Three Mile Island

Products of decayed uranium:

*cesium -137 half life of 30 years, behaves like k * Strontium -90 half life of 29 years, behaves like Ca *Iodine-131 - half life of 8 days, volatile, easily absorbed by body Medium halflife is really bad -->long/short --> not horrible

Science

-Cooling water shut off -water in to cool the course so core doesnt over heat and cause uranium to melt, use water to generate steam to get energy -temp spikes started runaway nuclear reaction that melted uranium core -Extra neutrons --> more decay --> more decay --> extra neutrons -invalid assumptions about hydrogen bubble, always make sure using correct equation -safety systems were generally engineered well -the release radioactivity was a small amount

Need

-High price of oil from oil embargoes made energy expensive in the 70s $3-30 - energy storage across us -N.P.P. could produce large amounts of energy for electricity (lots of cost goes into build up cost/safety cost

Lessons

-New safety and training regulation -Nuclear design projects in U.S. cancelled of put on hold in 70 and 80 -recent interest in building more nuclear power plants

2. Considerations

-Risk of nuclear melt-down and results -China movie --> melt the core, metal/uranium, molten radioactive metal --> go down to ground all the way to aquifer --> "got all way to China" -designs scaled-up by a factor of 10 up to 1 GW -Possibility of explosive hydrogen gas in the reactor like bridges, initially produced 100 MW-->1 GW -Radioactive materials produced by the nuclear reaction

Documentation

-Valve fault, indicator light connected to solonoid, not physical valve - back up systems worked -operator intervention created problem because of too much trust of the control room indicators -difficulty to communicate with jammed phone systems and respirators, caused alarmed public and made it hard to get info to and from the designers of the plant

Impact

-no deaths, injurys, or long term health -widespread panic among the public -cancellation or indefinite postponement of all nuclear project, NRC did not issue any permits between 1979-2012 -clean up took more than decade, cost about a billion dollars -Takes about decade to get over

Ethics

-unreliable info from metropolitan edison -despite previous valve failures, no warning to other power plants -NRC did not take safety concerns seriously enough--> we never imagined that could happen" -Communication to and through media

Document

Built on sandbar, 3 miles downstream from capitol, small plumbing break down. Press release down played the accident, hydrogen bubble mixed with oxygen is deadly 5 ft of core was gone --> 50% destroyed. There was miscalculations, technological gap between calc. Wrong formula used.

Nuclear plant works how?

Mixes uranium with radioactive uranium

Three Mile Island

Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg -1979 -no deaths