https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xQeXOz0Ncs
A very informative video that explains the accident in terms most people should be able to understand.
That was a great summary.
I also really liked the "second story" angle.
That was a great video. What he said about the difference between naval reactors and industrial reactors was eye opening. I always assumed smaller reactors would face similar risks as large ones but now it has me rethinking the possibility of using reactors in commercial ships if we can ever get over the stigma
If this were just a video about Three Mile Island I think it would be great but the fact that it's part of a greater story about how to deal with incidents that seem to be human error is awesome. Can't remember the last time I learned so much in such a short time. Great speech.
It seemed like it was on the verge of being a huge disaster and the only thing that stopped a bigger catastrophe was restarting the direct injection cooling.
Doubtful. TMI has a containment building.
Does that mean that if cooling wasn't provided, the nuclear fuel would have just melted itself down?
Yeah. The whole point of the containment building is to stop fission products leaving, either because of a meltdown or an explosion. It would have been very expensive to clean up though.
It did melt, but It was a partial meltdown. It wouldnt have exploded and burned like Chernobyl. Less material melted than Fukushima.
There's two things TMI had that chernobyl didnt which made the incident way less catastrophic. The containement building (chernobyl's core head literally burst that one open, it was also way less resistant and thick), and the protective 8 inch thick containement vessel around the core (only japan and the US were ever able to manufacture them). The fuel never melted through the containement vessel (it allegedly didnt either in Fukushima), but radioactive material can still get out in the form of contaminated steam, water, hydrogen etc. Afaik a little radiation made it out of the building but nothing harmful, nothing on the scale of Fukushima where very contaminated water leaked out of reactor 2 into the ocean.
The worst that could have happened would be a full meltdown, and the corium melting through the steel vessel and concrete building, maybe contaminating the river, i'm not sure if that was ever possible. Even in Chernobyl the corium never make it through the layers of concrete of the power plant.
More on reactor safety, incidents and lessions learned from them from a former nuclear safety representative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryI4TTaA7qM
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
