4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
It’s March 28th. This day, in 1979, a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss what led to the crisis, and how poor communications after the fact caused high levels of panic and misinformation. Plus, Jimmy Carter’s unexpectedly competent response.
Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory
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0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
0:09.0 | This day, March 28th, 1979, at 4 a.m. Eastern time, a pump stopped working and sending water to the steam generators that removed heat from the reactor core at the |
0:24.4 | three-mile island nuclear generating station which is located near Harrisburg |
0:29.0 | Pennsylvania. Operators in the control room reacted poorly because of missteps and misinformation, |
0:36.1 | and by early morning the Corps had heated to over 4,000 degrees, |
0:40.0 | just 1,000 degrees short of a full-on nuclear meltdown. On the 7-point international nuclear event |
0:48.1 | scale, the partial meltdown at 3 Mile Island was rated a five, which is, quote, |
0:53.1 | an accident with wider consequences. |
0:56.1 | Those consequences will get into it, |
0:57.6 | but were, to some extent, environmental |
0:59.7 | and health related, but to a much larger |
1:02.0 | extent about the narrative surrounding |
1:04.0 | nuclear power. That really is the legacy of Three Mile Island is the way that it |
1:08.3 | changed the conversation around nuclear energy in that moment. So here to discuss as always is |
1:13.7 | Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello. |
1:17.3 | Hello Jody. Hey there. So Nicky let's talk a little bit about just the tick talk of this event and specifically |
1:26.9 | kind of how this event played out in terms of a communication and people finding out about it. |
1:31.8 | So what do we need to know? |
1:33.2 | All right, so you gave a really great description |
1:35.6 | of all of the little things that went wrong |
1:38.2 | that led to this catastrophic moment. |
... |
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