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The Energy Spectator
Three Mile Island — Thirty Years After
If we haven’t recovered by now, we never will. A special report.
(Page 2 of 4)
On the other hand, the catastrophic situation imagined in The China Syndrome never happened. Supposedly once the fuel assembly had melted, it would sink to the bottom of the steel reactor vessel and then keep going.It would melt through concrete containment and on down into the earth. As the actor-scientist explained to Jane Fonda after she witnesses a near-meltdown in The China Syndrome:
If the core is exposed for whatever reason, the fuel heats beyond core heat tolerance, in a matter of minutes, nothing can stop it and it melts right down through the bottom of the plant, theoretically to China. But of course as soon as it hits groundwater, it blasts into the atmosphere and sends out clouds of radioactivity. The number of people killed would depend on which way the wind is blowing, rendering an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable, not to mention the cancers that would show up later. I may be wrong but I would say you’re lucky to be alive. For that matter, I think we could say the same for the rest of Southern California.
(The irony of the Pennsylvania reference was not lost on anyone at the time.)
But of course it didn’t happen — nor did it ever make much sense in the first place. At Three Mile Island 60 percent of the core melted and dropped to the bottom of the reactor vessel, yet its heat wasn’t even enough to penetrate the chromium lining of the reactor vessel, which has a lower melting point than steel.
But suppose by some wild and wacky happenstance the core did manage to melt through the steel and the concrete containment vessel and begin its journey to the center of the earth. Would it cause the steam explosion that would wipe out Pennsylvania?
A steam explosion occurs when you drop a superheated object into a vat of water. The water evaporates so quickly it acts as an explosion. As Bernard Cohen had long pointed out, however, a molten core making its way to China would not hit groundwater with anything near the same impact. At best it would sink a few yards per day. That would mean it might boil some groundwater, but this water would follow the core’s tunnel right back into the containment structure. The result would be a geothermal site, where the earth’s radioactive heat meets groundwater and sends steam shooting into the air. The China Syndrome was never anything but a cinematic fantasy.
Three Mile Island was an industrial accident. It ruined the reactor, caused a billion dollars worth of damage and nearly bankrupted the utility. What made it unusual for an industrial accident is that no one was hurt. The radioactive release — caused when the seals on a steam overflow tank failed — was minuscule. Exhaustive studies of the area have never found any health effects on the surrounding population. What Three Mile Island proved is that the worst-case scenario for a nuclear accident was far less than anyone realize.
The culture, rather than the technology, caused the accident. Within a year of Hiroshima, the federal government claimed a monopoly on all nuclear technology. The Atomic Energy Commission took control of research and reactor construction, while the utilities were not allowed to participate. After President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program, however, the AEC began civilian development. General, Westinghouse and Babcock and Wilcox started building reactors, although the AEC kept a tight rein on the technology.
When combined with the whims of state utility commissions, the results were a collection of one-of-a-kind reactors built around the country with very little in common. Each nuclear plant was an island unto itself. As Simpsons creator Matt Groening, who grew up with the ill-fated Trojan Reactor near Portland, once put it, “The manufacturers used to leave a note on the utility’s doorstep saying, ‘Congratulations, you are the owner of a new nuclear plant.’” The utilities communicated very little and shred no information. At Three Mile Island, the operating crew spent four hours per yearreviewing what was happening at other reactors.
A year after Three Mile Island, Reason published a brilliant article by Adam Reed explaining “Who Caused Three Mile Island.” Reed noted that the AEC’s culture of secrecy had kept nuclear technology completely isolated from a whole generation of engineering psychology that had evolved since 1945. As Reed wrote:
In the early 1950s, research established that about 80 percent of all industrial accidents were due, not to defects or malfunctions in industrial equipment, but to error and confusion on the part of human beings operating it.… Before the end of the '50s…insurance company safety consultants were bringing the new discipline of engineering psychology to bear on the design of industrial plant equipment.… By 1965, hardly any new equipment could be put into operation unless it conformed to the standards for safe human factors designed established by Underwriters Laboratory.… By 1970 no new design for a toaster or blender at General Electric could get off the drawing board without being examined by an expert in human factors. Yet the same company was designing, manufacturing, and delivering nuclear reactors that had never been seen, much less examined by an engineering psychologist.… It was only after the loss of the Three Mile Island plant in 1979 that engineering psychologists asked what the hell was going on in nuclear power plant control rooms. What they saw made them shiver.
One of the major advances of industrial psychology had been making certain that control devices were clearly marked and differentiated, ideally requiring the operator to perform an act similar to what was being put into effect. A lever that moved the control rods up or down, for example, should move up or down itself in identical fashion.
What the engineers instead discovered in nuclear operating rooms was a sea of identical light and switches completely unrelated to their operating functions. Nor was there any hierarch of importance. As Samuel Walker wrote in Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Accident in Historical Perspective:
Within a few seconds after the accident began, the plant’s alarm systems, including a loud horn and more than a hundred flashing lights on the control panels, announced the loss of feed-water in the secondary loop, the turbine trip, the reactor trip, and other abnormal events. But they offered little guidance about the cause of those occurrences and did not differentiate between trivial and vital problems.
In several reactors, lights and gauges indicating important information were so high up on the control panel that operators needed a ladder to see them. In one, two key switches that had to be thrown simultaneously were so far apart that it took two operators to perform the task. In another example that became infamous, the control rods were moved up or down by two identical, unmarked levers sitting side-by-side. The operators had so much trouble differentiating them that they eventually attached two different beer cans in order to remember which was which. At Three Mile Island, one crucial error occurred because a maintenance tag obscured a light warning of a serious malfunction.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (29) | Leave a comment
More Articles by William Tucker
More Articles From The Energy Spectator
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Indiana Alex| 3.31.09 @ 9:18AM
This administration is not interested in science, only the failed religion of liberalism.
owyheewine| 3.31.09 @ 9:41AM
A couple of points that need to be corrected and clarified. First, U238 is fissable, but when it "breaks apart", it does not produce enough neutrons to sustain the reaction. Just a picky point. The other omission is the failure to mention the development of DDC, direct digital (computer) control. Earlier systems, called analog, were orders of magnitude slower and less precise than DDC. What that means is that an old outdated PC (think pre pentium processors) has enough computing horsepower to control a reactor. These systems usually are operated in triplicate so that control systems are backed up as much as space shuttle systems. That combined with better training and operations technique make today's reactors almost failure proof.
Mike Donavan| 3.31.09 @ 10:55AM
According to that bill security is OK. Fine, but what about radioactive waste and retired nuclear facilities ? Nobody knows what to do with that stuff. Considering that some of it has a 10 000 years lifelong, you'd better consider it twice if you don't want to blow our children's environment. That is the real question about nuclear energy as we know it today.
I am surprised that 30 years later, no significant improvment has come from scientific research...
Big Leo| 3.31.09 @ 11:08AM
Most nuclear waste is low-level waste that is scarcely radioactive. You wouldn't want to sleep on a pile of it for a couple of years, but it isn't particularly deadly. The high level waste is very compact and could be stored in a medium sized room. I'll put all of it in a bunker in the back field for a million dollars a year. Actually, a stable geological area would be better, like Yucca Flats. I live on a dormant volcanic field.
Joe| 3.31.09 @ 11:29AM
Mike, wake up. The French have been doing a good job of getting rid of it for years including recycling it until it is of no use anymore. We are very very safe!!!
William Tucker | 3.31.09 @ 11:46AM
Gentleman,
I refer you to my previous article on French reprocessing efforts: http://spectator.org/archives/2008/05/12/parlez-vous-nucleaire
cdc| 3.31.09 @ 4:22PM
Reprocessing introduces more risks and inefficiencies into the system than necessary. The promising designs now, my preference is for molten salt, don't need reprocessing; but rather allow for continuos in line fueling/breeding so fissibles go in and non-fissibles come out.
Marc Jeric| 3.31.09 @ 4:27PM
To call the Three-Mile Island equipment failure "an accident" is criminally negligent - not a fly was hurt in that so-called accident. When two cars collide with no injuries we call that a bumper hit or paint scratch - we do not call it an accident when there are no injuries.
Also, not many people know how that equipment failure occurred nor why. The brand-new Unit 2 of that nuclear power plant was only 8 weeks in operation when the Carter's Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with one member of the 5-member commission was a Sierra Club lawyer and another a Massachussetts consumer advocate, directed additional tests of the auxilliary cooling water system. Why - there was no reason for that - the plant just finished all required tests 8 weeks before.
The lectric utility company contracted out this unnecessary test to an outside company with union labor. They tested that system with satisfactory results - but, following union rules the crew left the work on time with 20 minutes given to washup. Thus they left the auxilliary cooling water pump with the valve closed instead of open, without informing the operators of that fact. When the relief valve on the reactor got stuck in the open position the water escaped from the reactor while the Auxilliary cooling water pump came on - but the closed valve did not let that water to arrive to the reactor.
So - it was not an accident since nobody was injured. The causes were :
1) unnecessary tests demanded by the NRC nincompoops for a brand new plant;
2) union work rules that stopped the inspections;
3) unionized utility workforce without a single competent engineer on staff.
Pingback| 3.31.09 @ 6:00PM
Three Mile Island in Perspective | The Blog of Record links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
W White| 3.31.09 @ 7:57PM
TMI was a godsend for the Nuclear Program.
I had been involved in Nuclear Power in the decade before TMI and spent 3 months on site in the initial recovery phase. For several years after that I was involved in the application of 'Lessons Learned' and the Upgrading efforts. TMI enlightened all of us, and we needed it. It was sobering to realize firsthand how little the Regulators and the Utility hierarchy understood about what they were dealing with.
The accident hit the pocketbook hard enough that the glaring TMI message was taken seriously . A safe, reliable ,mature program has evolved -one that this country desperately needs at least until the 20% nuclear contribution can be replaced.
Unfortunately that enviable record is being put in jeopardy by the blanket approach in the relicensing laws. They do not account for the much greater risk in trying to extend the life of pre-TMI Plants. The whole industry is vulnerable, and indeed the power sensitive economy as a whole, while these plants remain in the system . Older units should be phased out as soon as replacement power becomes available.
A TMI type event at any one of the existing 100 plants would, to say the least, undo 30 years of hard earned progress. That 'bailout' would indeed be a real challenge!
What a shame that the blanket relicensing rules
V Fisher| 3.31.09 @ 8:45PM
I did some research for a debate last year and was surprised to learn that there has never been a personal injury suit brought about by the Three Mile Island incident and the only legal action was by local businesses who sued the local government because they were shut down due to over reaction to the situation.
stmichrick| 3.31.09 @ 11:39PM
V Fisher
The local businesses should have sued the producers of The China Syndrome film which MADE money as a result of the incident.
ARealist| 4.1.09 @ 1:37PM
ALL nuclear power plants presently in operation today in the USA are based on designs produced in the late 60s or early 70s.
The designs are, literally, ancient.
Yet, they have performed admirably.
New nuclear plants, if ever built in the USA, will be far safer , more stupid proof and more efficient than those operating today.
Look at the good results of nuclear plants operated by the French and by the US Navy.
As to nuclear waste ; it is inconceivable that scientists will have made ZERO progress over the next 100 years in figuring out what to do with this stuff and turn it into useful materials - either recycled or otherwise.
As to whether we will have any more nuclear plants built in the USA , well, that is a pipe dream.
We have a Marxist as president who is doing all he can to destroy the USA via bankruptcy.
We have a communist environmental lobby that tosses money to their fellow useful idiots in Congress to prevent any thoughts of nuclear plants.
We have an ignorant public that believes that there is no difference betwixt an H bomb and a nuclear powered generating station.
We have a communist media that will willfully engage in lies and distortion to "prove"nuclear power is the same as an H bomb, and will give face time to any facist communist hate-america firster wacko "environmentalist."
We are doomed to 8 dollar gasoline, sky rocketing electric and heating gas bills - and worse - as Obama and his fellow traveling hate america first communist fascist bolshevik nazi pig tyrants take over.
American Patriot| 4.2.09 @ 1:11AM
Jeez, ARealist, looks like every one is a communist but you! Give in and join us!
flyboy| 4.2.09 @ 8:46AM
After spending 20+ years in Nuclear power as engineer and licensed operator, I can assure you that refueling outages, whether three months or three weeks duration, have never been viewed as vacations by the plant personnel! The Westinghouse AP-1000 is a brilliant design that should be guilt in quantity. It has passive safety systems that lower cost and make it basically disaster proof. (Full disclosure, I have done a little contract work on the AP-1000 initial operating procedure preparation) Thanks for the good article.
Mike Donavan| 4.16.09 @ 4:45AM
Interesting paper about TMI :
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/04/post-4.html
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I’ll have a Poptropica full written walkthrough very soon, but in the meantime, here are some answers to some of the frequently asked questions about Mythology Island. Having trouble? Post a question in the comments and I’ll try to answer it!
Getting Hercules to Help You
Hercules won’t help you until you have all five items from Zeus’ quest. Once you have the five items, bring them to Athena. Zeus will appear and steal them. The big jerk! Once this happens, talk to Athena and she will tell you that Hercules will help you. You’ll need to have the magic mirror from Aphrodite because Hercules doesn’t want to have to walk. He’s so lazy!
Getting the Hydra Scale
You can see how to do this in the videos, but basically you need to jump up when the Hydra is about to strike. He will rear one of his heads back to attack and his eyes will bulge out. When this happens, jump up in the air and then try to land on top of his head. That head will get knocked out. When all five heads get knocked out, the Hydra will be asleep and you can click on him to get one of the scales. Poptropica I’ll have a full written walkthrough very soon, but in the meantime, here are some answers to some of the frequently asked questions about Mythology Island. PoptropicaHaving trouble? Post a question in the comments and I’ll try to answer it!
Getting Hercules to Help You Poptropica