Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pa., was the site of the worst nuclear power plant disaster in U.S. history in 1979. How close did we come to a major meltdown? Nuclear engineer Anthony Baratta explains the causes, clean-up, and effects of the disaster.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• three
• mile
• island
• nuclear
• power
• disaster
• threemileisland
• japan
• nuclearreactor
• meltdown
• fission
• radiation
• contaminated
• water

[JohnnyKutz]

One of the cheekiest and telling T-shirts I ever saw was just after the 1979 Three Mile Island "event", and it read,

"I survived Three Mile Island. (I think...)"

[JohnnyKutz]

They say a worse disaster at Three Mile Island back in 1979 would have rendered Pennsylvania Dutch Country, among the most fertile farmland in the world, unliveable for many years.

[HiTekVagabond]

The international nuclear event scale (INES) is like a Richter scale for nuclear accidents 1=anomaly - 7=major accident Incident: INES Scale: Chernobyl - 7 Khyshtym - 6 Mayak - 6 Windscale - 5 Three Mile Island - 5 Saint Laurant Des Eaux - 4 Tokaimura - 4 Simi Valley - 4 They have not told us about these accidents where radioactivity was released outside of the plant: Braidwood, IL (2005) - ? Erwin, TN (2006) - ?

[HiTekVagabond]

The accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and its amazing convergence of timing with the film, The China Syndrome reinforced the idea that a nuclear meltdown is a real, terrifying possibility that could kill thousands of people. Nothing has changed. Around 200 near misses at 50 reactors that have occurred in the United States since 1986. Nuclear energy is no safer than it was 20 years ago. Note carefully around 5:55 where he tells you clearly that accidents are still a possibility.

[LaurencePike]

I don't think it's a competition..

[sbu6]

Simi Valley was worse than TMI.