I can't help but think of the Simpson's episode where Homer is congratulated for saving the plant by " turning a possible Chernobyl into a mere 3 Mile Island " by Mr Burns.
So the problem isn’t so much nuclear power, but the competence and integrity of the people who build and run it. Many nuclear power plants function perfectly well and, of course, we never hear about them. No incident, no story.
I live about 40 minutes from 3 Mile Island, and despite hearing about it all my life when we drive by, my mom still tells me about it when we drive by.
I think nuclear plants like this have great potential, as long as the necessary precautions are taken and people aren't cutting corners. There's a power plant located in Byron, Illinois that I love to drive to just to look at. Their towers are about 400 feet tall, and there's a road that runs right up next to the fence so you can get a good look. Just seeing the massive structures in person gives me great appreciation for them and the clean energy they can provide.
I get your point, but I just want to point out nuclear energy isn't clean energy, there's still a pretty fair amount of nuclear waste generated by nuclear reactors. Much cleaner than fossil fuels, but only when done properly and incorporates proper waste disposal. The only "clean" energy is energy that produces little to no harmful waste, and even renewable energy sources produce moderate amounts of waste but they are less harmful to humans and the environment. Nuclear energy doesn't produce as much waste as some other methods, but the waste it does produce is deadly to humans and the environment.
@@crazycherokee8552 Nuclear waste can actually be recycled. Yes you can only recycle it so much but it leaves far less waste. Many European plants recycle.
At least they learned from there mistakes this led to the creation of IAEA and the second plant at 3 mile Island went on to lead the world in quality and safe operation.
The image shown at the 0:11 second mark is not Fukushima although it is often confused with Fukushima. It is a picture of an oil refinery fire in Chiba city, Chiba prefecture Japan on the same day as the Fukushima disaster and caused by the same Earthquake but it IS NOT a nuclear power plant you see in this picture
Well at 3:08 you lost all credibility when you said the core going critical was part of a bad chain of events. I'm a former nuclear reactor operator for the US Navy. Criticality is a good thing. Criticality is stable. You have an average of 2.43 neutrons released per fission. Criticality is when for every fission at least one of those released continues on to cause another fission. Less than 1 on average is sub critical and greater than 1 on average is super critical. Prompt criticality is reaching criticality with prompt neutrons only, otherwise known as instantaneously released neutrons. Delayed neutrons take longer to release, in the millisecond range and can cause more criticality and thus prompt criticality is dangerous and difficult if not impossible to control a runaway criticality. When the core is operating normally with a negative temperature coefficient, as the water heats up the plant power will reduce causing water to cool and thus power increases. Withdrawal of the rods with no way to pump hot water from the core can lead to excessive heating at power, but insertion of rods or even full shutdown or scram can cause the plant to stabilize with proper cooling flow for the lower power to remove decay heat. Anyways I'm getting too far past your ignorant statement of criticality being a bad thing and thus the furthering of ignorance in the world about nuclear power leading to a fearful public and thus the loss of the expansion of nuclear power as a clean replacement of power that is more sustainable than wind or solar. Please reeducate yourself concerning terminology and the actual process of power generation in this field.
I was 6 years old when this happened. We had to evacuate and go stay at my aunt’s house a few hours away. Thankfully I didn’t fully grasp what was going on at the time. Check and double check
I’m from the Harrisburg area and I’ve always found the plant unsettling. The area has never forgotten the accident, it’s featured on the local news each year on the anniversary of the accident; and up until the Plant closed, it was common to hear about TMI Core Meltdown Siren system testing happening in Middletown-the closest town to the plant. Its hard to not find the plant unsettling after finding all of this out.
@@averagejoe112 Middletown’s a little town that deserves better. Same with Steelton and Highspire. It’s sad what happened to all of them, they used to be booming places back in the day.
When talking about the meltdown, you gave the melting temperature of the zirconium fuel rods. That is wrong on your part. The fuel rods themselves are not what melt during a meltdown. A meltdown is considered when the fuel itself melts, which is about 2k F, for U235 and about 1300 F less than the zirconium structure metal. The rods also consist of poisons such as hafnium and others that are burnable and not zoned throughout the rods to make for a more evenly distributed fuel. At the start of core life there is no xenon in the core, poison (poisons soak up neutrons), from fission decay byproducts and thus nothing to help preclude reactivity. At core start with no poisons a miniscule withdrawal of controls rods would cause instant reactivity and make for a wildly uncontrollable core. They zone poisons through the rods to allow for more control. Think of either having a lighter as opposed to a flame thrower to light a candle. Meltdown occurs when fission products begin to be uncovered and air is the heat transfer medium which is not as efficient as fluid and thus heat compounds and the fuel melts, not necessarily the actual framework of the rods.
Given you are correct, thank you for the facts. I didnt expect much from a narrator that just farts around cracking opinionated jokes at every turn, so i opted out of this video about 2 minutes in. So stupid.
There are a few bad nuclear vocabulary uses in this video as well. A Nuclear Reactor going critical is normal operation. Critical just means there are enough individual nuclear reactions occurring that a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction can happen and the reactor can keep itself going. Going supercritical is also not always a scary thing. But taking it farther than that is not within safe operating conditions and you would just never operate one like this.
The word critical, when referring to nuclear reactors, is not a bad thing. It is in fact the normal mode of operation and means that reactor power is not changing.
I was a child when this happened, I remember my family talking about it and the movie “the China syndrome “. I remember being inconsolable about the whole situation and the threat of nuclear war was a real possibility at the time. This threat of war was hugely influential on me and my generation. A sort of impending doom hung over us generation x people.
I live just across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. I didn't live here at the time of the meltdown, but my bff's husband lived about 10-15 miles away from TMI. He was outside playing that day, and it seems everyone pretty much shrugged it off because Thornburg was not forthcoming about the dangers people faced.
I grew up in Central PA, about 20 minutes from TMI, in a small town along the Susquehanna. Ive heard many stories about this event, but its interesting to here "Harrisburg, Pennsylvania" mentioned in a RUclips video. I thought it was a forgettable place everywhere outside of here. I was just kayaking on the Susquehanna a few hours ago
@@johnbender49 hello fellow central Pennsylvanians! I was born and raised about 30 minutes outside of TMI. My parents told me they remember when this happened, and that everybody was losing their minds and heading out of the area. For years I drove past it when I’d come home from college (went to Millersville University in Lancaster).
Yeah its pretty silly how nuclear power plants are just steam engines. Would be better if we could directly capture the radiation as electricity instead. Say with something like a solar panel. A lot safer too if we can get rid of that explosive water
So weird and also so cool to hear this channel talking about the area I grew up in (I’m from a small town less than a mile outside of Harrisburg). I’ve driven past TMI many times in my life; it’s crazy to think this happened outside our little city.
and his boss, and that bosses boss. remember the owners are the craziest of the bunch. money before lives is the problem you see? not the guy working there. you dont realy get it.
Narrator reminds me of a insane English teacher I had that loved letting me cut loose on topics I like to work on my own vocal skills and later acting, because as he put it "once you can do it with something you love, you can learn to do it on any topic, like a role you love then muscling through one you've never done before"
I dont think they needed to decommission the other units. People fear nuclear irrationally. I blame movies. This new movement toward green energy can only be done through nuclear for the foreseeable future. //Later edit// The issue is fundamentally not being able to store energy. Batteries arent going to be feasible for years. Bottom line: Solar/wind arent enough, an every single other means literally pumps smoke into the atmosphere.. except nuclear.
I think with the rapidly increasing demand for power, especially with more and more EVs, nuclear power is the only solution we currently know of to meet the demand. As long as it's done responsibly and mandate continued research making nuclear power safer (not unlike the commercial aviation industry.)
Hahaha. As bad as things seem they are even worse. Tampering with things we don't understand will result in us irrevocably contaminating our ground water. It's already too late. Get ready for the bus and your dinner of lentils because the elite need you to starve so they can keep eating like kings.
I love me some local history! Thanks for doing a video on the partial meltdown at TMI. Fun little side note, my parents watched China Syndrome about 10 miles from the plant the day of the meltdown.
I can only *imagine* the stress that the crew in the 3 Mile Island had to deal with. Imagine realizing that a nuclear reactor was about to blow 🤭😬that’s not a fun way to spend your work day
This makes me feel much better. The most problematic unit ever and an comedy of error and bad operation and border line negligence and STILL it didn't penetrate the vessel, let alone the containment.
You showed the elephant foot from Chernobyl when talking about melting down of TMI. That is a massive misrepresentation of what actually happened. That indicates a total melt down and loss of primary shielding, which was not true with this situation
This is a credible summary of 3 mile island with one exception. The effectiveness of a drunk relief pitcher can’t be understated. How can you predict the next pitch when the man throwing it is as clueless as you?
I’ve always been amazed that schools don’t teach local history. I live not far from here, and never knew a thing about it. I was born shortly before the mishap. Smh
@@eastprospecthomestead my thoughts exactly, but I guess that would mean owning up to being the cause, and paying out a boatload of money to all of the people affected
These are the kind of things the government doesn't want you to know about, for example, that it used to burn Mexicans with gasoline even if they crossed legally or They bombed a town in the USA just because it was made up of black people
My dad has worked at the active three mile island units multiple times during outages and refuelings. He even got to visit the old control room and has some pictures
@@william9922 ooooohhhhhh Mr technicality here. Sorry oh wise one, guess you know everything about everything and come on here to spout your two cents since your woman wears the pants in the relationship and you need to feel better about yourself.
I know that you are correct, Cait. Have lost friends who died young, in their 40's, from cancers attributed to exposure from TMI. I know that the government studied the effects on pregnant women and their children for at least 17 years, because that is how long one of my friends lived afterward. She showed me the government questionnaire one year and told me about the study. It was marked "confidential"...
I don’t think there has to be an accident to cause the increase in cancer. I work in radiology, and we had an office in a town with a nuclear power plant, and we noticed there was about 3 times the cancer rate in patients of that town compared to our other offices, but there had not been an accident there. I don’t know if it is related to the plant or the waste, but I think that is something to consider when they talk about building more nucs.
I have two memories (something which is always suspect) about the event: First, that the town to the north had evacuation plan to go south, and town to north planned to go south. Also, there was a clip of President Carter's expression when he realized what was going on (he served, I believe, on a nuclear sub).
He served on a diesel-electric sub, the USS Barracuda, and he was associated with the US Navy's nuclear sub program in its earliest days -- receiving a lot of training in nuclear tech -- but I don't think he ever actually got to serve on a nuclear sub. He had to leave the Navy to look after his father's peanut farm after his death, although before that happened, Carter had expected to serve aboard the USS Seawolf, which was the US Navy's second nuclear sub after the USS Nautilus. Something that Carter did do, however, was lead a team in 1952 to help disassemble a ruined experimental reactor at Chalk River Laboratories in Canada. Each team had to be lowered into the reactor for just 90 seconds at a time to disassemble it in shifts, and each team member was exposed to an entire year's worth of radiation within those 90 seconds. Carter's urine even tested radioactive for many months afterward. He said that his experience there shaped his views on atomic energy.
@@archerj.maggott1372 I remember this being on the radio…..can’t remember the guy’s name but it always ended with ‘that’s the rest of the story’ or something like that. That’s where I learned about how dangerous nuclear energy can be.
I lived in the northern part of PA when this happened. People who had hunting camps that live near TMI fled to their camps. Only later would I deal with Chernobyl in 86 while living in Berlin, Germany.
Employees at TMI always said Unit 1 was excellent, but Unit 2 was a "dog"...."it just never ran right" they all said. Theres a reason for that too that for some reason is never mentioned. TMI was originally only supposed to have just one Unit. And Unit 2 was originally supposed to be built in New Jersey. However, a certain group of "ORGANIZED LABOR" threatened the construction company, so those plans were scrapped and instead it was moved to TMI. Design and layouts plans had to be scrapped and completely redrawn as soon as possible to fit with the existing Unit 1 reactor. Although both Units looked similar on the outside, the piping etc were totally different. And with the rush to get it all done quickly, there were inherent design flaws in Unit 2.
My grandma would tell me about the accident on occasion, she lived and I grew up in a small county less than 20 minutes from Harrisburg. There is a hiking spot I would visit that you could see TMI from with binoculars. I thought it took place in March not May though. Her birthday was the 1st of May and said her family was scared to come visit because of the accident.
Navy nuke here - You mention the core 'going critical' - that doesn't mean what you think it means. There are 3 criticality levels, subcritical, critical and supercritical and all those do is define if you are generating less, the same or more neutrons from each fission that feed subsequent fissions. The usage there around 3 minutes in is factually incorrect. If the reactor was critical, it means the reaction is stabilized and using up the same amount of neutrons that are being generated.
I was in the 12th grade. I had just turned 18 years ago on March 21, 1979. On that day the hallways had a green mist running through them. You could really see it because that day was very sunny. It was also very warm that day. They let us out from school that day before noon. I will never forget that day!
my mom had an older friend who actually worked at TMI while this was happening and she told me she answered the phone there one day and it was the president of the united states but she didn’t believe him so her response was “yeah? well im the queen of shiva” and hung up! she was an older lady at the time and has recently passed so there’s no way to re confirm her story. of course it very well could’ve been misremembered too.
I was surprised to learn the government didn’t start to evacuate people until two days later the incident. I always have heard about Three Mike Island but I honestly never knew what actually happened. This is why I love this channel. I learn new things all of the time. I also love the one liners. 😃 By the way, are you guys ever going to do more Timeline videos? I’d LOVE to see a Timeline 1960’s and 1970’s series.
My understanding of this crisis is that the automatic safety mechanisms were properly functional and the operators proceeded correctly in shutting down the plant. No release of radiation!
It's crazy how much things have advanced since these days. Of course we're scarred as a society. We weren't ready for this type of technology and engineering AT ALL so we really can do so much better now and it will greatly improve our energy grid and climate problem.
I didn't realize that they finally finished cleanup the month I moved away. also, my mom only knew it was happening because she was a scientist working for the University of Pennsylvania, and because information was being kept quiet about how serious it was except that she knew it had melted down, she had sleeping in the basement even though we lived 60 miles away. (It's not like we could look up on the Internet to figure out how far away the radiation danger would be if we were downwind of a nuclear explosion… Since that really hadn't happened all that much, or if it had been, at, say, St George, the govt pretended there was no danger. My dad's company had contracts with the defense industry. he knew how that went.) Anyway I very much appreciate finding out what I wasn't in danger from when I was a kid and this was all going on nearby or not so nearby… It wasn't exactly clear to me at the time, except that my parents were very worried
Then shareholders: Let the maintenance slide, we want our quarterly dividends!!!! Then meltdown. People KNOW this. THAT'S why theybare against nuke power....
There is a documented cancer cluster in the area surrounding TMI. A friends dad worked there at the time and told me years later that cows on the farm just across the river along the highway were laying dead that day and quickly disposed of by unknown parties. He later died of cancer.
Fallout lands on grass, cows eat grass and die. Same thing happened to livestock downwind from the nuclear test sites. It's all documented in the book, "American Ground Zero." How much grass do you eat?
@@averagejoe112Can you tell us how many rads it takes to kill a grown man, or how many curies, or becquerels? Because those are all terms for radioactive measure, and you havn't said which one rains out onto grass, or which ones are more dangerous, alpha particles or gamma rays, cesium 120 or strontium 90? How about polonium 210, the stuff Putin used to kill Litvinenko? Please, I beg of you Mr. Expert, enlighten us all with the depth and breadth of your superior scholarship.
I have always wondered why they call it a Melt Down. So, the fuel rods melting is why? What temperature do you have to reach to melt a fuel rod? And is the problem exacerbated by pressure in the reactor or something like that? Awesome video as always!
The reaction causes it to get as hot as matter can get before vaporizing. There is nothing to stop it from becoming like the Sun besides the ambient conditions on Earth and running out of energy.
Good video!! I was 16 years old when this incident happened and remember it well. Also, during this incident, there was a Nuke plant being built not too far from where I grew up in Ohio - the Perry nuclear Power Plant along the shores of Lake Erie, not too far from Cleveland. Also, also, I was in the US Army and stationed in West Germany during the 1980s when Chernobyl blew up. Was out on field exercises in massive rain for over a week when all that crud blew over Western Europe. The joke at the time amongst us service members was we really do not need to worry about having children for we are all now sterilized courtesy of the USSR.
I live very close to 3 mile island and when this happened people literally quit their jobs to get away from the area. We knew we were being LIED TO. The governor did nothing to safe guard the area. We were told all was OK IT WAS NOT OK !
I lived in Connecticut at this time. I had no idea that Three Mile Island was about to be renamed 'Three Mile Radioactive Hole In The Ground'. Scary stuff. Even scarier when you realise they didn't close the place because of a devastating and deadly mistake, but because it wasn't making money.
It wasn't a "deadly" mistake. Literally no one died, there is also zero evidence of anyone developing cancer from it and there wasn't even enough radiation released to cause any harm. The only danger was the mass hysteria created by the media to get ratings from gullible morons that don't know how to read a scientific paper. But by all means let's all keep breathing in the constant poisonous garbage pumped out by fossil fuel plants that literally kill millions of us every year because "evil nukes are scary." Brainwashed morons...
Love your videos guys. Thanks thanks for this channel, perfect mix of factual history and color commentary! I'd love to see you guys do a video on the KLM / PAN AM crash.
For all the hype at the time, in fact there was no release nuclear substances. The white "smoke" you kept showing over and over again, is just steam. In a way, for all the system failures, the system did work. No radiation escaped, nobody died or even got sick. If the movie hadn't just come out with a star studded cast, it would have been two day news event. In point of fact, nuclear energy has been the safest for electrical generation, even with the Japanese and Ukraine disasters!
Good program overall, but I do have a bone to pick. You stated there were no injuries as a result of the meltdown at TMI. That is bunk, I live in York Co less than 30 miles from said plant. There is a disproportionate amount of residents with cancer in the immediate surrounding areas to the plant. My neighbor is a victim, she was diagnosed with cancer not too long after the incident but was told by doctors that although it was very probable the the meltdown caused her cancer they were "not allowed" to say that it was certain. Not allowed by government officials.
Look guys, nuclear power is exactly like air travel. Its the safest method of travel, however when things do go wrong it’s catastrophic, and unfortunately 9/10 times its operator error.
@@JohnnyAngel8 yes it's a very little problem. Even the older, dirty reactors barely make any waste at all. We have storage and places to put this stuff for hundreds of years. Then you add on top of that tractors that feed on waste, even more efficient reactors that barely make any waste, etc. It becomes even smaller of an issue
Shutting down nuclear plants is just unfortunate because we really need more of them, the disasters can be scary but properly managed plants operate without incident and nuclear power is the future just like they thought in the 60s.
3:08 You are incorrect. "Going Critical" is a hollywood buzzword. If the reactor is critical, it only means that it is in a steady state. The word you would be looking for is "Supercritical," but with pressurized light water reactors, increases in temperature actually cause reactivity to go down. Loss of cooling will eventually shutdown the reactor. Speaking from experience. I used to be a nuclear power plant operator in the Navy.
What bothers me is we all know from the Russian/ Ukrainian war going on is in case of war anywhere, Russia had just confirmed that nuclear power plants are one of the very first targets they will attack first besides military nuclear weapons facilities where they are stored and after reviewing this video, it explains on why it would be their choice of targets. One it will cause a deterrent to have officials focus on and two it has the capabilities to provide a weapon against the country they are fighting against. This makes it one heck of a huge concern. But it's a need for our own equipment to be made also but heavy guards at these locations must constantly be maintained at all times with no skipping ever again on safety protocols.
A couple of notes here...1st, the porv valve stuck open...happened at another B&W plant just like TMI. TMI is a PWR, pressure water reactor, bc of the loss of pressure, water started to boil and steam released into containment, not the atmosphere, so no nuclear cloud was actually released to the public...at the time, operators thought there was too much water level in the core, do to stuck indicators, so they turned off water pumps...not bc they tripped, and didn't know they were off. So it was total human error that caused TMI meltdown. If they would've just stepped back and allowed the plants safety systems to engage instead of bypassing them, you never would've had the accident there. Water boiled out, and eventually enough to start heating the fuel rods. Fukushima again was due to human error, why didn't the other plant there suffer the same fate? Bc those operators did their job and brought the plant safely down. Chernobyl again, human error...instead of bypassing safety systems, maybe we should just allow the safety systems do their thing. So unfortunately a lot of false facts in this video. Still good video, but clearly didn't do the correct fact finding before making
@@keescouprie5968 Nope. Mixing up England and Scotland (both part of the United Kingdom) would be like mixing up Russia and Belarus or Ukraine and Kazakhstan (all being part of the former Soviet Union).
Although nuclear power disasters are scary to the people who work and live there, they are not the end of the world as many people fear. Unfortunately, the 3-mile island disaster literally shut down further development of nuclear power alternatives and reverting to reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. So, for over 50 years, we have been spewing billions of tons of carbon pollutants into the atmosphere to the detriment of life everywhere. Now, contrast other examples such as the country of France that uses nuclear energy for over 60% of its energy needs and the U.S. Navy that powers its ships, carriers, and submarines all with nary a meltdown. Yes, nuclear energy is particularly volatile and, yes disasters have occurred at Chernoble, Japan, and Pennsylvania, but it is a primary solution to global climate change, starvation, and endless wars. As evidenced by this excellent video, the problems that led to the 3-mile island disaster were avoidable and, through better physical designs, better systems designs, and better human systems controls a near-fail safe nuclear power plant can be designed and operated. And, the world will be better off for it.
Of course if they had done everything differently, it wouldn't be the same. But nobody works ideally with no mistakes in design or function, that only exists on paper. It's not real life.
B Good: you are right, of course. But, as I said, through better engineering design and physical and human systems design, the risks can be minimized. Is it still possible for mishaps to occur? Yes, of course, but a simple risk-reward analysis will show that the benefits far out way the risks. For example, since the 3-mile Island accident in 1979, over 1.6 million people have died in car crashes in the U.S. alone. We, as a people accept a certain amount of risk every time we get out of bed. I think we are being very foolish to reject the clean energy source because of unfounded fears of death by nuclear explosion when that risk is extremely low. Just look at the record of nuclear power in the last 50 years. The same guy who says no to nuclear power doesn’t think twice about driving home after consuming 3 glasses of wine with dinner. Come on man!
EVERY👏🏽 SINGLE👏🏽 PERSON👏🏽 that works with nuclear power NEEDS to know EXACTLY HOW IT WORKS! If they knew & ignored everything, toss THEM into the rods! 🤬🤬🤬
I was in 4th grade Social Studies class in New Oxford, PA, when this happened. I remember the panic that ensued. My brother was in college, which was ten minutes away.
Yes this meltdown took my brother’s life as he lived across the river from it. We went to Sloan Kettering in New York City and we were shown stats of all the people that got leukemia or cancer because of this! And that’s a fact!
I was a junior in Middletown High School that morning. Our chemistry teacher was not a fan of nuclear power and spent much of the semester teaching us about waste storage problems and how nuclear power plants work. He had a Geiger counter outside the window. We came in that room for class that morning and suddenly the clicks on the counter went crazy. He took out the phone book and called the Governor’s office and reported the radiation wafting over the school. They said, “We know and stay indoors, wait for instructions.” Many of the kids in the school had family who worked at the plant. Within minutes cars were pulling in the driveway with dogs and kids in the cars, parents came running in and immediately signed their kids out of school. Teachers even abandoned classrooms as the day went on. We left town not knowing if we would ever be able to return. For that contaminated water to be removed safely they would have had to dilute it to the tune of one drop per fifty thousand gallons. They did not do that. President Carter himself authorized the water to be trucked out “HOT” through out little town traveling the same route past the same homes and businesses on its route to wherever it was disposed of exposing countless people to radiation. Coincidentally, he was a big fan of nuclear energy and had himself performed an act of heroism while in the Navy, volunteering to do a dangerous task during a nuclear incident on a ship. I like the man, but that decision was unfortunate for the already traumatized people of Middletown because most of us knew this was happening. The people in the plant of course were not going to keep that secret. He is living a long life, but I do believe he is was successfully treated for a brain tumor ironically with a combination of radiation and immunotherapy.
My friends and I were sitting on my front porch when this happened. One of us looked around the group and said, "All my friends glow in the dark." We knew it was dangerous and oddly enough most of these people later went to work as welders at the Berwick nuclear plant a few miles away.
I drove by the Berwick plant a lot. And those Towers just loomed above the town! I have a cool picture of a rain storm and the clouds hovered over the towers. Freaky!
I am from York, PA and I remember this. I was 11 years old. We ended up getting I survived TMI T-shirts when it was all over. My parents were ready to head to relatives out of the area if needed.
The Davis-Besse plant of similar design had a similar stuck POV on September 24, 1977. This wasn't shared or a corrective action taking place, so the TMI operators didn't even think of that as a problem. So I'd say the accident was just waiting to happen for about a year and a half.
For all the clean energy it provides, I find the dangers that nuclear energy can cause to not be worth the price, Fukushima is a good reminder. No matter how thorough we think we are in considering all possibilities as to what can go wrong, we are only human, and mistakes are bound to be made. Perfect storms happen.
Fukushima was a natural disaster not human error TMI was human error and was controlled and no one was harmed phase three nuclear reactors and even phase two like TMI is safe and the only way we are going to stop carbon emissions from energy production
Nuclear power is still less damaging and cleaner, even with the few disasters that have happened, than anything else we were using until solar and wind started to gain traction. And, since you can generate power 24-7 reliably with nuclear plants, it is still superior. Try counting the number of nuclear plants in the world vs. the number of melt downs/disasters and people harmed. Then compare that to the damage of climate change the untold millions that are going to, and have already, died due to the use of fossil fuels. You are falling prey to the sharp shooter fallacy. Which is not to say that the disasters that have happened aren't to be taken seriously. They effect real people not just numbers. Still you're not looking at the bigger picture, nor are you taking in to account the whole story nor the improved safety that resulted from the three big disasters people usually talk about, TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
@@whitetransgirlwithdreads So far, but I believe for the most part we've been lucky that there haven't been more disasters. Like I said, "Perfect storms happen."
@@darkknight84123k It was human error because design didn't take into account every aspect of the flooding from the tsunami as it affected the back-up generators and their functioning on the plant. When designing something as dangerous as a nuclear power plant, it is human error if the designer doesn't take every possible disaster into account. Specially in areas known for having frequent earthquakes and tsunamis. Like I said, "Perfect storms happen." Because we are only human, we are never going to be able to know what it is that we've overlooked, because as human beings we are bound to overlook something This is why nuclear power is too dangerous, because one simple error can snowball with such catastrophic consequences.
I live really close to TMI and heard a lot of stories growing up about older people who remember what happened there. I know a guy who was part of the engineering team who fixed things after the meltdown which I think is cool. The best part is the fish in the river downstream of the plant. You’ll get all sorts of oddities such as two headed fish, half headed fish, fish with no fins and other weird things. I don’t eat the fish from there.
my father worked on the TMI shutdown. I was probably about 8yrs old then. Babcock and Wilcox sent my dad there and he brought the family along because we would be there awhile. I had no idea the extent of the whole accident until years later. I got to visit the Hershey chocolate factories.
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I can't help but think of the Simpson's episode where Homer is congratulated for saving the plant by " turning a possible Chernobyl into a mere 3 Mile Island " by Mr Burns.
“For once, dad’s fat a** prevented the release of toxic gas....”
*edit: rewatched the episode and it’s actually “butt”, not “a**”. Lol 😂
It’s not that bad
I hear it in my head and I never got it!! Now clarity has been achieved
All these nuclear accidents were preventable. Usually due to not properly maintaining things and not following procedure.
First thing that came to mind when watching this 😅
So the problem isn’t so much nuclear power, but the competence and integrity of the people who build and run it. Many nuclear power plants function perfectly well and, of course, we never hear about them. No incident, no story.
That why we need to make sure no 'Homer Simpsons' are hired..😜
@@ahuddleston6512 the world is full of Homer Simpsons. Prepare yourself.
They said steam locomotives were dangerous if run dry, killing all nearby
and that's why I wouldn't trust my country to run the technology
@@coryhobbs5386 Its true, IF they were refilled after running dry. Look it up.
I have to point out that this happened in March of 1979 not May. Love your channel sir and thanks for sharing. ❤
Also he showed the "elephants foot" from Chernobyl
I live about 40 minutes from 3 Mile Island, and despite hearing about it all my life when we drive by, my mom still tells me about it when we drive by.
It's etched in ur mom's memory, just like it is with anyone old enough in USA.
It'd be like driving 🚗 past ground zero on regular basis.
Uhhh, ok… what’s your point?
Lol, my parents are like that.
I grew up about 30 miles from there, and was in elementary school that day. I didn't understand why people were so freaked out about it.
@@judethaddeus9856 it’s memorable
I think nuclear plants like this have great potential, as long as the necessary precautions are taken and people aren't cutting corners. There's a power plant located in Byron, Illinois that I love to drive to just to look at. Their towers are about 400 feet tall, and there's a road that runs right up next to the fence so you can get a good look. Just seeing the massive structures in person gives me great appreciation for them and the clean energy they can provide.
They need to stick to a certain type and Mw reactor that’s proven .
I get your point, but I just want to point out nuclear energy isn't clean energy, there's still a pretty fair amount of nuclear waste generated by nuclear reactors. Much cleaner than fossil fuels, but only when done properly and incorporates proper waste disposal. The only "clean" energy is energy that produces little to no harmful waste, and even renewable energy sources produce moderate amounts of waste but they are less harmful to humans and the environment. Nuclear energy doesn't produce as much waste as some other methods, but the waste it does produce is deadly to humans and the environment.
@@crazycherokee8552 totally agree. Even electric is clean but it’s the battery waste and the mining of lithium. But I 💯agree with you
Is this a 5th grade book report?
@@crazycherokee8552 Nuclear waste can actually be recycled. Yes you can only recycle it so much but it leaves far less waste. Many European plants recycle.
At least they learned from there mistakes this led to the creation of IAEA and the second plant at 3 mile Island went on to lead the world in quality and safe operation.
Weird history clone ruclips.net/video/qx15aFLFje0/видео.html
I think it was INPO that was created
@@averagejoe112 was it inpo i think i was getting them backwards i know they made wano after Chernobyl
Yea and shitty politics still brought that to an end
The image shown at the 0:11 second mark is not Fukushima although it is often confused with Fukushima. It is a picture of an oil refinery fire in Chiba city, Chiba prefecture Japan on the same day as the Fukushima disaster and caused by the same Earthquake but it IS NOT a nuclear power plant you see in this picture
I was 9 when this happened and I still remember it. I love this channel.
Well at 3:08 you lost all credibility when you said the core going critical was part of a bad chain of events. I'm a former nuclear reactor operator for the US Navy. Criticality is a good thing. Criticality is stable. You have an average of 2.43 neutrons released per fission. Criticality is when for every fission at least one of those released continues on to cause another fission. Less than 1 on average is sub critical and greater than 1 on average is super critical. Prompt criticality is reaching criticality with prompt neutrons only, otherwise known as instantaneously released neutrons. Delayed neutrons take longer to release, in the millisecond range and can cause more criticality and thus prompt criticality is dangerous and difficult if not impossible to control a runaway criticality.
When the core is operating normally with a negative temperature coefficient, as the water heats up the plant power will reduce causing water to cool and thus power increases. Withdrawal of the rods with no way to pump hot water from the core can lead to excessive heating at power, but insertion of rods or even full shutdown or scram can cause the plant to stabilize with proper cooling flow for the lower power to remove decay heat.
Anyways I'm getting too far past your ignorant statement of criticality being a bad thing and thus the furthering of ignorance in the world about nuclear power leading to a fearful public and thus the loss of the expansion of nuclear power as a clean replacement of power that is more sustainable than wind or solar.
Please reeducate yourself concerning terminology and the actual process of power generation in this field.
Excellent call. Ex Navy Nuke as well. This video is riddled with glaring errors.
I was 6 years old when this happened. We had to evacuate and go stay at my aunt’s house a few hours away. Thankfully I didn’t fully grasp what was going on at the time. Check and double check
Just for the record: That image at 7:00 is the Elephant Foot from Chernobyl not 3 mile island.
I’m from the Harrisburg area and I’ve always found the plant unsettling. The area has never forgotten the accident, it’s featured on the local news each year on the anniversary of the accident; and up until the Plant closed, it was common to hear about TMI Core Meltdown Siren system testing happening in Middletown-the closest town to the plant. Its hard to not find the plant unsettling after finding all of this out.
Literally nothing unsettling about the plant.
Middletown is way more unsettling.
@@averagejoe112 haha or steelton
Indeed it is. We lived in Honey Brook then.
@@averagejoe112 Middletown’s a little town that deserves better. Same with Steelton and Highspire. It’s sad what happened to all of them, they used to be booming places back in the day.
I'm from the area grew up there as a kid and young adult and honestly, there's nothing unsettling about it or the surrounding area
When talking about the meltdown, you gave the melting temperature of the zirconium fuel rods. That is wrong on your part. The fuel rods themselves are not what melt during a meltdown. A meltdown is considered when the fuel itself melts, which is about 2k F, for U235 and about 1300 F less than the zirconium structure metal. The rods also consist of poisons such as hafnium and others that are burnable and not zoned throughout the rods to make for a more evenly distributed fuel. At the start of core life there is no xenon in the core, poison (poisons soak up neutrons), from fission decay byproducts and thus nothing to help preclude reactivity. At core start with no poisons a miniscule withdrawal of controls rods would cause instant reactivity and make for a wildly uncontrollable core. They zone poisons through the rods to allow for more control. Think of either having a lighter as opposed to a flame thrower to light a candle. Meltdown occurs when fission products begin to be uncovered and air is the heat transfer medium which is not as efficient as fluid and thus heat compounds and the fuel melts, not necessarily the actual framework of the rods.
Thanks for explaining that so well
So
Given you are correct, thank you for the facts. I didnt expect much from a narrator that just farts around cracking opinionated jokes at every turn, so i opted out of this video about 2 minutes in. So stupid.
There are a few bad nuclear vocabulary uses in this video as well. A Nuclear Reactor going critical is normal operation. Critical just means there are enough individual nuclear reactions occurring that a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction can happen and the reactor can keep itself going. Going supercritical is also not always a scary thing. But taking it farther than that is not within safe operating conditions and you would just never operate one like this.
The word critical, when referring to nuclear reactors, is not a bad thing. It is in fact the normal mode of operation and means that reactor power is not changing.
Not good, not terrible
I was a child when this happened, I remember my family talking about it and the movie “the China syndrome “. I remember being inconsolable about the whole situation and the threat of nuclear war was a real possibility at the time. This threat of war was hugely influential on me and my generation. A sort of impending doom hung over us generation x people.
Life immitates art.
Keep the people in line with fear.
History has repeated it's self with many things.
Most recently
The Contagion then COVID
@@webstern24 Jesus, go for a walk outside or something. Unplug from 4chan long enough to get some fresh air.
@@bf1255 a little education will go a long way for you kiddo.
Speak for your self.
I live just across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. I didn't live here at the time of the meltdown, but my bff's husband lived about 10-15 miles away from TMI. He was outside playing that day, and it seems everyone pretty much shrugged it off because Thornburg was not forthcoming about the dangers people faced.
I grew up in Central PA, about 20 minutes from TMI, in a small town along the Susquehanna. Ive heard many stories about this event, but its interesting to here "Harrisburg, Pennsylvania" mentioned in a RUclips video. I thought it was a forgettable place everywhere outside of here. I was just kayaking on the Susquehanna a few hours ago
@@johnbender49 hello fellow central Pennsylvanians! I was born and raised about 30 minutes outside of TMI. My parents told me they remember when this happened, and that everybody was losing their minds and heading out of the area. For years I drove past it when I’d come home from college (went to Millersville University in Lancaster).
This taught me something, when they say pregnant woman and children should evacuate up to 5 miles…I’m going with them.
Right 😂 screw the rest of us I guess.
That goes for anything.. women and children? I'm out the same door lol
Don't worry guys, women wanted equality so that rule is totally no longer a thing 😉
Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water. - Albert Einstein
I agree.
Nuclear power is the future of America. - Thomas Jefferson
I agree.
Better than paying Putin for Natural Gas - Me
Just FYI, someone hacked my account because I definitely didn't make this comment. Sorry.
Yeah its pretty silly how nuclear power plants are just steam engines. Would be better if we could directly capture the radiation as electricity instead. Say with something like a solar panel. A lot safer too if we can get rid of that explosive water
@@jek__ There's a lot of reasons that nuclear power plants don't work like that, but yeah that would be really cool
So weird and also so cool to hear this channel talking about the area I grew up in (I’m from a small town less than a mile outside of Harrisburg). I’ve driven past TMI many times in my life; it’s crazy to think this happened outside our little city.
The problem was never the power plant, the problem was having Homer Simpson in the control room!
and his boss, and that bosses boss. remember the owners are the craziest of the bunch. money before lives is the problem you see? not the guy working there. you dont realy get it.
Narrator reminds me of a insane English teacher I had that loved letting me cut loose on topics I like to work on my own vocal skills and later acting, because as he put it "once you can do it with something you love, you can learn to do it on any topic, like a role you love then muscling through one you've never done before"
I dont think they needed to decommission the other units. People fear nuclear irrationally. I blame movies. This new movement toward green energy can only be done through nuclear for the foreseeable future.
//Later edit//
The issue is fundamentally not being able to store energy. Batteries arent going to be feasible for years.
Bottom line: Solar/wind arent enough, an every single other means literally pumps smoke into the atmosphere.. except nuclear.
Tool.
@@JohnnyAngel8 cry harder
@@JohnnyAngel8 Tools are useful, I am assuming you are not
@@JohnnyAngel8 They're a great band.
The Star Wars Holiday Special deserves its disaster status, fair enough Weird History
*‘Meltdown with you’*
Digging the Modern English reference in the intro.
I think with the rapidly increasing demand for power, especially with more and more EVs, nuclear power is the only solution we currently know of to meet the demand. As long as it's done responsibly and mandate continued research making nuclear power safer (not unlike the commercial aviation industry.)
The next generation of plants are amazing in terms of safety.
What sort of power can we use it for though? I thought they are just some hatzardous chemical than can explode like a bomb
Hahaha. As bad as things seem they are even worse. Tampering with things we don't understand will result in us irrevocably contaminating our ground water. It's already too late. Get ready for the bus and your dinner of lentils because the elite need you to starve so they can keep eating like kings.
too bad no one is ready to have this conversation though.
need more solar, dont need nuclear
I love me some local history! Thanks for doing a video on the partial meltdown at TMI.
Fun little side note, my parents watched China Syndrome about 10 miles from the plant the day of the meltdown.
Wonder if they were my neighbors.....they did the same and lived across the street from me growing up......
Ironic in horrible ways!
I can only *imagine* the stress that the crew in the 3 Mile Island had to deal with. Imagine realizing that a nuclear reactor was about to blow 🤭😬that’s not a fun way to spend your work day
They couldn't turn off any of the alarms either, so basically they had to figure out what's going on with 40+ different alarms alarmjng
melt, not blow 🙂
@@YoureMrLebowski Really? you have to be that guy to nit pick over something like this? Do you feel special or important now?
Language is important
@@Me-qp8vz Same with this, you feel any better being "that guy's guy?"
Weird history is my favorite history channel 🙂
Not gonna lie, it’s been a long while since an episode of weird history captured my interest. *Note: this episode is an interesting banger
This makes me feel much better. The most problematic unit ever and an comedy of error and bad operation and border line negligence and STILL it didn't penetrate the vessel, let alone the containment.
You showed the elephant foot from Chernobyl when talking about melting down of TMI. That is a massive misrepresentation of what actually happened. That indicates a total melt down and loss of primary shielding, which was not true with this situation
This is a credible summary of 3 mile island with one exception. The effectiveness of a drunk relief pitcher can’t be understated. How can you predict the next pitch when the man throwing it is as clueless as you?
Doc Ellis threw a no-hitter while on acid.
I’ve always been amazed that schools don’t teach local history. I live not far from here, and never knew a thing about it. I was born shortly before the mishap. Smh
I always wondered that too. I went to school in Wrightsville, right down the river. You'd think they'd at least teach us due to the health Hazards
@@eastprospecthomestead my thoughts exactly, but I guess that would mean owning up to being the cause, and paying out a boatload of money to all of the people affected
These are the kind of things the government doesn't want you to know about, for example, that it used to burn Mexicans with gasoline even if they crossed legally or They bombed a town in the USA just because it was made up of black people
My dad has worked at the active three mile island units multiple times during outages and refuelings. He even got to visit the old control room and has some pictures
"Worked" is subjective, I've seen his act.
99% of comments: Chernobyl in Ukraine not in Russia.
A bunch of peasant nobodies that wanna be heard
Was in Russia when it melted down.
@@bondobilly9369 Wrong, it was in the Soviet Union. Pipe down
@@william9922 ooooohhhhhh Mr technicality here. Sorry oh wise one, guess you know everything about everything and come on here to spout your two cents since your woman wears the pants in the relationship and you need to feel better about yourself.
@@bondobilly9369 It’s not a technicality, you’re just insecure bud. You wrote a false statement.
I’m from here and there is a very high rate of cancer in people from that area that lived during the meltdown. My moms friend wrote a book about it
The studies don't support this.
I know that you are correct, Cait. Have lost friends who died young, in their 40's, from cancers attributed to exposure from TMI. I know that the government studied the effects on pregnant women and their children for at least 17 years, because that is how long one of my friends lived afterward. She showed me the government questionnaire one year and told me about the study. It was marked "confidential"...
I don’t think there has to be an accident to cause the increase in cancer. I work in radiology, and we had an office in a town with a nuclear power plant, and we noticed there was about 3 times the cancer rate in patients of that town compared to our other offices, but there had not been an accident there. I don’t know if it is related to the plant or the waste, but I think that is something to consider when they talk about building more nucs.
I have two memories (something which is always suspect) about the event:
First, that the town to the north had evacuation plan to go south, and town to north planned to go south.
Also, there was a clip of President Carter's expression when he realized what was going on (he served, I believe, on a nuclear sub).
He served on a diesel-electric sub, the USS Barracuda, and he was associated with the US Navy's nuclear sub program in its earliest days -- receiving a lot of training in nuclear tech -- but I don't think he ever actually got to serve on a nuclear sub. He had to leave the Navy to look after his father's peanut farm after his death, although before that happened, Carter had expected to serve aboard the USS Seawolf, which was the US Navy's second nuclear sub after the USS Nautilus.
Something that Carter did do, however, was lead a team in 1952 to help disassemble a ruined experimental reactor at Chalk River Laboratories in Canada. Each team had to be lowered into the reactor for just 90 seconds at a time to disassemble it in shifts, and each team member was exposed to an entire year's worth of radiation within those 90 seconds. Carter's urine even tested radioactive for many months afterward. He said that his experience there shaped his views on atomic energy.
@@archerj.maggott1372 Thank you, this is much more than I knew. And, as I tell my kids, memory is a minefield. David
Didn’t Carter have his degree in nuclear engineering?
@@archerj.maggott1372 I remember this being on the radio…..can’t remember the guy’s name but it always ended with ‘that’s the rest of the story’ or something like that. That’s where I learned about how dangerous nuclear energy can be.
@@amymeyers9682 Sounds like maybe it was Paul Harvey.
2 friends of mine, a mother and a daughter from there died about 20 years ago from cancer. What a sad situation that was.
I lived in the northern part of PA when this happened. People who had hunting camps that live near TMI fled to their camps. Only later would I deal with Chernobyl in 86 while living in Berlin, Germany.
Thank you for this video! 😊🌺
March 28th 1979 not May 28th 1979. And Chernobyl was in Ukraine not Russia.
You are right, I Googled it lol
And it was in Ukraine, NOT "The Ukraine."
Ukraine is a sovereign country, and The Ukraine is a property to which Russia feels entitled.
Employees at TMI always said Unit 1 was excellent, but Unit 2 was a "dog"...."it just never ran right" they all said. Theres a reason for that too that for some reason is never mentioned. TMI was originally only supposed to have just one Unit. And Unit 2 was originally supposed to be built in New Jersey. However, a certain group of "ORGANIZED LABOR" threatened the construction company, so those plans were scrapped and instead it was moved to TMI. Design and layouts plans had to be scrapped and completely redrawn as soon as possible to fit with the existing Unit 1 reactor. Although both Units looked similar on the outside, the piping etc were totally different. And with the rush to get it all done quickly, there were inherent design flaws in Unit 2.
My grandma would tell me about the accident on occasion, she lived and I grew up in a small county less than 20 minutes from Harrisburg. There is a hiking spot I would visit that you could see TMI from with binoculars. I thought it took place in March not May though. Her birthday was the 1st of May and said her family was scared to come visit because of the accident.
yes March 28
A+ video!
LOVE IT! What a history!
Navy nuke here - You mention the core 'going critical' - that doesn't mean what you think it means. There are 3 criticality levels, subcritical, critical and supercritical and all those do is define if you are generating less, the same or more neutrons from each fission that feed subsequent fissions. The usage there around 3 minutes in is factually incorrect. If the reactor was critical, it means the reaction is stabilized and using up the same amount of neutrons that are being generated.
I was in the 12th grade. I had just turned 18 years ago on March 21, 1979. On that day the hallways had a green mist running through them. You could really see it because that day was very sunny. It was also very warm that day. They let us out from school that day before noon. I will never forget that day!
my mom had an older friend who actually worked at TMI while this was happening and she told me she answered the phone there one day and it was the president of the united states but she didn’t believe him so her response was “yeah? well im the queen of shiva” and hung up! she was an older lady at the time and has recently passed so there’s no way to re confirm her story. of course it very well could’ve been misremembered too.
I was surprised to learn the government didn’t start to evacuate people until two days later the incident.
I always have heard about Three Mike Island but I honestly never knew what actually happened. This is why I love this channel. I learn new things all of the time. I also love the one liners. 😃
By the way, are you guys ever going to do more Timeline videos? I’d LOVE to see a Timeline 1960’s and 1970’s series.
They didn't evacuate immediately because the energy company lied and said nothing leaked from the plant.
My understanding of this crisis is that the automatic safety mechanisms were properly functional and the operators proceeded correctly in shutting down the plant. No release of radiation!
being in Canada at that time, I remember the 4.8 kilometer island incident well.
LOL, eh
I think there might be a typo in the description. The accident happened on March 28, not May 28.
They said May multiple times. For a history channel, someone really needs to fact-check their dates.
It's crazy how much things have advanced since these days. Of course we're scarred as a society. We weren't ready for this type of technology and engineering AT ALL so we really can do so much better now and it will greatly improve our energy grid and climate problem.
Sounds like Homer Simpson was too preoccupied with eating doughnuts while 3 Mile Island was melting down.
I'd not be surprised if this disaster inspired the creation of Homer Simpson.
I didn't realize that they finally finished cleanup the month I moved away. also, my mom only knew it was happening because she was a scientist working for the University of Pennsylvania, and because information was being kept quiet about how serious it was except that she knew it had melted down, she had sleeping in the basement even though we lived 60 miles away. (It's not like we could look up on the Internet to figure out how far away the radiation danger would be if we were downwind of a nuclear explosion… Since that really hadn't happened all that much, or if it had been, at, say, St George, the govt pretended there was no danger. My dad's company had contracts with the defense industry. he knew how that went.) Anyway I very much appreciate finding out what I wasn't in danger from when I was a kid and this was all going on nearby or not so nearby… It wasn't exactly clear to me at the time, except that my parents were very worried
Who can build our reactor the cheapest? Hired.
Then shareholders: Let the maintenance slide, we want our quarterly dividends!!!! Then meltdown. People KNOW this. THAT'S why theybare against nuke power....
A major discrepancy on the date there… you guys keep switching between March 28th and MAY 28th. When in fact the accident took place in March.
"We're gonna need a bigger island..."
“Then deploy Freddy Fazbear.”
Thanks for this! ☢
There is a documented cancer cluster in the area surrounding TMI. A friends dad worked there at the time and told me years later that cows on the farm just across the river along the highway were laying dead that day and quickly disposed of by unknown parties. He later died of cancer.
Probably didn't happen (cows)
@@KAT-dg6el yeah dubious story is super dubious
Fallout lands on grass, cows eat grass and die. Same thing happened to livestock downwind from the nuclear test sites. It's all documented in the book, "American Ground Zero."
How much grass do you eat?
@@LordMondegrene yeah that's not how fallout or radiation works.
@@averagejoe112Can you tell us how many rads it takes to kill a grown man, or how many curies, or becquerels? Because those are all terms for radioactive measure, and you havn't said which one rains out onto grass, or which ones are more dangerous, alpha particles or gamma rays, cesium 120 or strontium 90? How about polonium 210, the stuff Putin used to kill Litvinenko?
Please, I beg of you Mr. Expert, enlighten us all with the depth and breadth of your superior scholarship.
Somehow the “party of science” is behind on this source of clean energy with proper oversight
I have always wondered why they call it a Melt Down. So, the fuel rods melting is why? What temperature do you have to reach to melt a fuel rod? And is the problem exacerbated by pressure in the reactor or something like that?
Awesome video as always!
they say the temp in the video
The reaction causes it to get as hot as matter can get before vaporizing. There is nothing to stop it from becoming like the Sun besides the ambient conditions on Earth and running out of energy.
Idk, why do we say people are having a melt down when they go psycho?
Good video!! I was 16 years old when this incident happened and remember it well. Also, during this incident, there was a Nuke plant being built not too far from where I grew up in Ohio - the Perry nuclear Power Plant along the shores of Lake Erie, not too far from Cleveland. Also, also, I was in the US Army and stationed in West Germany during the 1980s when Chernobyl blew up. Was out on field exercises in massive rain for over a week when all that crud blew over Western Europe. The joke at the time amongst us service members was we really do not need to worry about having children for we are all now sterilized courtesy of the USSR.
I live very close to 3 mile island and when this happened people literally quit their jobs to get away from the area. We knew we were being LIED TO. The governor did nothing to safe guard the area. We were told all was OK IT WAS NOT OK !
Yes, my wife’s family won a major lawsuit against them.
Reminds me of on 9/11 when those poor people were told to go back to their offices. Always go with your gut.
Never trust the government. They do not care about you.
What should the government have done with the limited radiation release that occurred?
@@averagejoe112 Informed it’s citizens immediately.
All I could hear in my head the whole time watching this video was Homer saying “Core temp-er-a-ture nor-mal”
I lived in Connecticut at this time. I had no idea that Three Mile Island was about to be renamed 'Three Mile Radioactive Hole In The Ground'. Scary stuff. Even scarier when you realise they didn't close the place because of a devastating and deadly mistake, but because it wasn't making money.
Unit 1 was one of the safest operating reactors the world at the time of decommission
It wasn't a "deadly" mistake. Literally no one died, there is also zero evidence of anyone developing cancer from it and there wasn't even enough radiation released to cause any harm. The only danger was the mass hysteria created by the media to get ratings from gullible morons that don't know how to read a scientific paper. But by all means let's all keep breathing in the constant poisonous garbage pumped out by fossil fuel plants that literally kill millions of us every year because "evil nukes are scary." Brainwashed morons...
There is so much incorrect information in this video. To start, the reactor doesn't work until it goes critical. Critical doesn't mean it melts down.
I wasn’t gonna say it. Glad somebody knows.
Anyone who hides info from the public when they should’ve been evacuated, should spend the rest of their lives in jail.
Love your videos guys. Thanks thanks for this channel, perfect mix of factual history and color commentary!
I'd love to see you guys do a video on the KLM / PAN AM crash.
For all the hype at the time, in fact there was no release nuclear substances. The white "smoke" you kept showing over and over again, is just steam. In a way, for all the system failures, the system did work. No radiation escaped, nobody died or even got sick. If the movie hadn't just come out with a star studded cast, it would have been two day news event. In point of fact, nuclear energy has been the safest for electrical generation, even with the Japanese and Ukraine disasters!
Good program overall, but I do have a bone to pick. You stated there were no injuries as a result of the meltdown at TMI. That is bunk, I live in York Co less than 30 miles from said plant. There is a disproportionate amount of residents with cancer in the immediate surrounding areas to the plant. My neighbor is a victim, she was diagnosed with cancer not too long after the incident but was told by doctors that although it was very probable the the meltdown caused her cancer they were "not allowed" to say that it was certain. Not allowed by government officials.
Look guys, nuclear power is exactly like air travel. Its the safest method of travel, however when things do go wrong it’s catastrophic, and unfortunately 9/10 times its operator error.
There's this little problem called nuclear waste.
@@JohnnyAngel8 yes it's a very little problem. Even the older, dirty reactors barely make any waste at all. We have storage and places to put this stuff for hundreds of years. Then you add on top of that tractors that feed on waste, even more efficient reactors that barely make any waste, etc. It becomes even smaller of an issue
Nuclear barely makes waste as compared to other fuel supplies.
You keep getting the day wrong. You said it’s both may 28 and March 28 (it was March)
Shutting down nuclear plants is just unfortunate because we really need more of them, the disasters can be scary but properly managed plants operate without incident and nuclear power is the future just like they thought in the 60s.
Wrong, covering all of earth surface area with windmills and solar panels is the future now
@@Cx10110100 that is the path we seem to be going down for some reason
3:08 You are incorrect. "Going Critical" is a hollywood buzzword. If the reactor is critical, it only means that it is in a steady state. The word you would be looking for is "Supercritical," but with pressurized light water reactors, increases in temperature actually cause reactivity to go down. Loss of cooling will eventually shutdown the reactor.
Speaking from experience. I used to be a nuclear power plant operator in the Navy.
What bothers me is we all know from the Russian/ Ukrainian war going on is in case of war anywhere, Russia had just confirmed that nuclear power plants are one of the very first targets they will attack first besides military nuclear weapons facilities where they are stored and after reviewing this video, it explains on why it would be their choice of targets. One it will cause a deterrent to have officials focus on and two it has the capabilities to provide a weapon against the country they are fighting against.
This makes it one heck of a huge concern. But it's a need for our own equipment to be made also but heavy guards at these locations must constantly be maintained at all times with no skipping ever again on safety protocols.
A couple of notes here...1st, the porv valve stuck open...happened at another B&W plant just like TMI. TMI is a PWR, pressure water reactor, bc of the loss of pressure, water started to boil and steam released into containment, not the atmosphere, so no nuclear cloud was actually released to the public...at the time, operators thought there was too much water level in the core, do to stuck indicators, so they turned off water pumps...not bc they tripped, and didn't know they were off. So it was total human error that caused TMI meltdown. If they would've just stepped back and allowed the plants safety systems to engage instead of bypassing them, you never would've had the accident there. Water boiled out, and eventually enough to start heating the fuel rods. Fukushima again was due to human error, why didn't the other plant there suffer the same fate? Bc those operators did their job and brought the plant safely down. Chernobyl again, human error...instead of bypassing safety systems, maybe we should just allow the safety systems do their thing. So unfortunately a lot of false facts in this video. Still good video, but clearly didn't do the correct fact finding before making
Chernobyl is in Ukraine not Russia both where soviet states at the time of the accident though
correct, but at the time Russia and Soviet Union were being used interchangeably. Not a reason to do the same now tho.
@@alexm566 People do the same with England and United Kingdom where I live, which is a bit stupid.
@@jeshkam Not exactly the same. A better comparison would be mixing up England and Scotland. Like in “the Lockerbie bombing in England.”
@@keescouprie5968 Nope. Mixing up England and Scotland (both part of the United Kingdom) would be like mixing up Russia and Belarus or Ukraine and Kazakhstan (all being part of the former Soviet Union).
@@alexm566 Weird history clone ruclips.net/video/qx15aFLFje0/видео.html
Although nuclear power disasters are scary to the people who work and live there, they are not the end of the world as many people fear. Unfortunately, the 3-mile island disaster literally shut down further development of nuclear power alternatives and reverting to reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. So, for over 50 years, we have been spewing billions of tons of carbon pollutants into the atmosphere to the detriment of life everywhere. Now, contrast other examples such as the country of France that uses nuclear energy for over 60% of its energy needs and the U.S. Navy that powers its ships, carriers, and submarines all with nary a meltdown. Yes, nuclear energy is particularly volatile and, yes disasters have occurred at Chernoble, Japan, and Pennsylvania, but it is a primary solution to global climate change, starvation, and endless wars. As evidenced by this excellent video, the problems that led to the 3-mile island disaster were avoidable and, through better physical designs, better systems designs, and better human systems controls a near-fail safe nuclear power plant can be designed and operated. And, the world will be better off for it.
Of course if they had done everything differently, it wouldn't be the same. But nobody works ideally with no mistakes in design or function, that only exists on paper. It's not real life.
B Good: you are right, of course. But, as I said, through better engineering design and physical and human systems design, the risks can be minimized. Is it still possible for mishaps to occur? Yes, of course, but a simple risk-reward analysis will show that the benefits far out way the risks. For example, since the 3-mile Island accident in 1979, over 1.6 million people have died in car crashes in the U.S. alone. We, as a people accept a certain amount of risk every time we get out of bed. I think we are being very foolish to reject the clean energy source because of unfounded fears of death by nuclear explosion when that risk is extremely low. Just look at the record of nuclear power in the last 50 years. The same guy who says no to nuclear power doesn’t think twice about driving home after consuming 3 glasses of wine with dinner. Come on man!
EVERY👏🏽 SINGLE👏🏽 PERSON👏🏽 that works with nuclear power NEEDS to know EXACTLY HOW IT WORKS! If they knew & ignored everything, toss THEM into the rods! 🤬🤬🤬
I was in 4th grade Social Studies class in New Oxford, PA, when this happened. I remember the panic that ensued. My brother was in college, which was ten minutes away.
Yes this meltdown took my brother’s life as he lived across the river from it. We went to Sloan Kettering in New York City and we were shown stats of all the people that got leukemia or cancer because of this! And that’s a fact!
lived in Perry co., never heard that about cancer or anything.
@@gloriaknepp1290 Sloan Kettering Pittsburgh Montefiore hospital they all knew
Never trust the government
@@gloriaknepp1290 they always keep us PeCo scumbags in the dark lol
I mean the area around the plant is pretty poor so vices like smoking and alcoholism are more likely to blame.
I was a junior in Middletown High School that morning. Our chemistry teacher was not a fan of nuclear power and spent much of the semester teaching us about waste storage problems and how nuclear power plants work. He had a Geiger counter outside the window. We came in that room for class that morning and suddenly the clicks on the counter went crazy. He took out the phone book and called the Governor’s office and reported the radiation wafting over the school. They said, “We know and stay indoors, wait for instructions.” Many of the kids in the school had family who worked at the plant. Within minutes cars were pulling in the driveway with dogs and kids in the cars, parents came running in and immediately signed their kids out of school. Teachers even abandoned classrooms as the day went on. We left town not knowing if we would ever be able to return. For that contaminated water to be removed safely they would have had to dilute it to the tune of one drop per fifty thousand gallons. They did not do that. President Carter himself authorized the water to be trucked out “HOT” through out little town traveling the same route past the same homes and businesses on its route to wherever it was disposed of exposing countless people to radiation. Coincidentally, he was a big fan of nuclear energy and had himself performed an act of heroism while in the Navy, volunteering to do a dangerous task during a nuclear incident on a ship. I like the man, but that decision was unfortunate for the already traumatized people of Middletown because most of us knew this was happening. The people in the plant of course were not going to keep that secret. He is living a long life, but I do believe he is was successfully treated for a brain tumor ironically with a combination of radiation and immunotherapy.
My friends and I were sitting on my front porch when this happened. One of us looked around the group and said, "All my friends glow in the dark." We knew it was dangerous and oddly enough most of these people later went to work as welders at the Berwick nuclear plant a few miles away.
Sure 👍
I drove by the Berwick plant a lot. And those Towers just loomed above the town! I have a cool picture of a rain storm and the clouds hovered over the towers. Freaky!
Oh, Susquehanna! I worked there for a few years. Nice place.
@@averagejoe112 I lived on the west side of the river from Wilkes Barre.
I am from York, PA and I remember this. I was 11 years old. We ended up getting I survived TMI T-shirts when it was all over. My parents were ready to head to relatives out of the area if needed.
If _Chernobyl_ can't make me wary of nuclear energy, this definitely won't
The Davis-Besse plant of similar design had a similar stuck POV on September 24, 1977. This wasn't shared or a corrective action taking place, so the TMI operators didn't even think of that as a problem. So I'd say the accident was just waiting to happen for about a year and a half.
Chernobyl was not in Russia…It was in Ukraine
lol
It was in Russia. It is now in Ukraine
Learn your history before talking out your butt. Learn about the USSR and how it failed.
It was Russia at the time of the accident
Is it still in Ukraine??
This narrator frigging cracks me up every video.
For all the clean energy it provides, I find the dangers that nuclear energy can cause to not be worth the price, Fukushima is a good reminder. No matter how thorough we think we are in considering all possibilities as to what can go wrong, we are only human, and mistakes are bound to be made. Perfect storms happen.
Fukushima was a natural disaster not human error TMI was human error and was controlled and no one was harmed phase three nuclear reactors and even phase two like TMI is safe and the only way we are going to stop carbon emissions from energy production
@@darkknight84123k Weird history clone ruclips.net/video/qx15aFLFje0/видео.html
Nuclear power is still less damaging and cleaner, even with the few disasters that have happened, than anything else we were using until solar and wind started to gain traction.
And, since you can generate power 24-7 reliably with nuclear plants, it is still superior.
Try counting the number of nuclear plants in the world vs. the number of melt downs/disasters and people harmed. Then compare that to the damage of climate change the untold millions that are going to, and have already, died due to the use of fossil fuels.
You are falling prey to the sharp shooter fallacy. Which is not to say that the disasters that have happened aren't to be taken seriously. They effect real people not just numbers. Still you're not looking at the bigger picture, nor are you taking in to account the whole story nor the improved safety that resulted from the three big disasters people usually talk about, TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
@@whitetransgirlwithdreads So far, but I believe for the most part we've been lucky that there haven't been more disasters. Like I said, "Perfect storms happen."
@@darkknight84123k It was human error because design didn't take into account every aspect of the flooding from the tsunami as it affected the back-up generators and their functioning on the plant. When designing something as dangerous as a nuclear power plant, it is human error if the designer doesn't take every possible disaster into account. Specially in areas known for having frequent earthquakes and tsunamis. Like I said, "Perfect storms happen." Because we are only human, we are never going to be able to know what it is that we've overlooked, because as human beings we are bound to overlook something This is why nuclear power is too dangerous, because one simple error can snowball with such catastrophic consequences.
There are multiple mentions of May 28th being the day of the accident, but it was March 28th (which is also noted in the video).
I live really close to TMI and heard a lot of stories growing up about older people who remember what happened there. I know a guy who was part of the engineering team who fixed things after the meltdown which I think is cool. The best part is the fish in the river downstream of the plant. You’ll get all sorts of oddities such as two headed fish, half headed fish, fish with no fins and other weird things. I don’t eat the fish from there.
Thankyou for sharing that. You will never hear anything like that on main stream media. As they just hide everything from us
This would probably freak me out a lot more if not for Kyle Hill's consistent and calm explanations of nuclear power
Nice video, but it happened March 28, 1979.
Please do some Weird History on Automobile Racing
And I can't wait for Timeline: The 1970s
I agree be cool to hear some weird history on drag racing and the yanko comaro times
@@vincemckernan70 Along with NASCAR, F1, IndyCar, IMSA, Global Rallycross and The Supercar Series
Would you mind making a video on the Boston Molasses flood? I think it would be very interesting to learn more about it😁.
Have a great day
The accident occurred on March 28, 1979, not May.
I think nuclear power can be very save if maintained properly
Can you think about making weird history a podcast? I'd like to listening to it when i walk.
I was a senior in high school living in southern NJ. Far enough away to feel both safe and threatened!
my father worked on the TMI shutdown. I was probably about 8yrs old then. Babcock and Wilcox sent my dad there and he brought the family along because we would be there awhile. I had no idea the extent of the whole accident until years later. I got to visit the Hershey chocolate factories.