Three-Mile Island reactor

Kanapilly GM, Stanley JA, Newton GJ, et al. 1983. Characterization of an aerosol sample from the auxiliary building of the Three Mile Island reactor. Health Phys 45(5) 981-989. 

The important accidents involving commercial plants were the Three Mile Island Reactor partial meltdown accident, which did not breach the outer containment but totally ruined the plant, and the Chernobyl meltdown accident, which caused major releases of radioactivity to the atmosphere and global fallout. 

The risks associated with the operation of nuclear reactors are small but not negligible, as the failnre of the Three Mile Island reactor in the United States in 1979 and the disaster at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1987 demonstrated. If a reactor has to be shnt down quickly, there is danger of a meltdown, in which the heat from the continning fission processes melts the uranium fuel. Coolant mnst be circulated until heat from the decay of short-lived isotopes has... 

There have been two major accidents (Three Mile Island in the United States and Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union) in which control was lost in nuclear power plants, with subsequent rapid increases in fission rates that resulted in steam explosions and releases of radioactivity. The protective shield of reinforced concrete, which surrounded the Three Mile Island Reactor, prevented release of any radioactivity into the environment. In the Russian accident there had been no containment shield, and, when the steam explosion occurred, fission products plus uranium were released to the environment—in the immediate vicinity and then carried over the Northern Hemisphere, in particular over large areas of Eastern Europe. Much was learned from these accidents and the new generations of reactors are being built to be passive safe. In such passive reactors, when the power level increases toward an unsafe level, the reactor turns off automatically to prevent the high-energy release that would cause the explosive release of radioactivity. Such a design is assumed to remove a major factor of safety concern in reactor operation, see also Bohr, Niels Fermi, Enrico AIan-HATTAN Project Plutonium Radioactivity Uranium. 

OECD (1994) Three Mile Island reactor pressure vessel investigation project , Paris. 

The Three Mile Island reactor accident (Pennsylvania, 1979)... 

Fig. 12.14. Schematic of the Three Mile Island reactor (from the Report of the President s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, 1979).

In recognition of the importance which reactor safety has assumed, both within the nuclear industry and with the public at large, the remainder of the book is devoted to a study of the safety and environmental aspects of nuclear reactors. After a discussion of the biological effects of radiation, the potential hazards from both routine operation and accidents at nuclear power plants are evaluated in the light of the most recent studies. These are illustrated by reference to incidents such as that at the Three Mile Island reactor. Other... 

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