America’s Worst Nuclear Disaster
By: Calin Aneculaesei
Tags: Cold War, Innovation, History, Nuclear, America

America’s Worst Nuclear Disaster

The Three Mile Island accident

A clean-up crew working to remove radioactive contamination at Three Mile Island. Courtesy of Wikicommons

Nuclear power has been dubbed by many as the “fuel of the future”. Being carbon neutral and able to produce massive amounts of power using little fuel it is easy to see why such a statement was made. Since its development as a power source, we have seen many incidents when this “fuel of the future” turned out to be more like the “killer of the future”.

Well-known events such as the Chernobyl and the Fukushima nuclear disasters haunt the minds of the global community when the topic of nuclear power is brought up. Although the above-mentioned events are the most well-known ones there is one, less prominent, nuclear disaster which still haunts the minds of many Americans to this day, the Three Mile Island accident.

The Nuclear Age

The post-WWII era brought upon the people of the world something many dub the “Nuclear Age”. Efforts to refranchise radiation and nuclear power made it so that the general public now saw the scientific development as a tool for good rather than a tool for war. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, media about the benefits of using nuclear power flooded the world, most notably in the two biggest nuclear powers, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States of America (USA).

The Ford Nucleon. A concept car which was said to be able to run on nuclear fuel. Courtesy of Yahoo News

Throughout this era, promises of using nuclear power for more and more advanced things came about such as the use of nuclear power to help in the creation of the fabled flying car. Many hoped that with this new technology previously unusable areas of land could now be “colonised” by bringing power and thus industry to regions which before lay barren.

The dream of a “Nuclear Future” and the end of the so-called “Nuclear Age” would come with the nuclear failures of the 70s and 80s. Before Chernobyl shut down the global dream of a “Nuclear Future” the Three Mile Island accident shut it down for the American people.

Small mistakes lead to big consequences

During the maintenance of one of the eight condensate polishers of the reactor, a big mistake was made. A condensate polisher is a device used to filter the water used in these nuclear plants. The filters remove minerals and impurities which accumulate while the water cycles around the reactor decreasing the erosion such materials would cause on the pipes.

During a routine maintenance of one of the filters, those who were meant to clean the filter did not end up doing it the conventional way. Usually, compressed air was used to clean out the filters easily, however, on 27 March 1979, this didn’t seem to work. Instead, the maintenance workers used the compressed air to force water through the filter hoping that the force of the water would be enough to do the job. During this process, they also forced water into a vital air line used by the reactor leading to problems eleven hours later.

A graphic of the aftermath of the meltdown provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

At around 4:00 am on 28 March 1979 the problems from the mismanagement of the filter’s cleaning started to be noticed by those controlling the reactors. Due to the water intrusion into the air line multiple vital pumps across the compound malfunctioned and stopped.

This led to the rapid increase in temperature in the reactor and, unknown to those managing the station at the time, a partial nuclear meltdown which led to further radioactive material being released into the surrounding area on top of the radioactive steam being released in an effort to cool the reactor down.

The figure on the left shows the aftermath of the events, the numbers point towards the following:

2B inlet 1A inlet cavity loose core debris crust previously molten material lower plenum debris possible region depleted in uranium ablated incore instrument guide hole in baffle plate coating of previously-molten material on bypass region interior surface supper grid damage

Public response

The disaster at Three Mile Island created a lot of public outcry against nuclear power. Now that American technology failed to keep the beast of nuclear power in check many started to doubt its usefulness as the “fuel of tomorrow”. Countrywide protests and tighter regulation on the use of nuclear material as fuel followed the events at this power station.

With all of the outcry and bad press nuclear power received as a result of this event, the field started to progress much slower. Now with less funding and more regulations, it became harder and harder to innovate and find more safe and efficient ways to harness this fuel source. With all of these roadblocks came the end of the so-called “Nuclear Age”. The thought of using this vastly powerful material to fuel our future was destroyed as soon as the Three Mile Island station malfunctioned.