Three-Mile Island nuclear accident

On March 28, 1979, a loss of containment incident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. An overheated reactor released radioactive steam and water to the atmosphere resulting in a mass evacuation of the surrounding community. Although no direct injuries were attributed to the incident, environmental effects were later observed and public outcry resulted in a slowdown in the growth of the nuclear power industry. 

The process at Three Mile Island involved nuclear fission and subsequent reactor cooling using circulating water. The primary water was kept under pressure to prevent boiling. Heat was transferred to a secondary water system that supplied power to a steam generator. Upon completion of this step, steam condensate was recovered and recycled. All radioactive materials, including primary water, were enclosed in a lined concrete containment building to prevent their escape to the atmosphere. 

Problems witbin tbe polisher unit caused operators to respond by attempting to unblock a cboked condition using instrument air. The air was at a lower pressure than the condensate and this caused water to enter the air system. This was not a standard procedure and the commercially supplied polisher unit was not built to standards consistent with the plant. Water in the instrument air system caused several instruments to fail and ultimately initiated a turbine trip. This interrupted heat removal from the radioactive core. The heat generation within the reactor was halted automatically within a few minutes by dropping metal rods to absorb neutrons within the core. 

Radioactive decay contributed to further heat buildup. This caused water in the primary circuit to boil. The pilot-operated relief valve on the 

---

In fact, the air was not vented. The 1 -inch vent line on the air supply was choked by a wasp s nest. Although this example primarily illustrates a wrong assumption, a second factor was the inadequate indication of the state of the oxygen valve by the panel light. A similar error was a major contributor to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. 

Xe-133 was the main radionuclide released during nuclear incidents such as the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear accidents. In these accidents, the Xe that was built up as a fission product was released. Because of the unreactive nature of the noble gases, the Xe was hard to contain and hence was released into the environment. 

Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurs in Pennsylvania, USA. http //www.libraries.psu.edu/crsweb/tmi/tmi.htm... 

Prince-Embury S and Rooney J (1988). Psychological symptoms of residents in the aftermath of the Three-Mile island nuclear accident in the aftermath... 

McKinnon W, Weisse CS, Reynolds CP, et al Chronic stress, leukocyte subpopulations, and humoral response to latent viruses. Health Psychol 8 389-402, 1989 Parkinson DK, Bromet EJ Correlates of mental health in nuclear and coal-fired power plant workers. Scand J Work Environ Health 9 341-345, 1983 Prince-Embury S, Rooney JF Psychological symptoms of residents in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and restart. J Soc Psychol 128 779-790, 1988... 

One famous example of a special commission was the Kemeny Commission that investigated the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Another is the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger Space Shuttle accident in 1986. 

We may all say accidents happen. However, their occurrence may not only take human lives, destroy millions of dollars in property and lost business, they may also cost us our jobs and reputations. The Bhopal, India, accident in 1984 released methyl isocyanate and caused over 2500 fatalities. A petroleum refinery blew up in Houston, Texas, in 1989, killing 23 workers and damaging properly totaling U.S. 750 million, spewing debris from the explosion over an area of 9 km. Many thought that after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States in 1979 and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986, we would finally get a handle on how to prevent accidents. Unfortunately, the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 proved otherwise (see Picture 2.1). 

A clear example is the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States. In the 1960s and early 1970s, nuclear power looked like a very promising career and an incredible growth industry. Nuclear power was to be our cheap form of energy. But the industry was stymied by the American public s perception that nuclear power is an unwarranted risk. And the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident sealed its fate. Now commercial nuclear power in the United States is a relatively small industry in comparison to other forms of generating power. And yet, in France, 40% of the electric power is generated by nuclear reactors. 

T. H. Moss, and D. L. Sills, The Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident Lessons and Implications, The New York Academy of Sciences, New York (1981). 

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant clearly demonstrated that an alarm system can be counterprociuc tive. An excessive number of alarms can distract the operator s attention from the real problem that needs to be addressed. Alarms that merely tell the operator something that is already known do the same. In fac t, a very good definition of a nuisance alarm is one that informs the operator of a situation of which the operator is already aware. The only problem with applying this definition is determining what the operator already knows. 

Show the complex iterations between government laws and regulations and the PSA response to not only comply but to protect the process industry. The real impact of the accident at the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant was not radiation, which was within regulations but financial losses to the utility and the acceptance of nuclear electrical f>ower in the United States. The effects of the Bhopal accident were in human life but it also had a profound effect on the chemical industry financially, and its acceptability and growth. Present the mathematics used in PSA in one chapter to be skipped, studied, or relerred to according to the readers needs. 

Public opposition to commercial nuclear power plants began with the misperception that the plants could explode like nuclear weapons. The nuclear industi-y made progress in dispelling this misperception, but suffered major setbacks when an accident occurred at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the USSR. 

The 1970s were hard times for the nuclear industiy. The decade opened with the first Earth Day (April 22), which featured thousands of teaching events, many of them aimed at halting further nuclear power development, and ended with the accident at the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. In... 

March. An accident occurs at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in New York. 

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in March 1979 resulted in contamination of the containment and auxiliary buildings. An aerosol sample from the auxiliary building obtained by filtering about 1,4xl09 cm3 of air through a fiber glass filter for 8 days contained an estimated total transuranic actinide radioactivity of 13 Bq (350 pCi), of which 241 Am was the major contributor (Kanapilly et al. 

The devastating accidents at the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear power plants both occurred as a result of erroneous decisions made between the hours of midnight and 3 00 a.m. 

By the 1970s, nuclear power was in widespread use, in the U S. and abroad, as a source of electricity. As of 2007, nuclear power provided about 19.3% of the electricity generated in the U.S., created by 104 licensed nuclear reactors. Nonetheless, the potential for accidents, meltdowns and other disasters has never been far from the minds of many consumers (after all, for many of us the first image that comes to mind upon hearing the word nuclear is a nuclear bomb). The 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in the U.S. led to the cancellation of scores of nuclear projects across the nation. This trend was later reinforced by the disaster at... 

Politicians in our parliamentary democracies who wish to please public opinion feel the urge to take into account demands that are more emotional than scientific, and advocate restrictions even when these go against the best interests of the citizens. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in the United States which resulted in no fatalities, the more recent Chernobyl explosion which, as of 1988 had directly caused two deaths, have, with no good reason, prevented any resumption of the U.S. nuclear program and have aroused fears in European countries in people least likely to give way to mass hysteria. 

During an emergency, people are often overloaded with urgent information. Consequently, they may tend to fixate on just one or two items, even if these items are only a minor part of the overall story. The situation will further deteriorate, if it turns out that an instrument signal on which the operator was fixated was wrong. Then, he or she will take actions that will exacerbate the situation. (Fixation on an incorrect signal was a factor in the accident at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant.)... 

These accidents, and many less devastating incidents that continue to occur today, were linked by an incomplete analysis of human factors. The human side of safety was ignored with high costs. Chemical manufacturers have yet to get over the impact of Bhopal, which killed 3,800 and injured over 200,000. Litigation is still in process. It required 4.5 years and 970 million to clean up after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident. That cost is hundreds of millions more than the cost to build the plant. Long-term environmental and health impacts of Chernobyl continue to haunt Russia and her neighbors. 

---