Meltdown At Three Mile Island
On the morning of March 28, 1979, a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suddenly overheated. During the tension-packed week that followed, scientists scrambled to prevent the nightmare of a nuclear meltdown, officials tried to calm public fears and more than one hundred thousand residents fled the area. Equipment failure, human error, and bad luck would conspire to create an event that stunned the nation.
At 4:00 AM on March 28, 1979, the Unit-2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania suddenly overheated, releasing radioactive gases. During the ensuing tension-packed week, scientists scrambled to prevent the nightmare of a meltdown, officials rushed in to calm public fears, and thousands of residents fled to emergency shelters. The film, "Meltdown at Three Mile Island", provides an inside look at how equipment failure, human error, and bad luck would conspire to create America's worst nuclear accident.
On March 28, 1979, a series of malfunctions, mistakes, and misinterpretations led to the worst nuclear accident the United States has ever seen, and nearly led to the worst of all possible disasters: total meltdown. To truly understand how just how devastating this situation could have become, you must first understand how a nuclear reactor works. If you refer to figure 1-A, you will see that at the heart of every nuclear power plant lies the radioactive core. The core is a nuclear furnace, generating heat as its atoms split during a controlled chain reaction. At Three Mile Island, the core stands 12 feet high and weighs 100 tons. Control rods are lowered into or raised out of the core to control the rate at which the atoms split, and therefore the amount of heat generated by the core. Lowering the rods slows down the reaction; raising the rods increases the reaction. Water in the primary loop flows around the core, absorbing the heat generated. Because...
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