THREE MILE ISLAND: 30 YEARS LATER (A couple of weeks early)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1236830125137800.xml&coll=1

THREE MILE ISLAND: 30 YEARS LATER

Powering up
Thursday, March 12, 2009
BY MONICA VON DOBENECK
Of The Patriot-News

The coffee mug handed out Wednesday to reporters from as far away as Germany read "Three Mile Island: Clean, Safe, Reliable."

That's the message organizers wanted to give for media day at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The event came two weeks shy of the 30th anniversary of America's worst nuclear accident.

On March 28, 1979, residents across the region fled after a valve malfunctioned at TMI's Unit 2 reactor, triggering a partial meltdown of the reactor's core and releasing radiation into the atmosphere.

Media from all over the world filled the hotels around Pennsylvania's capital to cover the accident, which was the worst commercial incident until the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in Ukraine.

…

[closeupready]

1. countdown to being lectured, "3MI was a SUCCESS story!" begins now.

:eyes:

[azmouse]

2. Boy do I remember that!

It was my senior year of HS. We were in one of the outer rings to be evacuated if the meltdown occurred.
I read a book a few years ago about the disaster and I was surprised how much we didn't know at the time, like how very, very close that meltdown was to really happening.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. It actually did "melt down" in that the core melted (part way)

It didn't breach containment (see "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Syndrome">China Syndrome.")

In some cases, we were kept in the dark. In some cases, the folks on site just didn't know. (For example, when they finally learned that the core had actually melted, that came as a complete surprise to many of the "experts.")

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

…

The sequence of certain events – equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and worker errors – led to a partial meltdown of the TMI‑2 reactor core but only very small off‑site releases of radioactivity.

…

Because adequate cooling was not available, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes which hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about one-half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident. Although the TMI-2 plant suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, it did not produce the worst-case consequences that reactor experts had long feared. In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment. But this did not occur as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.

The accident caught federal and state authorities off-guard. They were concerned about the small releases of radioactive gases that were measured off-site by the late morning of March 28 and even more concerned about the potential threat that the reactor posed to the surrounding population. They did not know that the core had melted, but they immediately took steps to try to gain control of the reactor and ensure adequate cooling to the core. The NRC's regional office in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, was notified at 7:45 a.m. on March 28. By 8:00, NRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C. was alerted and the NRC Operations Center in Bethesda, Maryland, was activated. The regional office promptly dispatched the first team of inspectors to the site and other agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, also mobilized their response teams. Helicopters hired by TMI's owner, General Public Utilities Nuclear, and the Department of Energy were sampling radioactivity in the atmosphere above the plant by midday. A team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory was also sent to assist in radiation monitoring. At 9:15 a.m., the White House was notified and at 11:00 a.m., all non‑essential personnel were ordered off the plant's premises.

…

[LiberalEsto]

4. And where, I wonder, are the spent fuel rods

that TMI discarded over the years?

Are they "clean, safe" too? Would the CEO of the company that owns TMI keep a spent fuel rod in his back yard?

:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. The curse of Three Mile Island

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/234952

The curse of Three Mile Island

No nuke plants built in U.S. since 1979 accident. Experts say that won't change.

…

TMI's active Unit 1 reactor was built two years behind schedule. Unit 2 was five years behind schedule, three times over budget and operated a mere 90 days before the infamous accident, Epstein said. Other nuclear plants built in Pennsylvania recorded similar overruns and delays, he said.

"The trend is clear and unequivocal. Nuclear plants are always over budget and always very, very expensive."

…

[wtmusic]

6. A Cato Institute mouthpiece and an anti-nuke activist are "experts"?

Bah.

[diane in sf]

8. This is a blessing, not a curse. You could call it the silver lining to the meltdown.

I was watching China syndrome just a day after. Best line in the movie "If this thing melts down it could destroy an area the size of Pennsylvania." The audience howled with laughter.

[NNadir]

7. Everybody in Harrisburg will die, although this will NOT equal the number of people

who will die in the next two days from dangerous fossil fuel dumping into the atmosphere, including that being released, uncontrolled, from dangerous fossil fuel plants in well, Pennsylvannia.

Nuclear energy is the ONLY form of energy that is declared by its critics - NOT ONE of whom give a rat's ass about how many people will die in Pennsylvania - or world wide -from dangerous coal plants in the next two days that must be <em>perfect</em> to be acceptable.

Nuclear power need not be perfect to be better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else, which it IS by a long shot.

By the way, what's the liklihood that some damn anti-nuke is going to be here 30 years after the Sago mine disaster to give a flying fuck about what happened there.

How come we had ZERO anti-nukes coming here to record the 30 year anniversary of the Banqiao dam collapse that killed more than 200,000 people in a single night?

[madokie]

9. The nuclear power industry dropped the ball when they first tried to mislead us

If the nuclear energy industry would do one thing and one thing only it would go a long way toward lessoning the fear so many of us have. Quit lying to us, talk to us as if we are smart enough to understand what it is being said, we are. There's a few aspects that worries many of us, like the waste, like nuclear weapons proliferation and most of all like accidents. Accidents that when and if a big one does happen will be devastating to a large area, many people are going to die, a large portion of our country could be rendered uninhabitable for years. Can we chance that? CO2 is killing us, I know that, but we do have some lead time, time to work toward getting it right. Theres a lot of things that could be done differently to help us buy some time. Why was the decision made to burn coal as they do in most the power plants today rather than using a gasifier process that if nothing else is done results in a good 50% plus less CO2 being produced to begin with? Who made the decision to go the route they take today? Sometimes I wonder what part did the nuclear power industry have in that decision making? If, I know if is a big word but if we would have built our coal plants to work a little differently from the get-go we wouldn't be in quite the fix we're in today. Fission is not the future, fusion, on the other hand, possibly is and thats where we need to be spending resources on finding the key too. Enough of beating the Nuclear power industry as it is todays, drum. IMO

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html
(snip)
Rather than burning coal directly, gasification (a thermo-chemical process) breaks down coal - or virtually any carbon-based feedstock - into its basic chemical constituents. In a modern gasifier, coal is typically exposed to steam and carefully controlled amounts of air or oxygen under high temperatures and pressures. Under these conditions, molecules in coal break apart, initiating chemical reactions that typically produce a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other gaseous compounds.

Gasification, in fact, may be one of the most flexible technologies to produce clean-burning hydrogen for tomorrow's automobiles and power-generating fuel cells. Hydrogen and other coal gases can also be used to fuel power-generating turbines, or as the chemical "building blocks" for a wide range of commercial products.

Much more...

[HamdenRice]

10. Alerting

I might actually learn something from someone with a pro-nuclear perspective like you, if only you could provide your perspective without violating DU rules, posting incoherent rants and insulting everyone within shouting distance.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html

4. Content: Do not post messages that are inflammatory, extreme, divisive, incoherent, or otherwise inappropriate. Do not engage in anti-social, disruptive, or trolling behavior. Do not post broad-brush, bigoted statements...

<end quote>

You violated the rules in the following ways:

You wrote: "Nuclear energy is the ONLY form of energy that is declared by its critics - NOT ONE of whom give a rat's ass about how many people will die in Pennsylvania - or world wide -from dangerous coal plants..."

It is impossible for you to know whether every single nuclear power critic does not give "a rat's ass" about the effects of coal power plants; in fact, most critics of nuclear power also tend to be critics of coal and other forms of power that contribute to environmental degradation. You have therefore posted an "inflammatory, extreme, divisive, incoherent" criticism that is a "broad-brush, bigoted statement".

You also wrote: "By the way, what's the liklihood that some damn anti-nuke is going to be here 30 years after the Sago mine disaster to give a flying fuck about what happened there."

Again, it is impossible for you to know what anti-nuclear posters think of the Sago mine, and cursing at them ("damn anti nuke") is against DU rules.

As for anyone else who reads this, please join in alerting on Nnadir's post. Perhaps Nnadir will prove that he is as capable of behavior modification as the typical pigeon in a Skinner box, if he receives consistent negative reinforcement for his disruptive behavior.

[Systematic Chaos]

13. I think I'm going to start alerting you instead.

And calling you stuff like pathetic, whiny little crybaby. Which you are.

"I might actually learn something from someone with a pro-nuclear perspective like you, if only you could provide your perspective without violating DU rules, posting incoherent rants and insulting everyone within shouting distance."

Like any of that means dick, ham'n'rice. You already have the opportunity here to learn everything you need to know about energy in this forum, and it's nobody's fault but your own if you're more concerned with how the information is delivered and/or trying to give yourself a feeling of importance by coming here and playing rules lawyer over other people's fucking posts.

DU also prohibits call-outs, but naturally you neglected to cite that particular rule in your little crybaby assault.

Go be an idiot elsewhere. Please.

[HamdenRice]

14. Wow!

You're really, really -- and I mean really -- stupid!

:rofl:

[truebrit71]

12. I expected you MUCH earlier in the thread than this...

...:eyes:

[HamdenRice]

11. I remember Three Mile Island refugees flooding into New York

I was in college and came home to NY for spring break. Some of my friends had relatives from the 3MI area staying with them because they had fled the area.