Three Mile Island accident
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, near Harrisburg, the capital city of Pennsylvania, United States. The reactor accident began at 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, and released radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment.[2][3] It is the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.[4] On the seven-point logarithmic International Nuclear Event Scale, the TMI-2 reactor accident is rated Level 5, an "Accident with Wider Consequences".[5][6]
Date
March 28, 1979
04:00 (Eastern Time Zone UTC−5)
INES Level 5 (accident with wider consequences)
March 25, 1999[1]
The accident began with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system,[7] followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve (PORV) in the primary system,[8] which allowed large amounts of water to escape from the pressurized isolated coolant loop. The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA). TMI training and operating procedures left operators and management ill-prepared for the deteriorating situation caused by the LOCA. During the accident, those inadequacies were compounded by design flaws, such as poor control design, the use of multiple similar alarms, and a failure of the equipment to indicate either the coolant-inventory level or the position of the stuck-open PORV.[9]
The accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among the general public and led to new regulations for the nuclear industry. It accelerated the decline of efforts to build new reactors.[10] Anti-nuclear movement activists expressed worries about regional health effects from the accident.[11] Some epidemiological studies analyzing the rate of cancer in and around the area since the accident did determine that there was a statistically significant increase in the rate of cancer, while other studies did not. Due to the nature of such studies, a causal connection linking the accident with cancer is difficult to prove.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Cleanup at TMI-2 started in August 1979 and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cost of about $1 billion (equivalent to $2 billion in 2023).[19] TMI-1 was restarted in 1985, then retired in 2019 due to operating losses. Its decommissioning is expected to be complete in 2079 at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion.[20]
In popular culture[edit]
On March 15, 1979, twelve days before the accident, the movie The China Syndrome premiered and was initially met with backlash from the nuclear power industry, claiming it to be "sheer fiction" and a "character assassination of an entire industry".[153] In the film, television reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and her cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) secretly film a major accident at a nuclear power plant while taping a series on nuclear power. At one point in the film, an official tells Jane Fonda's character that an explosion at the plant "could render an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable".[154] After the release of the film, Fonda began lobbying against nuclear power. In an attempt to counter her efforts, Edward Teller, a nuclear physicist and long-time government science adviser best known for contributing to the Teller–Ulam design breakthrough that made hydrogen bombs possible, personally lobbied in favor of nuclear power.[155] Teller suffered a heart attack shortly after the incident and joked that he was the only person whose health was affected.[156]
Meltdown: Three Mile Island is a four-part docuseries released by Netflix on May 4, 2022.[157] The documentary recounts the events, controversies, and lingering effects of the accident.[158] Featured in the series are Rick Parks, a TMI nuclear engineer turned whistleblower; Lake Barrett, an independent energy consultant who served as the NRC's on-site director for the TMI-2 cleanup; Eric Epstein, chairman of TMI Alert, a nuclear watchdog organization in central Pennsylvania; Michio Kaku, an American theoretical physicist; and residents of the communities affected by the event.[159][160][161][158]
The Three Mile Island accident plays a pivotal role in Heat and Light, a 2016 novel by Jennifer Haigh.[162]
Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island is a 2023 documentary about the accident.[163]
General: