Exploding Three Mile Island (May, 1980)
Exploding Three Mile Island
Think back. It hasn’t been that long ago. Pennsylvania looked like it might be blown off the map any minute, turned into a radioactive no-man’s-land forever. “Permanently uninhabitable” was the way they said it in the movie, The China Syndrome.
That’s the trouble. A lot of people said a lot of things. And a lot of it just wasn’t true. Not even close.
Take the hydrogen bubble that made all the headlines. Bubble, nothing. The implication was time bomb, ticking away. And that would’ve frightened anybody who didn’t have a degree in chemistry.
The fact is, that bubble couldn’t explode. Not by any stretch of the imagination.To understand why, you have to understand how the hydrogen got there in the first place. And that takes some understanding of how the reactor at Three Mile Island was designed to work.
It’s the pressurized-water type, meaning the fuel core was cooled by keeping it submerged in water. H2O. Hydrogen and oxygen.
Heated by the core to more than 550 degrees, well beyond the boiling point.
What kept it from boiling was pressure, approximately 2,000 pounds worth. But on March 28th, last year, a relief valve on the pressurizer stuck open, the pressure dropped, and the water—the H2O— inside the reactor boiled into steam.
When that happened, the zirconium-alloy tubes housing the fuel underwent a chemical reaction. A kind of accelerated rusting that combined the zirconium from the tubes with oxygen from the water to form zirconium oxide.
That’s important, because with all the oxygen used up by the chemical reaction, the only part of the water left was hydrogen. The bubble. And what nobody bothered to tell you at the time was that without oxygen, hydrogen can’t explode.
On May 1st, more than a month later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted the scare was all a mistake. Roger Mattson, Director of its Systems Safety Division, told a congressional committee there “never was any danger of a hydrogen explosion in that bubble.”
That never made headlines.
And more than likely, neither will the fact that even if there had been a meltdown, it wouldn’t have spelled disaster for Pennsylvania. It couldn’t have.
First of all, the fuel core in the reactor vessel was surrounded by a containment building. Not just any building, an immense fortress with an enormously thick floor. Eleven feet of solid concrete reinforced with steel.
Second, for a molten mass to eat through it, that concrete-and-steel floor couldn’t be covered with water. But water is what’s used to cool the core. And when the relief valve on the pressurizer stuck open, sending several hundred thousand gallons shooting out, the law of gravity gave it only one place to go.
Down to the floor, right under the reactor vessel. Right in the path a molten mass would take.
That’s the fallacy of the meltdown theory. In spite of the overwhelming odds against it, if all systems failed, if the entire J core melted, if it got through the foot-thick steel reactor vessel in one piece and dropped to the floor below, it would’ve been stopped right there. Cooled by an ocean of water inside the containment building, not 20 feet from where the meltdown started.
As for any sudden burst of steam pressure that might be released when the molten mass hits the water, it wouldn’t be nearly powerful enough to rupture the walls of the building. Walls capable of withstanding almost twice as much force.
In other words, there was no way for significant radioactivity to reach the atmosphere outside.
The point of it all is that Three Mile Island and nuclear power itself deserve a fairer shake. A second look minus the hysteria, the hyperbole, the half-truths, and the untruths. They deserve a close, careful reading of the facts.
True, we’ve experienced the worst accident in the 22 years America has been using nuclear energy to produce electricity. But it wasn’t the apocalypse. No one died. And except for the stress of being scared stiff, no one was injured. Despite the equipment failures and failures in judgment, despite everything that went wrong, the safety systems worked.
What really exploded were myths.
Commonwealth Edison
One in a series of ads on the issue of energy in our community, paid for by the company and not published at our customers’ expense.
I’ed think getting a decent shot going at speed would be impossible...
That’s for sure http://www.straightdope.com/co.....power-safe
Comment by John — April 6, 2011 @ 9:31 am
As for Nuclear saftey look at it this way, sure Pennsylvania is full of horrible mutants, but it was like that before Three Mile Island too!
Comment by Hirudinea — April 6, 2011 @ 9:54 am
According to this puff piece, the Three Mile Island accident was a lot of nothing…a huge misunderstanding. Sort of like spilled cup of coffee.
Chernobyl was just a little ‘oops’ and Fukajima will be back in full operational service after some minor repairs over the weekend.
Sure.
Comment by DouglasUrantia — April 6, 2011 @ 11:11 am
Compared to Fukushima and Chernobyl, Three Mile Island was pretty minor.
Comment by Charlie — April 6, 2011 @ 11:40 am
DouglasUrantia: Well, I wouldn’t say it was nothing but more people died mining coal from then to now than died in the Three Mile Island accident.
Comment by John — April 6, 2011 @ 11:45 am
This was a self-defeating ad. Most readers wouldn’t have gotten past the headline.
Comment by Charlene — April 6, 2011 @ 2:05 pm
In the 1950s the US Army thought that it was safe for soldiers to walk into the dust of an atomic explosion within an hour of it’s detonation. That’s the mentality of the Commonwealth Edison PR propaganda above.
Does it bother anyone than when nuclear plants fail, for whatever reason, the results are catastrophic and, have long range effects with deadly consequences?
Comment by DouglasUrantia — April 6, 2011 @ 3:19 pm
Of course it bothers us when there is a problem. But looking at it in isolation isn’t helpful. There needs to be some sort of comparison to the downside of alternatives. Coal kills many people every year, both in it’s mining and production and from pollution. For oil, just look at the gulf. I’m an advocate of nuclear power, I’m just saying that it’s not necessarily worse than everything else.
Comment by Charlie — April 6, 2011 @ 3:29 pm
And then you get the people protesting wind power and now solar power. (We’ve had people protesting hydroelectric power here for decades, despite it being so ubiquitous that we call our power company “Hydro.”)
Some people would rather live with wind-up radios and tvs – but just don’t touch their cancermobiles!
Comment by Toronto — April 6, 2011 @ 3:42 pm
DouglasUrantia: Okay, disregarding the irrelevancy of some stupid Army officers in the 1950′s and based on the facts of Three Mile Island, what would you have them write in 1980 so as not to have you sneer at this as “propaganda”? Realizing of course that your last post comes closer to the classic definition of propaganda than anything in that ad. Hysterical propaganda at that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.....th_effects
Comment by John — April 6, 2011 @ 4:47 pm
Burning coal releases far more radioactivity and pollutants than a nuclear plant. Solar requires huge amounts of water for the most efficient process of conversion. Wind turbines kill migrating birds and are most useful at non-peak hours of the night. Hydro disrupts water tables and fish migratory paths.
Choose your poison.
Comment by Adam C — April 6, 2011 @ 5:11 pm
John: I’ll ignore your personal comments and opinions about myself.
The article has a very “we know it all” supercilious attitude concerning the unnamed persons that would dare to question the safety of the plant. Why not just tell the facts of what happened without all the hype and overarching rhetoric. The ad tends to assume that people are ignorant and can’t understand what actually happened. Most people resent being talked down to.
Comment by DouglasUrantia — April 6, 2011 @ 5:25 pm
Adam: I’ve walked around wind generators and have NEVER found a dead bird. However, the building complex I work at has people walk around just after dawn to pick up the birds that have died from flying into the windows – they average something like 15 a day. Cars seem to kill that many a day along my 5 kilometre commute, as well. We seem to accept *those* avian deaths.
But yeah, the generators’ detractors cite infrasonic noise and odd electrical fields, as well as the dead bird thing.
Comment by Toronto — April 6, 2011 @ 6:23 pm
DouglasUrantia: In the aftermath most of the Great Unwashed were basing their expertise on nuclear plant safety by watching The China Syndrome. Since then they (like you) have had to ignore the facts in order to still be up in arms about the lack of long term health effects. And you deserved that. A discussion of nuclear power plant safety and you bring up Operation Plumbbob from 1957 with soldiers walking toward an atomic explosion. Sorry, but that’s propaganda.
Comment by John — April 6, 2011 @ 6:50 pm
John: Rather than sticking to the facts of the nuclear accident at TMI, the author of the ad brings up pop culture in the form of a film [which I have never seen] as a basis for their imperious literary attitude. That’s propaganda in it’s most obvious form.
I feel there is something about my values and judgement that you subconsciously respect. Most appreciated and likewise for yourself.
Comment by DouglasUrantia — April 6, 2011 @ 8:00 pm
I agree about “pick your poison” comment. While what happened in Japan is truly tragic. The amount of radioactive elements being spilled is nothing compared to the amount of fallout produced by the N tests done in Nevada during the late 40′s and 50′s. This was not all that far from Las Vegas or even LA. I remember the Strontium 90 scare. We were told not to drink milk because we would all get it in our bones. I drank milk by the gallon back then. I’m still alive and healthy. We are also living longer than we ever did. No one wants to cut back on our energy usage. To go truly “green” is to live like the Amish do. I wonder how many people have Radon leaking into their basements and homes and they aren’t aware of it. Radon is a naturally occurring gas which is a byproduct of the breakdown of Uranium. Nuclear plants supply over 20% of our energy. It has had the high safety record for 50 years. The problem at Fukushima wasn’t caused by the earthquake but the tsunami that followed. It flooded out the backup generators and emergency batteries for the cooling pumps. I’m sure anything I comment on will not change anyone’s mind. You have already picked your poison and have called it the antidote for all the other poisons.
Comment by carlm — April 7, 2011 @ 1:56 am
DouglasUrantia: Alzheimer’s is so sad. Hey, I’m just glad you didn’t say I was making an “ad hominem” attack. As to your mind reading act I’d say that you weren’t ready to take it on the stage yet. I can’t really respect the whole violet people thing.
Comment by John — April 7, 2011 @ 4:34 am
What is truly impressive about nuclear power, is that an ad from 31 years ago can still stir such passionate responses.
Comment by Adam C — April 7, 2011 @ 7:03 am
The reason they referenced The China Syndrome, is that it was a big movie in 1979, and misinformed a large segment of the population, very shortly before the accident. The movie had a huge influence of the public’s perception and reaction.
The ad does a pretty good job explaining the safer features of a Pressured Water Reactor, over a cheaper Boiling Water Reactor, like Fukushima. General Electric sold the world a bill of goods with that design.
Comment by xoxoxoBruce — April 7, 2011 @ 9:15 am
Far from being a “catastrophe” 3 Mile Island fell victim to public perception and anti-nuclear propaganda. To avoid talking down to anyone here are the slides from a lecture by Professor Andrew Karnak in his class on Operational Reactor Safety. Note the conclusions that he draws on page 28 as to the the long term health effects.
Comment by John — April 7, 2011 @ 10:52 am
John: Your comments to many members of this site are stained because your attacks are ‘ad hominem’, that’s obvious to everyone.
Comment by DouglasUrantia — April 7, 2011 @ 11:03 am
Three Mile Island was a disaster for nuclear power generation. No new nuclear power plants have been proposed since then and that is a shame. Newer reactor designs would be even safer, more reliable, and more efficient.
As for radiation exposure, the people in that part of Pennsylvania would have been exposed to more radiation if’n they spent the weekend in Boulder Colorado.
Chernobyl was quite a different story from TMI. Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor, the easiest type to build and the most dangerous. Graphite reactors of that type had not operated in the west since shortly after the 1957 Windscale fire. The reactors at Chernobyl, as with most Soviet reactors, had no containment buildings as they were thought an unnecessary expense.
Comment by JMyint — April 7, 2011 @ 12:33 pm
DouglasUrantia: And you were doing so well, too.
Subconsciously you turn to me for guidance and I’m OK with that….
Comment by John — April 7, 2011 @ 12:59 pm
“Does it bother anyone than when nuclear plants fail, for whatever reason, the results are catastrophic and, have long range effects with deadly consequences?” – DouglasUrantia
“Why not just tell the facts of what happened without all the hype and overarching rhetoric.” – DouglasUrantia
Although I am generally in favour of nuclear power, I am more than happy to reconsider my opinions based on reputably sourced data, and I absolutely agree that it’s important to present the facts of the situation; so far, however, you have not provided any citations for your claims on the dangers of nuclear power.
To back up my own views on the relative safety of the nuclear industry: according to a peer-reviewed study by the University of Pittsburgh (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_.....103102.php ), there has been no statistically significant rise in cancer deaths due to the three mile island incident.
So far there do not appear to be any reputable figures documenting immediate deaths from exposure at Fukushima, and we will not be able to measure long terms effects with any accuracy for many years, but some sources (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....plant.html ) are claiming (without any reputable backing, that I an see) five current deaths from exposure and another 15 expected. If this is true (and again I stress that it is not reputably sourced) then it would be a figure approximately 30% lower than a single year’s average coal mining deaths in the US (http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/osar0012.htm ).
Chernobyl was an unusual case for many reasons – poor design, disregard of safety procedures, and lack of failsafe mechanisms – and would be physically impossible to repeat with any modern reactor design. That said, it is worth commenting on as a non-repeatable worst case scenario. Directly attributed deaths from exposure stand at 35 – a little more than a year’s worth of US coal mining deaths, as mentioned above. Rather than copying a long list of links, I would direct you to the excellent and comprehensive references section of the Wikipedia article on the subject: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster&oldid=422924645#cite_note-vibrationspecialists-0 . It is estimated that approximately 6,000 extra cases of thyroid cancer can be attributed to the incident (http://www.unscear.org/unscear.....tml#Health ), leading to roughly 500 extra deaths (http://www.genzyme.ca/thera/ty.....era-ty.asp ). Although significant, this is similar to the total reported deaths due to coal mining in China for a single year (http://www.usmra.com/china/wor.....yearly.htm ); it is also worth noting that many people believe that figures released in China actually only represent a small proportion of the actual deaths, but again I am trying to avoid falling back on speculative data here.
Comment by Greg — April 7, 2011 @ 3:22 pm
“Greg”: I don’t need to cite quotations on the dangers of nuclear power plants…it’s all too obvious. Anyone that’s really interested in the facts can find many articles and books on the dangers. I do not need to spoon-feed.
Comment by DouglasUrantia — April 8, 2011 @ 12:30 am
DouglasUrantia: Life is so simple sitting around the cracker barrel, ain’t it?
Comment by John — April 8, 2011 @ 5:02 am
I think this conversation has gone about as far as it should. (Or a little farther). I’m closing the comments on this post.
Comment by Charlie — April 8, 2011 @ 7:39 am