclear energy it has all but halted the progress of this technology. In some European countries nuclear power provides nearly four times the power that it does in America. As Jeff Donn put it "Maybe nuclear power was fundamentally flawed; Steeped in danger and, as environmentalists sometimes suggest, the most expensive way ever devised to boil water. Maybe nuclear plants are too big and centralized to thrive in an ere of smaller is better"(Donn) The truest testament to what happened to the nuclear power industry may be the fact that AmerGen has offered to buy Three Mile Island's remaining working reactor for 100 million, it cost 400 mi! NRC. "Three Mile Island 2 Accident" Yahoo. Because the secondary loop was out of commission for about eight minuets the pressure relief valve had to open. The pressure relief valve should have closed after the pressure dropped but it did not. The emergency water injection system had also come on to inject water into the primary loop to prevent a loss of coolant accident. Plant workers were not concerned when this happened because it had come on in the past when there had been no leak. Operators seeing that the water level and pressure are going up turn the emergency water injection off. In reality the water level was still dropping but since the gauge that the workers saw was reading incorrectly they were unaware of this. Because of design shortcomings the plant operators also did not know that the pre
Some common words found in the essay are:
Regulatory Commission, Mile Island, , Nuclear Station, San Onofre, Donn Maybe, China Syndrome, mile island, Angeles Times, Mile Island's, Cronkite March, pressure relief valve, relief valve, nuclear power, pressure relief, primary loop, secondary loop, water primary, water primary loop, valve closed, loop water, power industry, emergency water injection, water secondary loop, nuclear power industry,
Approximate Word count = 2414
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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