Three Mile Island: Nuclear Accident in Pennsylvania
American History Hit
History Hit
4.3 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's the worst accident in US commercial nuclear power history. In March 1979, the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island nuclear generating station came half an hour from full meltdown. Two days later, an explosive bubble of hydrogen gas was found in the reactor.
To talk technical malfunction, human error and public response, J Samuel Walker joins Don for this episode. Sam is a former historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and author of 'Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective'.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Siobhan Dale. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's 4 a.m. on March 28th, 1979, while the cities and towns of South Central Pennsylvania are sleeping, |
| 0:12.0 | here in the command center of this nuclear power facility, |
| 0:15.0 | we are quietly ticking through normal procedures. |
| 0:18.0 | Lights and switches blink and click on a panorama of control panels as we get on with our routine tasks |
| 0:25.0 | done countless times before. |
| 0:27.3 | When suddenly, what? |
| 0:30.4 | That alert never goes off. |
| 0:35.0 | Nor should it. Scrambling to write the reactors, |
| 0:37.0 | we check on the coolant system and the feed water pumps. |
| 0:40.0 | We cannot allow the reactor to heat up, nor can it flood. |
| 0:45.0 | So many switches, so many lights, hundreds of them, |
| 0:49.0 | including two just out of sight, one hidden beneath an old maintenance tag. If those |
| 0:55.3 | indicators are on, it means no water is running in the pumps. And no one has even |
| 1:01.2 | noticed they are flashing. Greetings all, I'm Don Wildman and you are listening to American History Hit. |
| 1:24.0 | Time for another episode. Thanks for joining us. |
| 1:27.0 | 44 years ago is not a very long time, especially in the realm of nuclear energy, |
| 1:32.0 | what with half-lives and exponential decay rates. |
| 1:35.0 | It's all measured in eons rather than days or months or decades, it seems. |
| 1:40.0 | This being the case, what happened on March 28th, 1979 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power |
| 1:46.3 | Facility in Central Pennsylvania might as well have happened yesterday. |
| 1:49.7 | And for those of us who lived through it, I was assumed to graduate high school senior at the time in eastern |
| 1:54.7 | Pennsylvania no less, it is a very fresh memory. |
... |
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