A 66-year-old Arkansas man has been arrested after he allegedly rammed his car through security gates at a South Carolina nuclear power plant and tried to hit security guards.
Even three mile island wasn’t as bad as most people seem to think. It was used as an Anti-nuclear propoganda piece, but it wasn’t that bad. The other reactors there continued operating for several decades after, though I think they’re now all shut down.
(This is true for Chernobyl too though, so I guess it really doesn’t say a whole lot about severity.)
Most of what the Three Mile Island accident did was use up half the power plant. Problem is it spooked a lot of folks, partially due to unfortunate timing. The movie The China Syndrome had recently come out, and a lot of people expected it to go as bad as that.
It really didn’t help when the Soviets blew the roof off a reactor seven years later.
If the US government hadn’t classified the event, the reactor that they intentionally melted down in the late 50s/early 60s in the TVA would have been proof that China Syndrome was based on bad math. That incident is why the Army Corps of Engineers lost their nuclear power program. Didn’t anyone else wonder why the Army Corps of Engineers built a bunch of nuclear reactors in the 50s and 60s for the TVA, and then they never worked on nuclear power again? The Navy still has their nuclear power program…
General public wouldn’t have freaked out if the government hadn’t been lying at worst, and misrepresenting data at best, about a lot of things regarding nuclear technology.
There was practically zero impact to the surrounding environment after the TMI leak, I think I read that radiation was practically undetectable after like 6 months.
This is not true for Chernobyl though. That place is fucked and they needed to encase the reactor building twice in order to stop it from leaking harmful radioactive particles (x-ray and gamma particles, alpha and beta particles are less worrisome but still harmful in large doses IIRC). Pripyat is still hot and will be for like a hundred years or more, tons of people died either immediately after the explosion or shortly thereafter. Those that didn’t die within the first few months developed serious health issues and cancers years later. It’s literally the worst nuclear disaster in history.
Even three mile island wasn’t as bad as most people seem to think. It was used as an Anti-nuclear propoganda piece, but it wasn’t that bad. The other reactors there continued operating for several decades after, though I think they’re now all shut down.
(This is true for Chernobyl too though, so I guess it really doesn’t say a whole lot about severity.)
Most of what the Three Mile Island accident did was use up half the power plant. Problem is it spooked a lot of folks, partially due to unfortunate timing. The movie The China Syndrome had recently come out, and a lot of people expected it to go as bad as that.
It really didn’t help when the Soviets blew the roof off a reactor seven years later.
If the US government hadn’t classified the event, the reactor that they intentionally melted down in the late 50s/early 60s in the TVA would have been proof that China Syndrome was based on bad math. That incident is why the Army Corps of Engineers lost their nuclear power program. Didn’t anyone else wonder why the Army Corps of Engineers built a bunch of nuclear reactors in the 50s and 60s for the TVA, and then they never worked on nuclear power again? The Navy still has their nuclear power program…
You think the general public is able to understand or care that the math checks out in a disaster movie?
General public wouldn’t have freaked out if the government hadn’t been lying at worst, and misrepresenting data at best, about a lot of things regarding nuclear technology.
There was practically zero impact to the surrounding environment after the TMI leak, I think I read that radiation was practically undetectable after like 6 months.
This is not true for Chernobyl though. That place is fucked and they needed to encase the reactor building twice in order to stop it from leaking harmful radioactive particles (x-ray and gamma particles, alpha and beta particles are less worrisome but still harmful in large doses IIRC). Pripyat is still hot and will be for like a hundred years or more, tons of people died either immediately after the explosion or shortly thereafter. Those that didn’t die within the first few months developed serious health issues and cancers years later. It’s literally the worst nuclear disaster in history.
Very true, the windscale fire is probably a better comparison between incompetence and release.
Yes three mile shut down production completely in 2019 after running at a loss for years.