What happend
In the mid-1950s, nuclear physicists confidently predicted that nuclear energy would usher in a new age for humanity. The cost of energy would be so low it would be almost too cheap to meter. They predicted that by the year 2000 there would be thousands of commercial reactors producing unlimited amounts of power. Like the horse and buggy, oil and coal would become little more than historical curiosities. With such a bright outlook for the future the engineers and scientists started to get careless. Then on March 28, 1979, an event took place that rocked the nuclear power industry so badly that it has yet to recover. That event was the partial meltdown of one of the reactor cores at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania. The accident at Three Mile Island was a combination of equipment failures, design problems, and human error. It was even more that though it was a complacent attitude that the industry had as a whole as Harold Denton former Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said, " We thought the plant was too well designed to have a serious accident." "It was kind of like the Titanic."(CNN) It may surprise some people to find out how close we came to a major disaster and the sh
Because of fears it never opened, and it is only one of about 65 that have been canceled. Because the secondary loop was out of commission for about eight minuets the pressure relief valve had to open. The emergency water injection system had also come on to inject water into the primary loop to prevent a loss of coolant accident. This was later proved to be impossible because there was not enough oxygen to support such a reaction. The incident Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear accident in U. The plants operators once again turn on the pumps for the primary loop this starts the water circulating again. But this time the valve was not reopened after the test. However a good amount of the fuel did in fact melt or disintegrate altogether. Still many questions were raised about the effects of the radiation had on the things surrounding the site. The Los Angeles Times said that reporters "knew shocking little about nuclear power and compounded their ignorance by focusing too narrowly on worst-case scenario questions". New plants have opened since Three Mile Island but they had all been planed before the incident. The pressure relief valve should have closed after the pressure dropped but it did not. The water in the primary loop in now 350 times its normal level of radioactivity. This water removes the heat generated by the core as it is pumped through the loop.
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Acceptance Essays
