4 ms·
> If they did go ahead without safety measures, and had an incident, the plant would likely be shut down Three Mile Island had two close calls. The first was
by bb88 4y ago
> If they did go ahead without safety measures, and had an incident, the plant would likely be shut down
Three Mile Island had two close calls. The first was the reactor was only 30-60 minutes from going into complete meltdown. The second was potentially using a faulty crane to remove the lid of the reactor vessel. Either one of those would have made large areas of dense urban area unlivable.
- pfdietz 4y agoWhen was this crane thing? It would have been long after the reactor had reached cold shutdown, so what exactly was the accident it was supposed to have almost caused?
- keneda7 4y agoNot the OP but the crane incident was shortly after the first incident. The higher ups wanted to use the polar crane to lift a bunch of radioactive debris out of the core that almost melted down. At least one of the workers (Rick Parks) ended up whistleblowing over it because the crane was the same one that was there during the incident and most likely had taken damage. He was concerned the crane would fail while lifting the radioactive debris out (around 1000 lbs of it) and fall back onto the core. Check out the Netflix document Meltdown: Three mile Island for more info.
- bondarchuk 4y agoThis is also in Moral Mazes somewhere, if you prefer a written summary.
- pfdietz 4y agoYeah, that "shortly after"... the reactor top wasn't lifted off until FIVE YEARS after the accident. So I ask again: just what horrible public-relevant accident is supposed to have nearly happened here? I can't imagine anything that would have caused anything catastrophic. The lid falling back onto the reactor vessel wouldn't be that.
- keneda7 4y agoSorry for the late response. The fear was that the crane would fail and drop the debris back into the core and set off a nuclear explosion.
- pfdietz 4y agoThey added large amounts of borate to the water before opening the top. There was no way it was going to go critical (and if it had, it would at best have been a steam explosion, not a nuclear bomb, as the chain reaction if it could have occurred at all would have been with slow thermal neutrons.)
- actinium226 4y agoWhy is nuclear judged by near misses while coal pollutes like crazy daily and causes real lung damage and no one bats an eye?
- dillondoyle 4y ago* real death. Quick googling shows wildly different numbers, but the lowest study in top results says 1 million per year from coal alone. All global warming + pollution is way higher. One study estimated 1 in 5 deaths. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...
- Gwypaas 4y agoBecause coal is not an alternative today, renewables are and they have miniscule external pollution in relation to everything else.
- kortilla 4y agoNo, renewables are not an alternative to fossil fuels. That’s why natural gas and coal fire plants are still being cranked out today.
- Gwypaas 4y agoSeems to work just fine? This will of course penetrate down to less ideal locations as costs continue to decline. > South Australia is at the vanguard of the global energy transition, having transformed its energy system from 1% to over 60% renewable energy in just over 15 years. > By 2025/2026, the Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts this could rise to approximately 85%. > South Australia’s aspiration is to achieve 100% net renewables by 2030. In 2021, South Australia met 100% of its operational demand from renewable resources on 180 days (49%). https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/industry/modern-energy/leading-the-green-economy https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/industry/modern-energy/le...
- 4y ago