Three Mile Island - What Really Happened

Summary

The Three Mile Island incident, which occurred on March 28, 1979, remains a pivotal moment in American nuclear history. Despite being the worst accident in the U.S. nuclear industry, official reports emphasize that the radiation released was minimal and should not have caused significant public health issues. The incident was largely a result of human errors and miscommunications, and it introduced the idea of "normal accidents," where complex systems inevitably experience failures due to unforeseeable factors. Public perception, however, was shaped by poor communication and media frenzy, leading to widespread fear and anti-nuclear sentiment. This incident contributed to a decline in nuclear energy's development in the United States for decades.

Highlights

• Initial panic ensued as a series of procedural errors led to a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, inciting widespread fear 🚨.
• Miscommunication between operators, regulators, and the public led to a media frenzy that distorted the reality of the accident 📺.
• Despite the alarm, the physical health impact from radiation was negligible, contrary to public belief ☢️.
• The chaos surrounding the incident birthed theories of unavoidable 'normal accidents' in complex systems 🔄.
• Three Mile Island's shadow loomed large over nuclear policy, stalling nuclear plant construction for years 📉.

Key Takeaways

• Three Mile Island's accident was marked by a series of human errors and a stuck valve that could have been a minor glitch but led to a major crisis 🙈.
• The incident initiated the theory of 'normal accidents' in complex systems, suggesting that some disasters are inevitable 😲.
• Public perception post-accident was largely shaped by the chaotic communication and media reports, not the actual impact of the radiation 📢.
• The actual radiation release was minimal, especially compared to Chernobyl, and not enough to cause significant health issues 📉.
• Three Mile Island's fallout affected the nuclear energy industry's growth due to public fear, despite minimal real health impacts ⚖️.

Overview

On March 28, 1979, a failure in the cooling system at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania resulted in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. A combination of mechanical malfunction and human error led to a partial meltdown. The confusion escalated due to major miscommunications and a lack of public information, resulting in unnecessary fear and panic among the public.

The fallout from the incident was not just technical but deeply psychological. The media's portrayal amplified fears and overshadowed the reality: the actual health risks were minimal. This event popularized the idea of 'normal accidents'—the notion that catastrophic failures in complex systems are oftentimes unavoidable.

Despite the low physical risks, the societal and political repercussions were significant. Public perception of nuclear power soured, leading to halted developments of new plants. The Three Mile Island accident's legacy was less about radiation and more about how human error and media horror stories could escalate a manageable situation into a national crisis.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter titled 'Introduction' describes an unexpected sequence of events at the 3M Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which resulted in radiated steam escaping from the reactor. This incident occurred on March 28th, 1979, triggered by a malfunction at unit 2 of the generating station. Federal officials at the time insisted there was no immediate danger, though concerns about the fuel core's status were evident due to significant fuel damage. The problem began exactly 36 seconds after 4:00 a.m. when feedwater pumps failed, abruptly halting the flow of water to the steam generators.
• 00:30 - 01:00: The Event Unfolds The chapter 'The Event Unfolds' describes the initial chaos and technical failures during the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Automated systems quickly responded by shutting down the steam turbine and electric generator, but soon after, a critical failure occurred as two-thirds of the unit's uranium core lost cooling water, reaching extremely high temperatures. This marked the start of a significant nuclear incident in US history, rated five out of seven on the international nuclear event scale.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Public Perception vs. Reality The chapter titled 'Public Perception vs. Reality' explores the significant impact of the Three Mile Island accident on public perception of nuclear power. It left a lasting negative impression, fueled by the media's poor communication, leading to the widespread belief that Three Mile Island was an unmitigated disaster. This perception deviates from the more complicated reality of the event.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Technical Aspects of Nuclear Power The chapter delves into the technical aspects of nuclear power, emphasizing that despite the complexity involved in splitting the atom, the overall structure of a nuclear power plant is relatively simple. It also recounts the story of the 3M Island accident, highlighting human errors leading to a benign failure. The narrative underscores human fallibility in managing intricate systems, drawing from historical incidents.
• 02:30 - 04:00: The Accident's Sequence The chapter explains the sequence and functioning of a nuclear power plant. It describes the process of chain reactions generating heat, which is exchanged with water in a separate loop, creating steam. This steam spins turbines to generate electricity. Afterward, the steam is cooled and condensed to re-enter the system. Throughout the process, various systems, valves, and pressurizers ensure smooth operation. The core of the nuclear power plant is highlighted as the most crucial part of the system.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Complexity and Chance The chapter titled 'Complexity and Chance' discusses nuclear reactor designs, focusing on how control rods are utilized to maintain safe operations. The control rods can be inserted into the reactor core to absorb neutrons and stop chain reactions, effectively shutting down the core. The design of these reactors ensures that they cannot be converted into atomic weapons, despite political claims to the contrary. However, the chapter cautions about the potential dangers if the reactor core loses its ability to self-cool, emphasizing the risks associated with inadequate cooling.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Failures and Responses The chapter discusses the critical temperatures at which a nuclear reactor core can become dangerous. It explains that after shutdown, a core can heat back up to 2,200°F, causing superheated water to react with the fuel rods, producing hydrogen gas, which is explosive. The temperature reaching 5,200°F can lead to the melting of the fuel itself, releasing radioactive materials. This can either contaminate the system's water or breach the reactor's shielding, potentially resulting in the creation of an unstoppable flow of a hazardous substance known as chorum.
• 09:00 - 11:30: Public Panic and Miscommunication The design and structure of nuclear reactors are emphasized for safety, particularly regarding their ability to endure high temperatures. The text illustrates these safety measures with the construction characteristics of the 3M Islands unit 2 reactor, which includes fuel rods capable of handling extreme heat and a reactor vessel fortified with thick steel and concrete to withstand potential hazards. The containment building housing the reactor is described, highlighting its immense size and reinforced concrete walls, all of which serve to prevent the release of radioactive materials in case of malfunction.
• 11:30 - 16:00: The Aftermath and Public Health The chapter discusses the robustness of nuclear power buildings and how their design helped prevent a disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979, despite severe damage to the reactor core. It highlights that this incident halted the momentum of nuclear power development in the U.S.
• 16:00 - 19:00: Economic and Political Impact The chapter begins with a technical malfunction at a nuclear reactor located 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The incident starts early in the morning, just after 4:00 a.m., when the feedwater pump system to the reactor core fails. This failure stops the essential flow of water to the steam generators.
• 19:00 - 21:00: Conclusion The chapter discusses a critical situation in a nuclear facility where nuclear fission in the core had ceased. However, an issue arose because a relief valve that was supposed to close remained stuck open, an error that wasn't indicated by the control room's lights and switches. Within a minute of the incident, operators noticed the emergency feedwater pumps activating, but they failed to observe two warning lights indicating that no water was actually flowing through the system.

Three Mile Island - What Really Happened Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in a series of unplanned events allowed radiated steam to escape from the reactor Federal officials insist the danger is not imminent Our concern though about the status of the fuel in the core there's extensive fuel damage on the morning of March 28th 1979 exactly 36 seconds after 4:00 a.m. a series of feedwater pumps at unit 2 of the 3M Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg Pennsylvania tripped and the flow of water to the steam generators suddenly stopped 2 seconds
• 00:30 - 01:00 later automated systems did as they were programmed to and shut down the steam turbine and Associated electric generator the accident at 3M Island was now 2 seconds old 7,164 seconds later 2/3 of the unit 2's uranium core was without cooling water and was getting half as hot as the surface of the Sun so began the worst accident in the history of the US nuclear industry a five out of seven on the international nule nuclear event
• 01:00 - 01:30 scale though the accident at 3M Island left an indelible Infamous Mark on the Public's perception of nuclear power an overwhelmingly negative one that is still traded in on to this day this motivated perception obscures the more complicated truth and the truth is that one of the most covered stories of the 1970s was so poorly communicated to the public that today history remembers Three Mile Island as an unmitigated disaster and not what it actually was an
• 01:30 - 02:00 inevitable series of human errors that resulted in a harmless failure this is the true story of the 3M Island accident for all the technicality that goes into splitting the atom a nuclear power plant is surprisingly simple rods of fuel are brought Clos close enough
• 02:00 - 02:30 together to cause sustained chain reactions which generate a lot of heat that heat is exchanged with water running in a separated Loop and turns into steam that steam is used to spin turbines and that makes electricity the steam is then cooled by towers and condensed to re-enter the system and all along the way various systems valves and pressurizes keep the system running smoothly the most important part of a nuclear power plant is the core where
• 02:30 - 03:00 fuel typically uranium is kept at the desired water heating temperature by control rods which can be inserted into the core at will to almost instantly soak up the neutrons continuing chain reactions and shut the core down it's a design that despite what politicians may say is impossible to turn into an atomic weapon that being said a reactor core without an ability to cool itself can be extremely dangerous if Cooling water
• 03:00 - 03:30 where at any time to boil away even a recently shut down core will start heating back up at 2,200 de F superheated water reacts with material in the fuel rods to produce hydrogen and explosive gas and at 5,200 de F the fuel itself melts releasing radioactive materials into the system's water and or eating through the reactor shielding to produce a flow of Unstoppable chorum arguably the most dangerous substance on
• 03:30 - 04:00 Earth to protect against all of this the fuel rods that hold the fuel pellets are designed to withstand extreme temperatures and the reactor vessel is a monolith of Steel and concrete 3M Islands unit 2 reactor was 40 ft of 8 in thick steel inside of two concrete and steel Shields with a total thickness of 9 ft all inside a containment building 193 ft high with reinforced concrete walls 4 ft
• 04:00 - 04:30 thick nuclear power buildings are extremely robust even under enemy fire it's this design that made what happened at 3 Mile Island an accident and not a disaster the 1979 accident that 3 m Island unit 2 severely damaged the Reactor Core the following is a 2 the2 sequence of events that killed both tmi's second reactor and the momentum behind nuclear power in the United States 30 seconds
• 04:30 - 05:00 after 4:00 a.m. 10 Mi southeast of Harrisburg Pennsylvania the feedwater pump system to the Reactor Core tripped stopping the flow of water to the steam generators 2 seconds later the interrupted flow of feed water caused the reactor coolant temperature to increase and the water to expand the pilot operated relief valve opened to release the pressure increase 8 seconds later the pressure was still building and the reactor dropped all control rods automatically into the core 1 second
• 05:00 - 05:30 after that nuclear fision in the core had stopped at this point the relief valve should have closed itself to return pressure to the system but it was stuck open a condition for which there was no indication among the control room's hundreds of lights and switches less than a minute into the emergency operators in the control room noticed that the emergency feedwater pumps had turn on what the operators did not notice were the two lights that indicated no water was running through
• 05:30 - 06:00 those pumps one was covered by an old yellowing maintenance tag no one knows why the second light was missed over the next 2 minutes the secondary Loop of the reactor would boil dry and the emergency core cooling system would kick in attempting to flood the overheating core with 1,000 gallons of water per minute however assuming that the in fact blocked emergency pumps were already flowing and not wanting to fill the entire system with water the operators
• 06:00 - 06:30 in the control room turned off the emergency cooling system for the next 2 hours and 20 minutes the relief valve would remain open it had an indicator light only showing that a signal was sent to close it not whether or not it was physically closed allowing over a third of all the coolant water to escape the system after which the core started to overheat had this single valve closed had anyone left the emergency cooling systems on quote the accident at 3M
• 06:30 - 07:00 Island would have remained little more than a minor inconvenience how does something fail that's difficult to determine for something as complicated as a nuclear reactor the pathway to any accident could have hundreds or thousands of Crossroads a meltdown or not could depend on a button not pressed a valve not closed assessing RK and complex systems
• 07:00 - 07:30 therefore is incredibly complicated but is discovering every possible Pathway to failure even possible as diagrams like these of Three Mile Islands potential turning points try to do was Three Mile Island in fact a normal accident after reactor 2 failed in 1979 it inspired sociologist Charles perro to develop his normal accident Theory which postulates that accidents like nuclear meltdowns are inevitable the result of
• 07:30 - 08:00 unanticipated interactions of multiple failures within a complex system given the innumerable variations that might cause a failure in a highly complicated system a single stuck valve a pump out of Maintenance a plant manager not having his coffee that morning perro argued that 3M Island was normal in that it was unexpected incomprehensible uncontrollable and unavoid
• 08:00 - 08:30 voidable normal accidents then were caused by the flap of a butterfly's wing so to speak by systems so complicated that even trivial or random events could lead to chaos the idea of a normal accident revolutionized the academic study of safety and risk an accident failure or disaster in a complex system is never the result of just one thing and by examining them as interweaving webs of causation rather than isolated events we
• 08:30 - 09:00 might learn how to prevent them but in the case of the reactor about to partially melt down 10 Mi southeast of Harrisburg Pennsylvania we should have seen it coming according to the report of the president's Commission on the accident at 3M Island the pilot operated relief valve the single opening that ultimately led to a reactor meltdown had failed 11 times before March 28th 1979 the company that made these reactors Babcock and Willcox never told
• 09:00 - 09:30 its customers 18 months before the accident in Pennsylvania a Babcock and Willcox reactor in Ohio failed in exactly the same way as 3 Mile Island was about to do except operators there caught their mistake quickly a senior engineer at Babcock and Wilcox wrote an internal memorandum that if the reactor there had been operating at full power it was only operating at 7% quote it is quite possible perhaps probable that core
• 09:30 - 10:00 uncovery and possible fuel damage would have occurred end quote but again Babcock and Willcox issued no new instructions to customers this memorandum which quote fell between the cracks was written just 13 months before 3M Island had a meltdown then there was tmi's control room which investigators found had key indicator lights on the backs of panels switches out of calibration and tag covering warning panels and never fewer
• 10:00 - 10:30 than 52 alarms blinking at all times over 100 alarms would sound when the reactor started to fail in Pennsylvania and it was impossible to sort the critical ones from the usual finally the valves that would fail at 3 Mile were in disrepair reportedly Boron stalactites more than a foot long hung from these valves and stalagmites were building up from the floor what happened at 3M Island may
• 10:30 - 11:00 have been a kind of normal accident as Charles perrow would later Define it but it was not unexpected 2 hours after the accident at 3M Island had started low-level radiation alarms were blinking in the unoccupied containment building where the reactor was dying a few minutes later investigations show the fuel in the core was no longer covered by cooling water and would remain uncovered for a maximum of 38 minutes at 6:22 a.m.
• 11:00 - 11:30 operators in the unit 2 control room asked if anyone had closed the block valve a backup valve to be shut if the pilot operated relief valve failed the response was I don't know the block valve was then shut the loss of coolant was stopped but the accident continued for some unexplained reason according to the president commission report the emergency core cooling pumps weren't turned on for another hour at 654 the reactor coolant
• 11:30 - 12:00 pump was turned on then shut off again 19 minutes later due to heavy vibrations calculations would eventually show that with 8 ft of the 12T tall core uncovered temperatures inside would reach at least 4,000 de F causing major damage to the fuel rods Fuel and the reactor structure as it partially melted down several areas of the plant now reported high levels of radiation at 7:00 a.m. 3M
• 12:00 - 12:30 Island declared a sight emergency as the core now threatened quote an uncontrolled release of radioactivity to the immediate environment shortly after 3M Island officially declared an emergency Rising radiation readings caused emergency workers to evacuate the on-site auxiliary building minutes later a radiation detector at the top of the containment building read eight rims per hour but because the detector was shielded by lead that figure was actually 100 times higher and closer to
• 12:30 - 13:00 800 RS per hour a dose that would exceed the maximum yearly dose limit for civilians in less than half a second at the same time plant operators finally turned on the emergency core cooling system flooding the Reactor with 1,000 gallons of water per minute but they mistakenly shut it off 18 minutes later at 7:24 a.m. 3M Island declared a general emergency a quote incident that has the potential for serious
• 13:00 - 13:30 radiological consequences to the health and safety of the general public during his deposition engineer William dor would remember what he said at that moment quote I said to myself this is the biggie the traffic reporter at harrisburg's WBO radio station was using a CB radio to scan for police chatter at 8:00 a.m. he heard something good police and firefighters were mobilizing near Middletown the closest area to the
• 13:30 - 14:00 nuclear power plant wbo's news director called the plant shortly thereafter but he accidentally got his call routed directly to the control room and one of the operators scrambling to bring the core back under control quote I can't talk right now we've got a problem a man said the man then denied there being any fire engines headed towards the plant and told the news director to call the local utility company at 8:25 a.m. the public found
• 14:00 - 14:30 out what was happening at 3M Island not from the plant itself not from public relations not from any regulatory body but from a top 40 music station this is Mike pinch in The kbo Newsroom Met Ed company officials had to shut down their 3-mile Island nuclear power station unit number two this morning after an accident occurred within the plant's turban system so began a media frenzy that made the 3M Island accident one of the most reported stories of the decade and what has to be
• 14:30 - 15:00 one of the worst PR disasters of all time in retrospect it's not surprising that the memory of 3M island is so negative and so inaccurate while reactor operators were still trying to soothe the dying core core manufacturer Babcock and Wilcox made the conscious decision not to comment on the incident even when company officials believed misinformation was being made available
• 15:00 - 15:30 to the public according to the president's commission during press conferences official sources of information appeared unprepared confused and many times contradictory the nuclear Regulatory Commission Now in contact with three mile didn't provide enough technical experts for interview and so local and National reporters had extreme difficulty in interpreting the specifics of the event the probability of a true disaster and the releases of radiation and their possible health
• 15:30 - 16:00 effects in turn a distorted and confusing picture was presented to the public similarly politicians learned about the accident from these confusing reports and not from their own emergency preparedness people at one point Lieutenant Governor William Scranton was publicly contradicted about released radiation by information reporters had gathered from the power utility Met Ed quote this was the first contradictory bit of information that we received and it caused some disturbance Scranton
• 16:00 - 16:30 later reported the following days were a flurry of that same disturbance on March 29th more than a day after the first pump tripped the power plant began discharging slightly radioactive cooling water that had been accumulating in their tanks now close to overflowing but without notifying any Downstream communities or the press the water was harmless the lack of transparency was not
• 16:30 - 17:00 Friday morning would prove the most consequential 43m islands Legacy during normal operations a reactor like 3M Islands generates radioactive gas more specifically the noble gases Krypton and Xenon this gas builds up in the reactor over time and is stored in a tank where the short-lived Krypton and Xenon Isotopes can safely Decay away at 7:10 a.m. on Friday morning a supervisor monitoring the rising pressures from these gases made the decision to open the valves and
• 17:00 - 17:30 transfer them to the Decay tank he knew that because of leaks in the system this would release radioactive gas into the environment he ordered the transfer anyway without telling either the power utility or other 3M Island officials and 1 minute after 8:00 a.m. a helicopter reported a reading of 1200 m per hour above the plant's vent stack it was over an hour before the Super supervisor told anyone what he
• 17:30 - 18:00 did the lack of communication between operators utilities regulators and public officials can only be described as a meltdown of another sort just before noon the vice president of power generation at Met Ed was pressed for more information at a briefing reporters already knew that 1200 mph was somewhere at the plant the met at official pictur here did not they asked him for clarification whether the radiation was
• 18:00 - 18:30 controlled whether it was from the discharged water whether it was onsite or off I hadn't heard the number 1200 he answered I don't know why we need to tell you each and everything that we do specifically end quote that sentence marked the end of met Ed's credibility with the media at almost the exact same time Met Ed was melting down publicly Pennsylvania Governor Richard thorberg got a call it was the president of the United
• 18:30 - 19:00 States 40 minutes later the governor had a meeting with his AIDS an advisory went out from the governor's office shortly thereafter something that was arguably the most impactful thing that happened during the accident all pregnant women and preschool children were encouraged to leave the area within a 5m radius of the power plant until further notice on the morning of the 30th a local man recalled all hell broke loose and we left for Delaware to stay with
• 19:00 - 19:30 relatives end quote residents fled schools closed health professionals evacuated President Jimmy Carter would arrive to see 3M Island in 2 days officials on the ground needed to get the situation under control now and then it got worse the Friday Saturday and Sunday after the accident were the most hectic the Pennsylvania Emergency Management
• 19:30 - 20:00 agency directed officials to start drawing up wider evacuation plans first 10 miles then 20 six counties 650,000 people 13 hospitals and a prison were inside this radius at 2 p.m. on March 30th Harold Denton an expert sent by Jimmy Carter arrived at 3M Island he soon learned that a bubble of approximately 1,000 cubic feet of gases had built up inside the Reactor Core
• 20:00 - 20:30 superheated steam was reacting with the zirconium cladding of the uranium fuel rods and producing hydrogen a potentially explosive gas that night Denton brief governor thornberg in person for the first time and then the two men held a press conference no General evacuation orders at this time with the continued exception of pregnant women and young children within 5 miles on Saturday invest instigation of the bubble began unable to see inside
• 20:30 - 21:00 the reactor vessel or even enter its building scientists from all over the country from all sides of the problem started calculating hydrogen is explosive but only in the presence of oxygen and some energetic ignition source so the real question was whether or not there was also enough oxygen in the core to spontaneously combust with the hydrogen a potential catastrophe if it ruptured The Vessel and exposed fuel to the open air thankfully the 3M Island reactor was
• 21:00 - 21:30 raided to withstand the pressure of such a blast but public relations was not throughout the day calculations flew back and forth between scientists there was enough oxygen then there wasn't there were 5 days before there was enough gas in the core and then there were less than two no definitive answer no sigh of relief or brace for impact the first notice to the public that some NRC the officials feared the bubble might explode spontaneously went
• 21:30 - 22:00 out at 8:23 p.m. that day but later that night Harold Denton would tell the press that quote there is not a combustible mixture in the containment or in the reactor vessel and there is no near-term danger at all end quote this was contradicting yet again reports in the media no there is no disagreement he explained I guess it is just the way things get presented but Denton in fact knew there was
• 22:00 - 22:30 disagreement and the president of the United States would be there in less than 24 hours to hear about it if it wasn't resolved the night the public learned about the bubble and the uncertainty it pulsed with all hell once again broke loose and emergency preparedness offices throughout central Pennsylvania were deluged with worried callers scientists continued calculating and continued disagreeing but now they had a way out they had a much safer potential solution pressurized water
• 22:30 - 23:00 reactors like those at 3M normally operated with free hydrogen molecules in the system that way if oxygen did start to build up to dangerous levels it would react with the free hydrogen to form harmless water thereby eliminating the risk of an explosion the infamous hydrogen bubble in unit 2 could be doing the same thing could be eating up any Oxygen so as to make explosion impossible scientists just had to prove
• 23:00 - 23:30 that the officials that went to the private airport hanger to meet President Carter were still debating the oxygen problem seconds before he touched down at 1: p.m. the president would Dawn some protective wear and tour the 3M Island plant himself thankfully by 400 p.m. and with help from scientists all around the country on-site Engineers had proved it the processes inside the reactor were still violent but they were not explosively so there would never be
• 23:30 - 24:00 enough oxygen a few hours later readings would show that the bubble was getting smaller not bigger the accident was getting better not worse but the communication meltdown continued now reading from the report of the president's Commission on the accident at 3M Island quote by late Sunday afternoon NRC which was responsible for the concern that the bubble might explode knew there was no
• 24:00 - 24:30 danger of a blast and that the bubble appeared to be diminishing it was good news but good news unshared with the public throughout Sunday the NRC made no announcement that it had aired in its calculations or that no threat of an explosion existed governor thornberg was not told of the NRC miscalculation either nor did the NRC reveal the bubble was disappearing that day partially because NRC experts themselves were not
• 24:30 - 25:00 absolutely certain end quote it's ironic to commit so hard to making a fool of yourself on April 1st which of these assortments of dots is random human brains tend to think that the dots on the right have no pattern are fair random but they are not it takes some cause some rules some guidance to make each dot for example a
• 25:00 - 25:30 comfortable distance away from its neighbor to fill up most of the given space Randomness isn't like this Randomness is messy clustered it can look like a pattern until you zoom out far enough to see that it is never repeated to discern a true signal from random noise you need to abandon human bias for statistics statistics is especially important in a science like epidemiology where diseases like cancer
• 25:30 - 26:00 can be randomly distributed in a population but anecdotally appear like clusters clusters that almost dare you to say correlation equals causation almost all of the radioactivity released from the 3M Island accident was from the planned controlled venting of the Krypton and Xenon gases on March 30th the total was later established at at least 2 1/2 million curies a direct measure of radioactive decay this amount was less than 1% of the
• 26:00 - 26:30 radiation released by the Chernobyl disaster and unlike other nuclear nightmares with fision products that linger in the environment for centuries and have an affinity for human bones Krypton and Xenon is not absorbed by body tissue and is quickly eliminated if inhaled or ingested Krypton 885 has a halflife of 10 and 1/2 years Xenon 5.3 days if anyone downwind end of 3M Island was to be exposed at ground level as
• 26:30 - 27:00 would be later calculated the dose rate they'd received would be well within the dose someone gets from natural sources over the course of a year in the 43 years since the Meltdown at 3 Mile Island this fact has been lost and improper correlation has become conspiracy according to every serious publication on the matter including the president's commission a research effort that could fill three 00 ft of shelf space in a library with materials the
• 27:00 - 27:30 amount of radiation released by the 3M Island accident primarily by short-lived isotopes of Krypton and Xenon delivered an average possible dose of 8 mrim to Residents within 10 miles of the plant 8 migr is equivalent to the dose that you get from the minerals in the concrete of your home each year a single chest x-ray and about a third of what every human receives naturally from Cosmic radiation annually anecdotal reports have claimed
• 27:30 - 28:00 everything from hair loss to poison drinking water to most notably cancer and the people who make a living promoting these claims are still doing so today however read the thousands of pages of journals reports and studies on the subject and the consensus clearly emerges from the randomness there isn't a single peer-reviewed non- anecdotal report of one significant Public Health effect
• 28:00 - 28:30 after the 3M Island accident simply put our Collective memory that 3M Island was some kind of horror show of health effects was a false one it's impossible according to the physics cancer is cancer whether Unstoppable cell division is caused by random mutation a carcinogen in cigarette smoke or damage from a source of radiation the disease looks the same it's impossible to tell therefore
• 28:30 - 29:00 without the epidemiology to tease out whether or not there's an underlying cause whether or not a randomly occurring cancer is being confused with one that is truly caused by something out of the 2 million people living within 50 Mi of 3M Island we know that some 320,000 are likely to die of cancer for reasons that have nothing to do with a power plant being there nearly a majority of people would develop cancer
• 29:00 - 29:30 sometime in their lifetime the average projected number of additional cancers added to this 325,000 from the specific amount of radiation released by 3 Mile Island is 0.7 not 0.7% 0.7 cases and this is an average meaning that there is more than a 50% chance less than one person would develop a radiation induced
• 29:30 - 30:00 cancer or in less mathematical terms no one and if someone was unlucky enough to be on the wrong side of this average one case wouldn't be enough to statistically untangle it from the hundreds of thousands of cases undetectable unmeasurable insignificant not insignificant because it wouldn't matter to that person or persons but insignificant because the three Island accident was minor enough
• 30:00 - 30:30 to be indistinguishable from nothing 3M island did have one very real and measurable effect on public health however stress think of the anxiety of being told you might hear an explosion at the nuclear power plant next to your home at any moment of both being pregnant and having to leave your home for some unknown amount of time of pulling your kids out of school and trying to explain to them why they have to stay in a shelter and not their own
• 30:30 - 31:00 bed while stress was the sole Public Health effect from 3M Island it affected people more than any low-level radiation ever could have it's almost funny the conspiracy theories and anecdotal evidence and anti-nuclear panic that 3M Island generated and still generates have likely done more to harm Public Health through stress than any r ation released in
• 31:00 - 31:30 1979 right for the wrong [Music] reasons the accident at 3M island did not end with a completely calm core and a pacified public evacuation recommendations weren't lifted for a week after the bubble was discovered more than a million gallons of radioactive water were still stored in tanks on site and the plant still planned on venting small amounts of Krypton and Xenon into the atmosphere over the next next 2 months thanks to the stuck open relief valve workers
• 31:30 - 32:00 still had a Monumental amount of wiping vacuuming and mopping to do inside the reactor buildings the Reactor Core itself had been severely damaged it was now structurally unsound and half the fuel inside had melted by 1990 11 years later close to 300,000 lbs of nuclear fuel wreckage and cleaning supplies had been systematically removed and shipped off site 2.23 million gallons of
• 32:00 - 32:30 contaminated water had been processed cleanup officially ended in 1993 and cost $1 billion reactor 2 was completely shut down after the accident reactor 1 continued operation for another 30 years until it too ceased operations on September 20th 2019 citing Financial pressures from Pennsylvania's second in the nation natural gas production in the months following the accident
• 32:30 - 33:00 hundreds of thousands of people across the country would stage anti-nuclear protests famous actors and politicians would attend them world famous musicians would hold nightly no nuke concerts at some of the world's biggest venues in 1981 and 1983 utility Met Ed would lose tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits claiming lost Revenue damages and falsified safety records a class action la lawsuit claiming substantial health effects however was rejected in both
• 33:00 - 33:30 Harrisburg and the US third Circuit Court of Appeals after 3M Island the number of reactors under construction in the US started to decline for the first time since 1963 51 nuclear reactors were canceled between 1980 and 1984 no new nuclear power plant would be authorized for construction in the United States until 2012 what took their place of course were Coal Fired power plants which would
• 33:30 - 34:00 soon contribute to more preventable deaths by pollution than all nuclear accidents ever combined the factors that led to Three Mile Island were pervasive and serious lack of transparency inaction poorly trained operators unmaintained equipment known Hardware errors a lazy safety culture abysmal information sharing with the media and the public for what it's worth 3M Island was a wake-up call that
• 34:00 - 34:30 did indeed lead to sweeping industry changes but irreversible damage was done in public Consciousness nuclear power was now dangerous not the future who knows how different the industry would be today if a single valve 10 Mi southeast of Harrisburg didn't fail or if President Jimmy Carter who specialized in nuclear power in the Navy had told the na what he told his staff after visiting
• 34:30 - 35:00 the plant that day that he didn't think it was even a disaster he thought it was minor he reportedly refused to tell the public this at the time for fear of offending anti-nuclear Democrats in the US House and Senate despite the lack of any real harm to Personnel or public the 3M Island accident was a sizable nail in the nuclear industry's coffin or rather in
• 35:00 - 35:30 the coffin of the Public's perception of the industry but it wouldn't be the largest that nail would come 7 years later after another series of missteps and another arguably unavoidable normal accident The Dominoes that would fall One Night in 1986 would also be ones of human error poor design and unsafe attitudes and in the of night on April 26th the last one fell in
• 35:30 - 36:00 Chernobyl until next time [Music] [Music]
• 36:00 - 36:30 [Music] is [Music]