Anger over Japan nuclear exodus
Three decades before the current nuclear crisis in Japan, the eyes of the world were on an unfolding disaster at America's Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
The event that became seared into America's collective memory began at 4am on Wednesday 28 March, 1979.
A relatively routine malfunction in a non-nuclear system at the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in America's northeast, caused a relief valve to open, releasing coolant from the core.
They mistakenly diagnosed the issue as being too much coolant in the pressuriser and shut off the emergency core cooling system, the first in a series of missteps that escalated the crisis.
It wasn't until 1985, when sophisticated cameras were sent into the core, that authorities understood the enormous extent of the meltdown.
The TMI disaster took over 12 years to clean up, at a cost of about $973m (£605m).
Fortunately, little radiation was released, and multiple studies have shown no serious health impacts....
Read entire article at BBC
The event that became seared into America's collective memory began at 4am on Wednesday 28 March, 1979.
A relatively routine malfunction in a non-nuclear system at the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in America's northeast, caused a relief valve to open, releasing coolant from the core.
They mistakenly diagnosed the issue as being too much coolant in the pressuriser and shut off the emergency core cooling system, the first in a series of missteps that escalated the crisis.
It wasn't until 1985, when sophisticated cameras were sent into the core, that authorities understood the enormous extent of the meltdown.
The TMI disaster took over 12 years to clean up, at a cost of about $973m (£605m).
Fortunately, little radiation was released, and multiple studies have shown no serious health impacts....