Thursday, March 28, 2013

March 28: Three Mile Island

On this date in History ..... 1979:

The worst nuclear accident in U.S. commercial nuclear history occurred at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

The failure was a mechanical failure compounded by “design oversight” which caused plant operators’ failure to recognize the “loss of coolant” accident.  It was a hidden indicator light that caused the operator to just override the cooling system. The loss of nuclear release was so small that not even one case of cancer was attributed to this accident, even tho’ the accident was rated 5 on a scale of 7 on the Nuclear Accident Scale.

The clean-up took 14 years and over $1 billion. Ironically, the accident occurred just 12 days after the release of the movie “The China Syndrome” about a nuclear reactor incident.


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