First published on the Steem blockchain by @remlaps on September 21, 2024. View the original post.
Before TMI meant "Too Much Information", it meant "Three Mile Island". Before Fukishima and Chernobyl, there was the TMI accident. Even those who don't remember the actual events in 1979 may be aware of the TMI accident as the subject of the controversial Netflix documentary Meltdown: Three Mile Island. Closed in 2019, the TMI plant is now getting a 2nd chance.
Background: TMI Accident and plant closure
Public domain license from picryl.com |
The site of the TMI accident, Three Mile Island, is less than 100 miles from my home, and my (late) father in law was one of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) nuclear engineers who responded on site during the March,1979 crisis.
Here's how the AI at Brave Search describes the accident:
The Three Mile Island accident occurred on March 28, 1979, at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania. It was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2), a pressurized water reactor.
Initial Cause The accident began 11 hours earlier, during an attempt to fix a blockage in one of the eight condensate polishers, sophisticated filters cleaning the secondary loop water. This led to a series of mechanical failures, including a stuck open valve and a faulty pump, which ultimately caused a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA).
As my father in law told it, there were three primary concerns at the time: (i) planning for the possibility of large scale public evacuation; (ii) dealing with a panicking public; and (iii) dealing with the potential for a full-scale meltdown - which he said the plant's containment technology was designed to handle.
