Three Mile Island - What Really Happened
Вставка
- Опубліковано 25 чер 2022
- The Three Mile Island accident is one of the world's most infamous, but was it more of a communication meltdown than a nuclear one?
👕 NEW MERCH DROP OUT NOW! shop.kylehill.net
💪 JOIN [THE FACILITY] for members-only live streams, behind-the-scenes posts, and the official Discord: / kylehill
🎥 SUB TO THE GAMING CHANNEL: / @kylehillgaming
✅ MANDATORY LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, AND TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS
📲 FOLLOW ME ON SOCIETY-RUINING SOCIAL MEDIA:
🐦 / sci_phile
📷 / sci_phile
😎: Kyle
✂: Charles Shattuck
🤖: @Claire Max
🎹: bensound.com
🎨: Mr. Mass / mysterygiftmovie
🎵: freesound.org
🎼: Mëydan
“Changes” (meydan.bandcamp.com/) by Meydän is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org) - Наука та технологія
*Thanks for watching.* I sincerely hope you enjoy the episode - definitely our longest and most involved to date. Drone footage provided by Atomic Aerials. Dude does video and photography of abandoned places, mega machines, nuclear missile launchers and cold war relics, check them out on basically any of the socials.
Swag
Exited to watch the video ! :D
Never any misinformation from you Kyle, this is why I subscribed to because science back in the day. Now you're GigaSmart 😅
@Don't read profile photo oh my god shut up
I sincerely appreciate you defending nuclear power and dispelling all these myths and misconceptions about it. We need it now more than ever.
Three Mile Island is like the anti-Chernobyl; At Chernobyl, the poorly made reactor exploded and caused a huge catastrophe, while the government denied the severity of the problem, whereas at Three Mile Island, the incident was relatively minor, the reactor didn’t explode, but everyone around totally freaked out about it.
While chernobyl was a disaster even that was hyped to be way worse than it actually wad.
@@Bronco541 What?
Pripyat residents were told they could return to their homes after a few days during the massive evacuation of the city...
Chernobyl was definitely NOT 'hyped to be way worse than it actually wad.'
@@nonegone7170 what about the larger claims well beyond the immediate area?
Let's be honest though, if it was brushed off as a minor incident, would the lazy safety mentality have continued until something bigger did occur? I'm not against nuclear power, but an instant like this probably made way more steps towards better protocols being implemented van the natural progression of them over time. A better PR for nuclear safety should be addressed soon, especially since coal power plants are being reopened. Maybe start playing the misinformation game a little to their advantage by saying a nuclear power plant is going to be built in a major city or something, get people looking up themselves how safe nuclear power is now LOL.
@@blindbrad4719 it is political, much like they said Carter wouldn't make statements in favor of nuclear power due to political considerations. Cheap and dumb as usual
As someone whos entire family works for a nuclear power plant in some way, and are directly responsible for maintaining the core and its equipment, I thank you for getting the word out. I forget that not everyone can see nuclear energy for what it is, a safer and more sustainable solution to our needs as a species.
To me it is very safe as long as these companies doesn't cut any corners. I have noticed that the majority of accidents are do to corners being cut. While the reasons for doing so is different, they all seem to lead to the worse possible outcome. With the rise of technology and better ways of handling the byproduct, it will come a time where Nuclear Power will have to be more explored again.
@@songohan3321 I’m with you 100%. In an ideal world nuclear energy would be fantastic, but this is America for crying out loud. Historically we’ve always placed profits over people, and in order to maintain a high profit margin, company executives/people in charge aren’t going to go out of their way to pay for the best educated/trained employees to manage and maintain a nuclear facility, they’re going to look for the cheapest labor possible. I’m just not willing to put my health or future in the hands of some rich fool who can jump on a plane and run away if shit hits the fan for any odd reason. I love the idea of nuclear energy, I just don’t trust fucking humans.
@@raquellydoesntsocialize if you can trust your groceries that there isn't poison in them, why wouldn't you trust other people, i understand your point, but it's hard to process, because it would imply you aren't near other people.
@@user-zn4pw5nk2v Funny, to me it implies the exact opposite.
People are lazy, greedy and willing to throw anyone else under the bus to save their own ass.
Granted, those are mostly corporate people...
There IS poison in the groceries though. Common food items that are unregulated often contain harmful substances. Ramen noodles contain petroleum based preservative that we know causes cancer. Apple juice often contains lead and heavy metals. Companies put sugar in EVERYTHING to make it sell better even though it's terrible for us in large amounts. I don't trust the groceries, but I eat them because I have little choice.
If the history of nuclear accidents has taught us anything, it's that if all the proper safety measures are put in place, you can literally do everything wrong and create a perfect storm of errors and yet still not have a terrible outcome.
Maybe not everything, but I really appreciate people breaking down what actually happens in incidents like this in non scientific (as in a paper written just for other people that already understand what you are talking about) terms.
It does really show how short of basically the worst case scenarios nuclear is pretty manageable in some way shape or form.
That said, I seem to remember the book The World Without Us contending quite unequivocally that, if every person were to vanish suddenly from the Earth, all the world's nuclear reactors would melt down.
@@spencerbookman2523 I mean yeah, eventually. They do still need maintenance and supplies. That's like saying a bridge will eventually collapse without any repairs.
It literally takes an act of god like in fukashima
Yep look at the two worst disasters in history, Chernobyl was operators purposely running an unstable reactor in a way that it was never meant to. And Fukushima took the worst tidal wave the island has ever experienced in recorded history destroying power lines and generators on sight.
You mentioned something to me that made me realize something
"read the thousands of journals, reports and studies on the subject" in response to Media "Overhyping" how bad it was.
That's the issue, the media are the ones who claim to have read the reports and they're the ones telling us how bad it was for profit.
The media profits off the clicks of the conspiracy exposed. The radiation that moved over the public due to wind shows in the documentary clearly that cancer was blatantly amplified by magnitudes among those in the path of the radiation
THIS is what made you realize that?
@@peridotgaming5894 As someone whose prior knowledge to this case was simply my parents mentioning how devastating it was to me growing up, and the surface knowledge that the news had perpetuated.
yeah, it takes time for people who thought one way to think another. do I know now how shitty the news media is 100% did I know then, yeah I had an idea I just didn't know how far back it went
@@SkyBoxGamingEverybody who realizes this has a point where it clicks. Most people never realize it, unfortunately. But the more you pull on the thread, the more you realize that absolutely nothing the media says can be taken seriously. They don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. If you’re lucky, it’s just ignorance and laziness. Half the time they’re pushing political or corporate propaganda on top of ignorance and laziness.
Media always lie, I am in my 50's and never once seen a news media tell actual truths. They are for profits, and that's the problem.
Remember a line in The Simpsons
"Congratulations! You've turned a potential Chernobyl into a mere 3 Mile Island!"
Which learning that 3 Mile Island was more bark than bite, this is actually even funnier
Three Mile Island is on the edge of Lancaster County where I grew up. I didn't really understand what was going on, but I remember people being freaked out at the time, but it quickly turned into no big deal. Of the two big disasters I remember as a kid, Three Mile Island and Love Canal, it was Love Canal that I remember really horrifying people. But now, it seems TMI is what people still get all worked up about and Love Canal is largely forgotten.
@@ressljs I haven't heard of Love Canal. I also question whether Google will send me to some dubious sites if I try to search for it.
@@EmpressLizard81 Likewise I am hesitant to google that!
@@ressljs wow, yeah pretty nasty. Still, at least it wasn't on the scale of Bhopal. I remember hearing about that on the news when I was a kid (I was about 6 when it happened). Thousands killed and around half a million people injured or affected in some way.
@@ressljs oh wow. So basically the Love Canal situation is what people think nuclear waste is like.
I used to teach seminars about this accident to nuclear plant control room operators. You nailed it. Your explanation of the accident timeline was very well-researched and communicated very clearly. I started watching the Netflix doc and couldn't get through it. I prefer to just stick to the facts and they didn't seem too interested in that approach.
That sounds like a nice gig, dispelling fact from fiction and arming operators with proper training. It's a shame the Netflix doc isn't sticking to facts. I was interested in seeing it.
Nice profile pic, by the way! It's nice to see another Band-Maid fan watching Kyle's videos!
Was like this with the Chernobyl show too. Made me cringe.
You know how it is with something like Netflix, inaccuracies are okay if it makes things more dramatic and fits a certain political agenda.
Netflix's bullshit fits well with the left's green energy bullshit.
@@lukezillig6111 .
the real horror of the three mile island accident is the sheer number of times "they turned the emergency cooling on, but then they turned it off," the sheer lack of transparency for the public or even other organizations, the abysmal lack of communication between anyone, and the insanity of all the misinformation and conflicting stories coming from literally everywhere as a result of the first things.
the event itself is horrifying for the media catastrophe it is, but this video is absolutely fascinating as a dissection of the communications breakdown
The fact that the accident occurred because of a dozen cases of human error is what stood out the most to me. With modern technology, we could probably automate a lot of those choices with much lower risk of disaster: Have a system of sensors to automatically monitor and control the valves, and if it activates one of those emergency precautions, they can't be turned back off unless manually overridden.
The PR side of things could also be automated to prevent that level of panic: A public website could be set up to share all of these sensor readings and precautions in effect, so if something like the TMI accident happened again, everyone could check the website to see for themselves how severe it really is.
It sucks that nuclear power gets such a bad rep from these concentrated incidents, as opposed to things like climate change and pollution that are caused by coal/oil/gas mining, which are overall more dangerous but have less concrete and immediate impacts. I think if we got better at mitigating the risks from nuclear power, it would be a great energy alternative.
one small criticism here: when talking about how safe xr85 and xe133 are, you only mentioned their half lives and lack of bioaccumulation - you didn't actually mention that they both decay directly into stable elements when they decay. i had to look that up on my own, and it seems pretty important to understanding why they're not problematic, as radioisotopes go.
The fact they decay into stable products is not really all that important regardless. Typically as you move through decay chains the energy released by the following decays are minor in comparison to the original. For example Xe-135 going to Cs-135 then Ba-135. The first decay releases 1169KeV and Cs-135 decay releases 268KeV. Still significant but it’s 1/5 of the problem, coupled with an extremely long half live of 10^6 years for Cs vs 9.1hrs for Xe.
Nerd fight!!!
I mean... That's what decay is.
@@htspencer9084...and it would help the OP to dive into a bit of alpha and beta minus decay chains (all roads lead to lead 😂).
You'll end up learning about discovering new elements, and those who fake discovering new elements.
What does "decay" mean? You call something alive and active as decayed? It would have been weird if he suddenly started to explain the meaning behind "decay" .
The moral of the story is not "nuclear power is dangerous" but rather "don't put complete morons in front of something that expensive" with a side order of "don't leave complete morons in control of actually telling people about their screwup"
Yep
Aka, don’t leave people like Homer Simpson in charge of anything
As a Radiation Therapist, I had to learn the ins and outs of everything Radiation. In my Rad Bio class I had to write a paper about Three Mile Island. It was very interesting and the accuracy of this video is amazing, I wish I could write the paper again after watching this!
I am certain your paper was wonderful regardless Sir Martin! I studied the 3 mile island incident as a hobby and was stunned by the amount of incorrect info i was given before my own research. Oh and i do hope your day is going well! nearly forgot my manners.
wow thanks for that info. i always wonderned what experts say about youtube documentarys like this one
Whay does a radiation therapist do?
@@sirpale Radiation therapists plan
and administer radiation treatments to
cancer patients
That's awesome that they had you dig into the details of this accident!
I wrote up about SL-1 and the human plutonium injection experiments.
I worked for a packaged ice company in the Harrisburg area back around the turn of the millennium. One day, TMI ordered 2 entire pallets of 20lb bags of ice - 4,000 lbs of ice - and I had to deliver it. Went through the gate and a guard with a shotgun rode along with me to the delivery point. I have no idea why a nuclear power plant needed 4,000 lbs of ice on short notice but it has always made me wonder.
Pizza party.
Huh. Maybe there is a situation in which ice would work better than water to solve a heating problem? I guess if you need to lower temperature extremely quickly, but that can present its own problems... That sounds pretty unnerving and surreal to experience though, to have some armed guard accompany you to make a delivery that you don't know how it will be used.
@@BIGMANLOGJAM Someone high up had managed to offload their useless kid into a job onto someone else and was holding a celebration. Nothing to do with the power plant.
Probably snacks and drinks lol. We do the same for our operators, just not on that scale
Having not ever worked on a nuclear power plant you would not know that absolutely any delivery which breaches the security perimeter of the plant is has a security plan which normally includes a ‘ride along’ from an armed and very well-trained nuclear security officer. They are very serious people, and would not hesitate to perform their duty, if required to. The easy-going attitude of pre TMI days no longer exists. Part of the lessons learned.
As someone who grew up fairly close to TMI, my parents, who lived through it, always taught me how horrible and dangerous nuclear power was, and how contaminated the area around TMI has become. And yet, I never really seemed to understand or see any effects from it. Absolutely amazing to see how that perception got formed.
It's cause the failure in itself failed all that was releases was xenon and krypton nowhere near as dangerous as say chernobyl which was also very poorly constructed For that I blame humanity.It's in our nature for some fucking reason to get mass hysteria in time to crisis It's like when you expect people to pull together and to work together on a problem.They do the fucking opposite I just like sometimes you expect the chaos and none happens We as a species are just too unpredictable
I grew up 6 miles from TMI and was a sophomore in high school when this happened. When I tell people that, I hear all the glow in the dark jokes...for forty years. And I have been telling people for forty years that this was a media disaster, not a nuclear disaster. I knew it even as a teenager. Thank you for this.
Yeah for media disasters…
Correct it was a media disaster. The mainstream media are the main culprits for many bad developments over the last 50 years. Even here in Germany.
You're incorrect. Those reactors are shut down for a reason. There IS radioactivity on the island. The inner workings of the reactor were extremely damaged.
Secondly, you may not feel it now, but your kids will. Their kids will.
The maintenance reports are public access. Read them before the accident.
@@castlekingside76 I BeLiEvE EvErYtHiNg MeDiA SaYs""
@@castlekingside76 There's more radioactivity while you're on an airplane at 10k feet in the air, or on a black sand beach, than around the reactor of a nuclear power plant.
As a longtime nuclear historian and retired nuclear engineer, and after having read so much about this accident, I must commend this channel’s flawless reporting of what actually did happen. Kudos to Kyle.
One of the best that I have seen.
This narcissist is like "now that I'm done talking about myself, kudos to the channel".
@@ThinkingDoesMakeMeImportant Actually he was stating that as someone knowledgable in the field talked about in the video, he was happy about the accurate reporting of the accident, basically he gave expert aproval, which also helps others be conifident that this video has good info in it.
@@Gizmos_and_stuff You shouldn't believe everything that people type on social media.
@@ThinkingDoesMakeMeImportant he would gain nothing from lying about this its not like we’re paying him for his reaction he has no reason to lie
I was a navy nuc operator for about a decade, and I'm starting up a similar position in the civilian sector. I don't think I ever learned the specifics of 3-Mile, but I've often struggled with people panicking over my job.
"Less radiation in a year than you get in a day at the beach" I would say, and still people would scream "Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile!"
It's exhausting.
This was a very interesting story, and I feel the need to go back and watch the rest of the videos you made in this series.
Radiation is the unseeable, unexplainable boogeyman to the average human. Just telling people I study physics gets me the same reaction every time "wow, you study physics? I never understood it" and thats the end of it. Thats why its like talking to a donkey when it comes to nuclear science.
I have never worked in any nuclear field, but I did work at a hardware store here in the US when the Fukushima disaster happened. A customer came wanting a Geiger counter (something we understandably did not carry) because she was freaking out about radiation and left even more distressed when I informed her that there was radiation already all around her in her daily life whether she liked it or not.
Generally speaking, aircrew get more radiation due to their job than submariners do.
Most people are too stupid to understand basic math let alone nuclear energy
Fukushima is considerably worse than chernobyl and 3mi as one of the Fukushima reactors had a full load of MOX fuel. The only thing saving Japan is the more effective containment however given the area is prone to disaster which caused the damage in the first place this might change
This clears so much up. I was always so confused when people compared this to Chernobyl. I never understood how these were even the same as one killed thousands and poisoned a massive swath of land across two continents. The other was a mild issue that ended up not even causing anything that bad.
Kyle, something of note here is the fact that twelve days prior to the incident at TMI, ‘The China Syndrome’ released in theaters, portrayed an accident almost exactly like what would occur less than two weeks later in Pennsylvania. I’m almost certain that it fueled nuclear paranoia in the American zeitgeist. MetEd’s PR abomination must’ve made the story on the silver screen ring true to those already unsure of nuclear power.
Quite right.
I am actuality surprised people forget the role that movie played in everyone's minds in the years that followed and in particular right after 3MI.
Incompetence and opportunism jpined forces a long time ago when dealing with fission energy and its "dangers".
did you get that from the Netflix documentary?
sorry that comes across as rude on my part
@@natashaeliot3628 it was in the documentary, yeah.
Not really paranoia if it happens, again and again.
It's almost funny that TMI simultaneously stands for "Three Mile Island" and "too much information"
Ironic, one might say.
@@mrbyzantine0528 especially since the problem with the Three Mile Island accident was too little information (or more accurately too little correct information).
And Teenage Mutantn Injaturtles
cant forget about Tscratching My Iballsacks
Pennsylvanian here. Whenever I hear "tmi," I instinctively think Three Mile Island, not too much information.
I’ve always been terrified of radiation but started watching these videos out of morbid curiosity. Knowing more about how radiation actually works and when it is and isnt safe has actually done a lot to calm me down even in cases of horrific disasters by making it understandable. I feel like in depth education like this is very valuable and should be provided to everyone in schools and in the media. I cant blame anyone in this situation who panicked and protested nuclear power. Even when explained properly a news report can’t give an average person with no knowledge on the topic an accurate idea of what is happening enough to calm them down. Theres no common groundwork of knowledge everyone has to build off of to explain it its so unknown to most of the population and so hard to explain it’s a breeding ground for misunderstandings and hysteria
I have the same morbid curiosity and I've realized it's nothing to be terrified of. In fact, it has led me to better understand complex topics as well. It's a unique mental strength and I credit that capability to my autism. Being able to understand something whole-heartedly is way more satisfying than just being scared of the unknown.
Some 6 hours behind Three Mile Island, Oyster Creek in southern New Jersey, had the same type of reaction. I learned of this because I was on a first aid squad with a security guard from the plant, in Oyster Creek. It was a very hectic time for a few days. There was NO DANGER at Oyster Creek, because they reacted quickly and correctly. Jimmy Carter was a NUCLEAR ENGINEER, which is something nobody mentioned in this story.
Same at Dresden Plant in Illinois. For all we know it’s happened at more, but kept quiet.
Jimmy Carter’s nuclear background is mentioned at 34:21. But he also seems to have kept quiet about his opinions to save political face
It's "funny" how misinformation about an invisible killer causes more stress and bad PR when it didn't even do anything, then a very measurable killer people seem to shrug off like it never happened. Additionally, seem to blame the response as the reason. I keep being astonished that people seem to believe some random guys emotions rather than the hard data. Thank you again kyle for bringing light to another event in history by telling the truth.
For me this reveals really dumb thing about people, the only thing that connects nuclear weaponry and nuclear power plants is material used for generating energy, and people thing this is the exact same thing. Imagine people would like to ban fireworks even harder than regular guns, because they use similar materials for explosion.
In my country, you need a license for a firearm, and it HAS to be bolt action, or single shot, plus fire works are also licensed…. Because it makes sense.
Looks like a recent pandemic you're talking about...
@@gekfurian *scamdemic
@@gekfurian plandemic
Nuclear power is a great example of "with great power comes great responsability", and that when it come to most nuclear power related accidents some of the people didn't treat their job with enough responsability.
Also that in disaster situations communication, with the public and otherwise, is as important as dealing with the disaster itself.
Keep up the great work Kyle.
If anything PR is more important - once the threat to the public is neutralised.
But it's not even great responsibility, just the perception of it. The problem with nuclear energy is that it does not release it's toxic waste as a matter of business, so when it does accidentally, people freak out.
Ironically, if radioactive releases were normal, nobody would care, like how we don't care about the toxic smoke from coal plants or cars.
@@andrasbiro3007 I mean we don't care about the radioactive material in coal in Australia, and we still burn it. In fossil gas it's much the same.
@@andrasbiro3007 "like how we don't care about the toxic smoke from coal plants or cars."
But we DO care about these.
@@lhb82 But there's still an absolute metric MEGATON of cars on the road at this moment burning gasoline and diesel are there not?
What's interesting to note is that the symptoms of acute radiation sickness are similar to symptoms of prolonged severe stress and anxiety. Difficulty breathing, Muscle pain, dizziness, sudden weight change, rashes, sweating, hair loss.
Also… burns
Depends what kind of acute radiation sickness - these would be the symptoms of subclinical stage, but intestine stage gives you white skin, bloody diarrhea, and etc.
That being said, radiation sickness is often the least of your worries when being exposed with radiation - it takes a lot of it to cause acute radiation sickness, but it can be more than enough to cause chronic radiation sickness or cancer.
Born October 1978 about 45 minutes from TMI. We can see the water vapor release on clear days. I’ve spent my whole life hearing about the “disaster” and how confused & scared my family was. This definitely helped put things in perspective and provided information that I never knew.
I grew up in Danville up near Selinsgrove and Bloomsburg. From a hill across the river you could see all the way up the valley all the way to berwick and you could see the Berwick Nuclear Powerplant. My uncle worked up there for some time and people constantly would tell my uncle he’s killing people and how could he bear working near that bomb that’ll kill millions.
In the meantime he worked a whole career there and is still alive, almost 90 years old. He worked as a maintenance worker and an engineer, went into one of the reactor rooms a couple times.
He has a super cool picture that he took of some control rods and you can see a few speckles here and there on the picture from where the radiation hit the lens.
I live about half an hour from TMI and we did an activity in high school where we basically ran through how everything happened and the breakdown in communication is scarier than the actual radiation. It was embarrassing for us to even have to act like that, I can’t imagine being one of the people involved.
Imagine if it were a real disaster like what happened in 1959
Its not radiation that kills people, its people that kills people.
York?
It always amazes me how quickly things go to hell and continue to do so all because people just aren't talking.
From relationships to nuclear power plants, it all blows up spectacularly when people fail to communicate and, by proxy, assume someone else is taking care of XYZ.
@@littleman6950 You're right that people not talking can cause a lot of problems. But people talking can cause problems as well. Especially, people talking when they don't have a clue what they are talking about. It sounds to me, like this was a combination of both. The people who had a clue weren't talking enough and the people who had no clue were talking way too much. Unfortunately, to some extent this is unavoidable. Smart people are typically of the mindset to be careful of what they say and not say too much such that they don't make mistakes and spread misinformation, but stupid people are perfectly willing to spew forth as much BS as they possibly can!
Look into the meltdown of the Rocketdyne reactor in the suburbs of LA. First reactor west of the Mississippi and one of the best covered up meltdowns. I live a couple miles from it and work for them today. Crazy how few people know about it.
Someone mentioned it (Simi Valley) in one of your livestreams and you said you hadn’t heard of it. I’m sure you’ll be very interested.
I somehow think I heard of that one. Can't recall where. Might have been Dark Docs or Dark History.
An entire reactor meltdown and almost no one has heard of it. That's... good to hear actually.
@@kingofflames738 it was a “partial meltdown.” There are a lot of locals who care a lot more than I do about it, but all I know is that we don’t drink the ground water. The people who care more say we have higher cancer rates in the area, but I haven’t checked their sources myself.
Yes definitely look into this one! i did a project on the Simi Valley/Santa Susana coverup in theater of all classes and it was super fascinating !
Pretty ironic I’m always mentioning this meltdown despite working for them. Disclaimer: I don’t have any insider info because it happened before I was born and we haven’t owned the property for years. Not that I’d say anything anyway lol
Only thing I get at work is uncomfortable looks from people who know and surprised looks from people who don’t.
A friend of mine did get the type of cancer that is supposedly more common in our area, and a lot of people are pissed at Boeing (the current owner of the property) for not cleaning it up by now. I’ve hiked in the area and what I’ve seen of the cleanup includes scraping all the topsoil away to leave a destructed natural environment.
The fact that The China Syndrome released only a couple of weeks earlier probably didn’t help with the publicity
The fact that the movie was so accurate, certainly didn’t help. But it probably helpped ticket sales.
"'I don't know why we need to tell you each and every thing that we do, specifically.' That sentence... marked the end of Met-Ed's credibility with the media." That is incredibly damning, but well-deserved. They have to, they had to. Yet they chose not to say anything, and got upset when the people demanded to know what was going on.
The statement was absolutely correct but should not have been said.
Because NO the public doesn’t need to be told every little thing being done in the management of a “crisis”.
@@OpenCarryUSMC I personally think that it was how it was said to the public that destroyed their credibility. I honestly do not know what they could have said that would have kept their credibility, though.
@@OpenCarryUSMCto a degree they absolutely have an obligation to quell the hysteria, not lie, but explain at least 1. What happened. 2. The severity 3. The probable outcome 4. What is being done correctively.
I watched the Netflix documentary and was initially confused about the TMI disaster. The film made more effort to highlight the feelings of the people living nearby rather that the technical details of the event. Thanks Kyle for clarifying this event for me.
That documentary was brought to us by the Anti-Nuclear lobby.
Whether directly or indirectly.
The show on netflix is a crockumentary, not a documentary, as it is a crock of poop.
Pretty sure they didn't go into the technical details because that would've exposed how un-disastrous TMI really was. They set out to push a narrative, and all that technical stuff would've just gotten in the way.
That garbage on Netflix is a stain on the word documentary.
@@BadRonin Based on real events: people waking up in the morning, getting a cup of coffee.... See! Real events!
I like that this entire incident is the equivalent of having every emergency light on in your car and people still in shock it failed
Fantastic comparison! I'd even add that your grandfather is in the passenger seat telling you the check engine light means nothing as the car has been running fine and repair diagnostics are expensive.
This literally happened to someone I work with 2 weeks ago. Their engine was overheating (to be honest I'm surprised it would even start and run) and when she picked it up later that day, basically her car had "absolutely no coolant or oil." How does anyone not notice their engine is overheating, oil pressure doesn't exist, and notice how different the engine runs?
@@swarley39 I had a female family member seize her engine because she never checked her oil level and ran it completely dry. All I can say is some people are very oblivious to certain things. I don't understand it because not even having any interest in cars I can still feel my engine running a little rough.
no, not at all. someone tell me how those cooling pumps were shut off multiple times for really no reason. someone kept turning it on meaning IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON, who cares if it breaks. No, someone was sabotaging 3 mile island. I would want to know exactly who turned off those pumps. where were the emergency control rods? I love Nuclear and I think it could be made intrinsically safe but not with a businessman at the helm. No, a true engineer whos number 1 priority is safety. someone who thinks about all the ways a system can go wrong. Hey, I think I found my calling. I am learning programming. Maybe I make safety monitoring programs and a safety firm.
there is so may ways this crap could have been avoided. that controll panel makes me very sad. very very sad. and these are the people with good careers. they dont deserve it. didnt
@@rigrmortis3393 wait, what was her gender?
Great video! I was a kid when the Three Mile Island incident happened, so my memory is a little fuzzy. But I do remember the media circus that surrounded it. I thought it was weird how everyone was freaking out, but the reactor didn't even explode.
Having lived in Pennsylvania during that time, I can provide my own personal perspective:
The nuclear power lobby had long been singing the praises of Three Mile Island & other such nuclear facilities as the dawn of a Brave New World of clean, coal-free electrical power -- non-pollutive & virtually inexhaustible. As news reports of the "incident" @ TMI began trickling in over the TV & radio stations, however, public suspicion of the nuclear power industry began to spread & grow -- which the apparent denials & stonewalling on the part of both power utility & nuclear facility officials did nothing to allay. Bear in mind that the Watergate scandal was still fresh in many people's minds (including mine, a schoolkid too young @ the time to fully appreciate the seriousness of what had gone on in the Nixon Administration), which only served to further plant the seeds of distrust in authority figures.
Combine all that w/ the "bombshell" announcement by the PA gov. re. pregnant women in the vicinity & it was practically a powderkeg that got set off by a short fuse. The panicked residents who voluntarily evacuated entire towns & neighborhoods in PA only contributed to the public perception that the "incident" was spiraling out of control ... & that officials had been either covering up the severity of the situation or @ least dragging their feet until it was too late.
The upside to all this is that it increased public awareness of the inherent risks of reliance on nuclear power -- namely, the production of radioactive waste as well as the disproportionately much higher stakes of a catastrophic breakdown @ a nuclear facility vs. any other type of power plant.
Great video! I learned about Three Mile Island in school right around the same time I learned about what life was like during Chornobyl for my parents. By the time that was done, all I think was "wow, if THIS is the worst nuclear accident in US history, Americans proved that these things really CAN be contained!"
So because of Three Mile Island I came out of middle school feeling way less anxious about nuclear energy, which was probably a good thing... considering my parents then immediately moved us right nextdoor to the only nuclear power plant in the entire state. The irony was not lost on any of us.
3MI is a really good case study in how things can go right and be well mitigated in such a dangerous scenario, so I'm glad you're correcting the misinformation and giving everyone more realistic expectations. I completely understand why this incident utterly terrified the local population, and resonated so much with American society. People accurately ascertained that human mistakes, judgment errors, lack of communication and lies by omission can be the biggest danger trigger in a situation like this, but still it bears repeating that the two scenarios were quite different - and one proved that doomsday is not inevitable
SL-1 was worse than TMI. It just doesn't get talked about as much
It's so easy to forget this happened BEFORE Chernobyl did. This was a case of being among the first major nuclear "disasters," and the people directly involved were working off of knowledge and theory and literally ZERO people were thinking "we have to avoid being the next Chernobyl."
I've read a lot about this event so I'm excited to watch it in quality Kyle Hill documentary format.
Tbh that mentality is good. Heck, make it "let's not be the next Fukushima". They let hydrogen build up instead of venting it like TMI. Now seeing how many mistakes were made in TMI, one of "best" nuclear disasters.. It really seems like people running these have to be very dumb for something so bad to happen. And that they have to be run-down to the ground.
In a dark humor kind of sense, it's almost like the USSR heard about Three Mile Island and said "Hold my Vodka, Capitalist Pig-Dog!" I'm completely kidding on that, but you look at the era and how petty of competitions the USA and USSR were having (nuclear armament, nuclear energy, The Space Race, Deepest Hole drilled, super sonic flight, this country having "democracy", that country having "communism", etc.) and it almost seems plausible.
I *remember* this accident as a kid, and how we were educated about it later. So much fear mongering! so little information - or information that was correct. This was the same cold war era that had us hiding under our desks like it would help in a nuclear holocaust. We need more science educators, and people willing to reevaluate events like these. I'm so proud of your work Kyle!
Hiding under your desk during a nuclear strike genuinely does help keep you alive, provided you're outside of thermal radiation range. At that point it effectively functions as an earthquake and the real danger is from the ceiling coming down on top of you.
@@kennandunn7533 Or the windows blowing in. During the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in Russia a few years ago there was a lot of selfie footage of people standing at the windows of an office or whatever staring at the weird sight high up in the sky and then, a little while after the meteor exploded about 30km up, the windows shattered as the shockwave (travelling at the speed of sound) hit. Quite a number of reported casualties were from people hurt by flying debris like this.
"Remember, children, Duck and Cover." (even Southpark has made fun of that one.)
@@kennandunn7533 Thank you for writing this so I didn’t have to. 🧠
Or like wearing a mask for virus protection!!!!! lmao
Good video. I am a former licensed reactor operator. My training was highly impacted by this event, and one important aspect was not mentioned: plant management's involvement. Plant management directed the operators to restart reactor coolant pumps (RCPs) that had been stopped earlier. Starting the RCPs injunction with injecting cooling water into the core caused thermal shock of the fuel assemblies and fractured the core. This had a negative impact on coolable core geometry.
I lived in Lancaster county. I was 15. My Mom was my hero.... She never got upset or even talked about it even when a large number of my friends were leaving the area. She was very level headed. This kept my brother and I from any stress/anxiety. Great episode Kyle.
I had read that there was a slightly elevated rate of cancer near the station -- but NOT specifically downwind. The rates were the same upwind. The theory was that people stressed out and the stress triggered higher rates of cancer. I think it might have been that people closer to the station were more likely to assume they had cancer and get screened than people further away.
Nothing like being in a potential fallout zone to prompt people to get a mammogram lol
If everyone were to go through the same set of blood/urine/physical screening, the majority if not everyone would have something off or wrong with them. Especially these days where doctors spend as little time with patients as possible and dispense prescriptions like candy during Halloween. With the prevalence of genetic testing and the adaptation to A.I. the entire approach towards medicine will change from one size fits all into a personalized medical profile and treatment regimen.
right now in san jose ther is abig increase in prostate c. doctors dont know why.. how do i know ive lived it..
Or it could just be the asphalt used on the local roads.
@@lordchaa1598ai isn't a thing
As a prior Navy Nuclear Operator I love when creates like Kyle set the record straight, I have often times felt like this story doesn't get told properly. This time I am happy to say it seems to be factual and unbiased.
There's an interesting argument I've read that TMI's crew being mostly former Navy nuclear operators may have contributed, in a way, to the accident. As Kyle said, the crew turned off the emergency cooling water because they saw water levels rising in the pressurizer and assumed water was being added to the system. (This was actually because, with the PORV open, the steam at the top of the pressurizer was bleeding off and letting more water in - water levels in the *core* were dropping, but there was no direct measure of that.) But why would they focus on that, rather than the reactor cooling system's pressure dropping, suggesting a potentially catastrophic loss-of-coolant accident? Well, Navy reactors are (comparatively) tiny and don't really have enough decay heat to melt down, so a LOCA isn't nearly as disastrous. But "going solid" - filling the pressurizer entirely with water and thus losing pressure control - is one of the worst-case scenarios, since it could leave your carrier or submarine powerless at sea. So in a stressful situation, they may have reverted to their primary/initial training.
@@joshuagreen3185 Correct. They were trained to avoid "going solid" by any means necessary. Anyone else's mind blown by the idea that there was no gauge for measuring water level itsel? Indirectly measuring it via pressure? Geez...
@@joshuagreen3185 I’m a former navy operator myself, and although it has been many, many years- I’m wondering about your comment on the size of navy reactors. I’m not saying you’re wrong because I honestly cannot remember from my own experience- but even though our S6G reactor was comparatively small, it had a higher power density than civilian reactors. We were producing 148 MW, and using highly enriched U-235 (98%+ vs. civilian fuel which I think is somewhere around 2% enriched). In addition, once we inserted control rods and shut down, we were still producing approximately 7% of power history for the first 24 hours as fission products decayed. So we were still generating a lot of heat. Anyway, you got me thinking. I left the Navy in 1996 and I’ve tried to block as much of that experience out of my memory as possible. Being a nuclear operator in the US Navy was kind of like working as a slave for Hitler’s Nazis. I’m grateful it is that way since the Navy hasn’t had a legit nuclear accident ever- and that’s over 60+ years of operating dozens or hundreds of reactors at a time. When my enlistment ended, I ran from nuclear power and instead made a career in metallurgy.
Im an engineering officer of the watch student at prototype, the amount of background and context I have to give family when they talk about disasters is… dizzying. To me the operator/supervisor actions at TMI make no sense but hindsight is 20-20.
I was at Bainbridge, MD. for Naval Nuke Power School in August of ‘74.
I was born in 1993 and saw a very well-done documentary about Three Mile Island when I was about 10 years old. My dad, who was born in 1955 and lived through the event (though he didn't live anywhere near there), fully expected me to be alarmed and terrified by the documentary. He even asked me once if I still thought the old and abandoned nuclear reactor cooling tower near our home looked cool, or if I thought it looked ominous now that I "know what it could have done if it was still functioning today". He's quite literally traumatized. The whole nation is, it seems. It's mind-blowing to see how much damage was done by the poor communication surrounding this event.
Born and raised in PA. I can definitely say growing up a mile away from the Berwick/Nescopeck nuclear power plant it was always a part of school to have tests/ drills just in case something happened. We had detailed plans of what we would do if the plant had a meltdown or issue.
We had a few scares over the years but nothing like this. I’m also 29 so I don’t know three mile all that well.
Fantastic video! Love learning new things.
I watched the Netflix doc last week and spent the whole time telling my partner that the makers were using editing and storytelling tricks to make it look way worse than it actually was. I sent this to them and hopefully they have enough patience with me to watch it! Excellent work as always Kyle, I love this series.
Let us know what they think afterwards!
I knew the Netflix series was sensationalism just by watching the trailer! This video however is much more accurate based on what I already knew about this incident (I don't call them accidents).
@@Milnoc the goal was to entertain moreso than it was made to educate
I’m honesty disappointed in myself. I replaced my thinking of three mile island (fairly close to this) with the ‘facts’ of the documentary because I thought netflix would have been more vetted than my cursory understanding of the event.
@@Mawyman2316 Don't be disappointed in yourself, you recognized that you had been misled by others! Most people will keep on living in their ignorance. You know the truth!
"Babe wake up, new Kyle Hill documentary vid!"
Ong
I know I used to dislike this channel for whatever reason but now I love it and can’t get enough of it!
@@josuefranco1091 ong?
@@qpSubZeroqp probably meant "omg"
*Snaps awake*
This is probably the most accurate short summary out there.
I did an in-depth report on what occurred in Unit 2 in a term paper in 82.
Our professor was a consultant for the Fort Saint Vrain HGCR in Platteville ( that's a fancy, one of a kind, test bed label for a hopeful fast breeder of plutonium reactor ).
Your description of what technically happened is spot on with the technical reports he provided without confusing everyone with the whole "Loss of Coolant" miasma of terms.
Nicely done.
I live in between TMI, Peach Bottom and Limerick, (Lancaster, PA), and I have never once worried about a nuclear disaster. Ignorance is a plague that needs to be eradicated.
I'm a communications professional and this was a fascinating video. Improper communications at the time of a crisis has so many, far reaching impacts. That's why it's so important to start working on the comms response almost as soon as the issue is identified - whether you know what the impact will be on the public, or not.
And even to prepare crisis response AHEAD of a potential crisis situation. Having pre-established, well thought out crisis communication plans can prevent things from escalating when it comes to an actual crisis
@@idrissb9742 absolutely! And practice your response too! Practicing a fake scenario helps reveal where there might be bottlenecks in a real crisis.
"Improper communication"
You spelled cover-up wrong.
@@EchoMirage72 it doesn't sound to me like this was a cover up. Just standard chaos at a time of a crisis, and incompetence.
Too many chefs ruins the soup
A singular case of too many people communicating information they are not qualified to give out along with qualified people not communicating what they should have and with both groups not communicating with each other.
My father worked at a nuclear power plant for almost 30 years and the amount of misinformation that got spread about Three Mile and just nuclear power in general really wore him down. He knew people that, once they found out he worked at a power plant, would not let him inside their house or talk to him. People would call him all sorts of horrid things and blame him and his work for things and he just got so tired of trying to inform those people, they did not want to listen they just wanted to "be loud." I mean heck, kids used to avoid me at school too for it. It was just insane.
I worked in the nuclear industry for 40+ years at 5 different facilities and NEVER experienced what you state. Maybe it was your father and not the industry taht was the problem.
Same here I work in nuclear plants and never had anyone do anything you have said, maybe some jokes or questions about it but nothing really bad. I've heard some misinformation not to much tho.
@@clarkkent9080”I’ve never experienced that so YOU must be the problem” S T F U 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Is your dad's name Homer by any chance?
@@AB-ee5tb WOW going all nuclear just because other people don't experience what you say your father endured. Maybe there was something about your father other than where he worked as the reason they did not want him in their house. Just saying....
My dad was there and had to break a lock with his bare hands as the electrical valve didn't open as designed. We lived in Elizabethtown PA and after this left for Arizona, my Dad was really impacted by this.
My grandmother and grandfather moved to middletown and my grandfather had a part in the construction of the plant. My grandmother still lives there today. She is less than a mile or so away from the plant. My mom told me about how when everyone was freaking out and leaving town, my grandpa decided they were staying. She was playing in the front yard in view of the plant. I currently live in middletown and my brother lives next door to my grandmother. It's a shame to see it dismantled because of the negative views that were spread.
As someone who works with radiological material for a living the biggest shock to me in this video is the public being exposed to only 8mrem. To put things into perspective where I work which is under super strict controls we're only allowed up to 5rem per year which is still an extremely negligible amount of exposure in the long run. Whenever I heard of TMI it always sounded like some catastrophic scenario so it's very eye opening that the public got exposed to almost 5000 times less than what I and many of my coworkers are allowed on a yearly basis.
It isn't ever guaranteed safe. Be safe! If you worked with solar power you wouldn't have to even think about that.
@@marniekilbourne608 they didn't say they work in nuclear energy, just something with radioactive materials. They could be an x-ray tech for all we know lol. Solar powered x-ray machines still use radiation.
@@marniekilbourne608 but solar power availability is dependent entirely upon sun exposure to the solar panels. no energy is generated at night, and less energy is generated on cloudy days. that’s an issue shared with many renewable energy sources: inconsistent power availability. if we had a reliable way to store large amounts of electricity after generation, that wouldn’t be an issue, but we don’t have that technology right now. this is why in my opinion, nuclear energy is the best and most reasonable alternative to fossil fuel that is currently available. yes, nuclear power plants have a higher capacity for pollution than solar or wind or hydro plants. however, when compared to fossil fuel based plants, nuclear plants are still significantly better.
@@marniekilbourne608 And with nuclear energy you don't have to worry about massive lithium ion battery farms exploding and burning violently for weeks on end and releasing all sorts of toxic chemicals and fumes. No method of energy production is completely safe, so they all have things to worry about.
@@marsgannon4891 I work on nuclear submarines. Yes nuclear power isn't 100% safe but with the proper protocols it's one of the cleanest and most efficient forms of energy. It's a shame the public perception is misconstrued over the small handful of incidents due to pure negligence. It's actually kinda funny cause if the city I live in realized how many nuclear reactors had actually been within walking distance from them FOR DECADES they'd probably shit their pants even though the fact we haven't had a single incident in that time proves it works under the right hands.
I was in high school when TMI happened. In our current events class we read every article in Newsweek, Time, NYT, and other publications, watched TV for news updates . I look back now and realize how much everyone said without saying a word. Nobody had a clue how reactors worked only that they were evil and we need to build more coal plants. Watching the president calmly visiting TMI wearing just boot covers didn't seem to calm people like it was supposed to do as the anti nuke hysteria continued. They thought that Carter was just show boating. They didn't understand that he was a trained and experienced nuclear engineer in the Navy.
Then Carter proceeded to outlive most of them 🤣
I really wish more people understood coal plants actually release many times more radiation into their local environment than any nuclear plant ever will, not even counting pollution.
Carter was trained under Rickover's original program and worked in the design of the new nuclear submarines, he definitely knew what he was doing.
I only realize now in retrospect how ironic it is that Three Mile Island's abbreviation is "TMI" and yet, not enough information was being given. It's almost to the level of cynical.
@@steeljawX Its funny you say that. I was a fan of the movie China Syndrome and its only now re watching it as an adult that I realized it was a dramatic hit piece on the Nuclear industry. Back then, in my mid teens, I though the film was pro nuclear because Jack Lemon is such a sympathetic character. But don't forget, "THere was... a V I B R A T I O N !!!"
@@thecrazycapmaster true asf,he literally is the oldest POTUS still alive,and 95-96 % of the people who loved in his generation are now dead.
The news media so effectively makes things worse.
Kyle, thank you again for all that you do and, in particular, this series and this video.
I live in PA and have driven past Three Mile Island several times. Each of those times, a resounding sense of fear, confusion, and curiosity has gripped me. All I could ever muster was to make a passing reference to what I had only known as a “near meltdown” to anyone in the car with me.
The continued dread that most everyone I know has toward that site and the events that took place astounds me, as uninformed and unintelligent assumption, conjecture, and sheer ignorance run rampant even in communities closely linked to the events of that day and thereafter.
Your work fuels a very important pursuit of self-education for me, and I hope that it can reach as many people as possible and do the same for them.
My aunt was going to school for nuclear medicine. Even in Texas, my aunt had to calm her parents, and explain to everyone the true nature of the situation from her understanding. You can’t calm down hysteria.
Yeah hysteria is one of the biggest flaws in people. It's even the main reason why homeopathy exists, why the placebo effect functions, and why doctors sometimes get self diagnosed symptoms for incredible rare conditions after reading their text books. Hysteria is the contrast to critical thought as hysteria can lead you to believe anything while critical thinking is the act of only accepting what you can prove.
It’s scary stuff
@@Skylancer727 eh, depends on the placebo
@@randomstuff508 I mean if it tastes just like a candy you already know or just like a sugar cube, sure; but in most cases the placebo is mainly carried on the weight of the accepting the claims of the packaging or the claims of the person who gave it to you.
I'm an xray technologist and every once in a while I get a patient who thinks we work with uranium.
Chernobyl happened when I was 8 years old. I can remember it being discussed in the same sentence with Three Mile Island, over and over again. I was an odd little kid, so I went to the library and researched TMI and found out that it was basically a tempest in a teacup. I just remember being disappointed that the Russians beat us.
Lmao
WHEN THE RUSSIANS:
😂😂😂
you can bet on that. Nobody beats Russians in terms of ecological disasters
@@sakesaurus1706 Except USA, China, Japan, UK and India if you look at facts and history. Also, Chernobyl is in Ukraine, not Russia. I guess you could put the blame on Russians by doing some mental gymnastics and calling all Soviets Russians, but it's worth remembering that Ukraine was one of the founding nations of USSR and as much to blame for all the bad that USSR caused as the other founding nations and willing participants of the Soviet Union.
The more I learn about this sort of thing, the more I realize that nuclear power vs fossil fuel power is sort of like air travel vs car travel. Overall, air travel is actually safer, but it does have the small chance to go *catastrophically* wrong, and if that happens (or is believed to happen) it sticks in public consciousness, leading to a perception that it's actually a lot LESS safe than the alternative. Even though the incident isn't usually caused by inherent danger, rather, it is more often people cutting corners.
i swear this series of videos has got to be one of the best on youtube, it's just so fascinating and interesting, and you do an amazing job at telling the facts, story, and explaining everything.
you say thanks for watching, i say thanks for making these videos. thank you!
I'm doing Nuclear Physics at university and it honestly angers me how misunderstood nuclear energy is
With how hard the world is pushing wind and solar instead. I'm afraid it will never be properly understood within our lifetimes.
Such wasted opportunity due to misplaced fear.
@@SuperCatacata I wouldn't say misplaced. I would say some have a different opinion.
There are 2 facts:
1) a major accident with many fatalities can't be 100% avoided
2) we don't know what's gonna happen to the waste.
We have plans for both but whether you think they are good enough or not is not a matter of facts but of opinion. Let's just say there is a 0.001% risk every year for the next 10000 years that the waste will kill a large amount of life. Is that high? I can understand why people want something that will not have unforeseen sudden effects in a few thousand years. Not even global warming will, because that won't suddenly change things. It will get worse over tone but it's not like we're keeping it under control but in 792 years temperature will suddenly jump up by 10C.
@@LuLeBe those are two misplaced fears not facts
two facts would be:
1) more people have died to alternative energies than the 3 major nuclear failures combined
2) waste is safely stored
@@LuLeBe have you thought about applying the same logic to other energy sources? Just saying, nothing is without risk, and lives will be lost no matter what. The real question is how do we manage the risks associated with each form of energy. I would encourage you to research this subject skeptically. I have encountered both inflated and deflated statistics surrounding nuclear safety, but I personally believe modern nuclear technology makes it safer in terms of death or injury per kilowatt-hour than any other current source.
Also, on the subject of nuclear waste, GeoEngineer has a fairly readable article on past, current and proposed methods of radioactive waste disposal. This is not a new problem, and solutions do exist.
I have two favorite myths people have told me concerning nuclear power. The first is that radiation is infectious, like a virus. The second is that it will never ever stop being radioactive for billions and billions of years. To be fair, that approaches truth for a large enough sample size, but have you ever tried to explain exponential decay and Permissible Exposure Limits to a skeptic? Much less try to explain the difference between low, intermediate and high-level waste. I can see the glossed-over eyes now.
Thank you so much for this one. I saw Netflix's fear mongering "documentary" about it and was annoyed that even in this day and age we still struggle to get past this strawman.
To be fair, one of the main people that was interviewed explicitly stated that he still believes in the future of nuclear energy despite everything that he has been through, but claimed that the only proper way to ensure the safety of nuclear energy is by nationalising the industry to ensure that all the safety regulations are followed as the profit motive incentivizes companies to cut corners in regards to safety. And he has a point.
@@GTAVictor9128 He says that at the very end after the viewer was already bombarded in misleading info or straight up lies.
@@FutureMartian97 I disagree, that they are straight up lies, they are their experiences and THEIR truths, and many of which suffered cancers down the line because of the profits of higher ups, and the reputation of higher ups was more important than fixing the issues that was clearly pointed out weeks prior. I watched the full documentary with an open mind, empathy, and critical thinking on what was possible and what was possibly ego driven. I was alarmed as soon as Kyle Hill said the situation was harmless though... it harmed a community of people's trust, and some of their lives in general, and no clue on how much it would impact generations to come. With how our world is being run, I don't have a lot of faith in humanity to actually care about people's lives over their own pockets. So I don't know if we'll ever have the capacity to actually improve the industry, but I would assume not in my lifetime, and I'm already 7 years passed my expiration date (non-related illness).
@@Nekomancer_Evei Their "truths" are not what is factually correct. The cancers were not caused from the accident, this has been proven time and time again. You obviously do not understand radiation exposure just like many of the people in the documentary. They were more likely to have gotten cancer from the coal plant that is just few miles away from TMI that the documentary just so happens to not mention. I don't know if you are aware of this but you actually get more radiation exposure from living within 50 miles of a coal plant than you do living next to a nuclear plant. Not to mention the sheer pollution from said coal plant constantly being pumped into the atmosphere. There is also one blatantly obvious lie at the very end cards where they say no new reactors in the US received licenses after the incident. The nuclear plant I can see from my house opened both units in 1988, and that plant wasn't the only one to open after TMI. There have also been multiple license renewals like Dresden and Quad cities in the past year alone.
The documentary was an anti-nuclear hit piece designed to scare people and ride the hype train that the Chernobyl miniseries started.
@@GTAVictor9128 it was the government that helped cover it up lmao
The root cause of TMI was the lack of proper training for the reactor operators. They didn't understand thermodynamics as well as they should,which caused them to not believe their instrumentation. The nuclear industry make corrections to training across the board and a repeat of this incident shouldn't happen again.
This is done so well.
Thank you!
Also, the dead pan comedy one-liners have not fallen on deaf ears.
Nicely done, this channel for the win!
🙌🏼🤙🏼
When this happened, my dad, an engineer, explained what happened to me and that the news media was full of crap.
The news media has not learned from its mistakes and 40 years on they are even MORE full of crap than back then! But lets hold scientists & engineers to a higher standard, shall we?
What happened was they didn't understand what was going on and that's scary.
Did he explain This video is full of BS. That 3 month old multi billion dollar plant was totally trashed, cost $1 billion to just clean up the melted fuel and Kyle outright lied in saying it was cleaned up in 1993 as the containment is so contaminated that it is not even scheduled to be cleaned up till 2039, 60 years after the event. And Kyle says it was no big deal
@@susanhp6690 I think a better way to explain it is that the company was so busy fixing the problem they didn't really care much about the public outcry and media storm happening around them. I mean nuclear physics is a far more nerdy field in the first place with a high education ceiling than most things.
@@Skylancer727 that's why the company has not so nerdy people dedicated to prevent that the "ignorant masses" prevent the extremely useful nerds from working, that's what you pay them for...
One of my close friends who now has a PHD and is a college professor and an EMT was a young girl living within the evacuation zone of 3Mile Island but didn’t evacuate because her mom was a nurse at the hospital and they were ordered to stay in case the worst happened. I’ve also had the rare chance opportunity to meet someone who was a Chernobyl liquidator. It’s so surreal when you meet people who were actually at events like these and to hear their stories. Btw great videos keep doing what your doing Kyle.
My surreal experience is seeing an air quality display in the center of a major city, showing everything several times above limit, and everyone is just ignores it. I was thinking if radiation were above the limit just a little bit, the entire city would have been evacuated immediately. It's an extreme double standard.
@@andrasbiro3007 nope. Around the duck and cover era, they figured out more people would die in an evacuation - just from the evacuation, than would be harmed in any way by the disaster at hand.
I live around 3 miles from TMI, the unit I shuttered a couple of years ago. Pity, the steam plume from the cooling system was an excellent landmark for navigation.
I am a bit more radioactive than my kids are, but considering I was born a week after Tsar Bomba, during the atmospheric testing madness era, of course I am. I've actually saw that on a gamma camera when I had to get my thyroid checked. Checked by taking a capsule with I-131 in it.
I was ever so tempted to visit the PX at Barksdale AFB after that, but nah, when it comes to nuke capable bases, they have absolutely no sense of humor...
@@spvillano
But why don't they apply the same logic to nuclear accidents?
@@andrasbiro3007 for nuclear accidents, it comes down to tonnage of soil to sequester. Think of a small area, say 100 square miles, where you have to scrape off the top two inches of topsoil. That's a hell of a lot of dirt!
And its longevity, unless one is growing food there, isn't exceptionally great overall. Fukushima's most radioactive residential area has reopened for homeowners to return again.
I love these styles of your videos..with the light ambient music in the background, so wonderful
Love your videos Kyle, very well-researched and a lot of effort put in them.
10:00 "...and never fewer than 52 alarms blinking at all times." This literally made my heart start beating faster. I know from experience that there are certain false alarms that show up regularly, and that large specialized machines usually behave a little differently than the designer intended, but... FIFTY-TWO???? How would anyone ever spot the real problems?
Very true it’s called alert fatigue, happens with nurses
You have to group the clusters of alarms and look for the thing that's eating your lunch. Check levels, check reactivity, check pressures (RCS and Containment), check to see all expected isolations occurred based on the input signals.... yeah, its a long list. But if you know how to run the systems, it becomes easier to spot what's unexpected.
Homer Simpson
Forget spotting problems, how did ANYTHING get done with all those blinking lights.
@@erikl9146 I was about to say that this is an issue in medical errors, and its not just nurses. To many alarms for too little reason and not enough difference between the alarms for serious and certain issues vs. unlikely and minor ones is the rule in medicine not the exception.
You missed such a monumentally important part about this entire debacle: WHEN it happened. 1979 was smack in the middle of the Cold War, when an unstoppable nuclear annihilation was on the horizon at any given moment. The people who watched Bert the Turtle duck and cover under a picnic blanket from a thermonuclear bomb became stressed, terrified adults with families in the Harrisburg area.
The response to TMI wasn't just a reaction to nuclear energy but the cold war in general. Sadly, nuclear power got caught in the military posturing and brinksmanship of the 20th century that left the American public with zero tolerance for anything radioactive in aggregate.
That nuclear accident film had just released, I forget the name. It had people on edge.
Why so stupid?
You state; "Sadly, nuclear power got caught in the military posturing"
I'm sorry, but I'm one who really doesn't like the way this country does nuclear. I believe it could be done safer and less likely to be made into bombs which I believe is truly what using uranium is about. But it's just my opinion and we know about those! LOL
Not being a scientist I also wonder what would happen to all these plants were the power be shut off through the entire country for a length of time.
There should be no tolerance for anything radioactive. Nuclear power is "unlikely" to fail, but when it goes we get Chernobyls and Fukushimas. We should be using solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal power.
@@chrismanuel9768 Actually if we count the deaths from nuclear energy as well as accidents (which are minimal if any) per TWh generated and set that against deaths caused from any of the other clean energy sources per TWh generated we see that nuclear energy is just as safe if not safer than them. There are accidents with hydro power that kills thousands, but we don't talk about those because there isn't the same stigma towards hydro as there is towards nuclear.
On top of this hundreds if not thousands are saved every year thanks to nuclear power replacing energy that would be generated through coal or oil with a zero carbon energy source that has a stable energy output, can be active for an extended period of time without much downtime and can generate an enormous amount of power in comparison to the amount of space it takes up and cost of fuel.
While most people who are against nuclear power are so because they fear the consequences and is really just trying looking out for everyone the truth is that nuclear power is currently one of the safest ways to generate electricity and possibly the only way we can minimize the effects of global warming, something that will kill millions and eradicate hundreds of species.
If you wish for any of the sources for my claims I would gladly send them in the comments here since I do not expect anyone to just belive my word but my only wish is for everyone to have an open mind and at least try to see things from another perspective from time to time.
You do such a great job explaining everything, thanks for providing your videos. Very informative 😊
I remember this. All of us within several hundred miles could get T-shirts saying "I survived TMI".
My father designed nuclear ship propulsion & knew the safeguards built in, used, & maintained, making it pretty safe. We'd even been to Peach Bottom to see how they worked. Later in life I met someone who studied nuclear science & engineering to combat the "danger", only to find that it was actually pretty safe. Chernobyl was different because of the Russian culture of infrastructure neglect & blame gaming until someone is found to pin it on, instead of actively fixing the problem first.
Don't forget that nothing in life is perfect.
In a way, the totally irrational and unfounded anti-nuclear fear caused by this PR disaster might have statistically killed more people than the accident, by delaying the development and deployment of nuclear energy, and necessitating the use of more fossil fuel.
hot take 🔥🔥
@@elijahstorm9740 ice cold take, actually. It's absolutely true. Hell, it might have even killed more people from radiation poisoning to stop the nuclear momentum. Coal contains radioactive isotopes & people who live near coal plants have higher rates of cancer.
You're not wrong. We go to nuclear, and stop funneling oil money to fundamentalist groups in the middle east. Problem is, it would kill the petro-dollar and a lot of friends of a lot of powerful people would go broke. They'd also lose a lot of money from pushing "green" energy that produces more waste than it saves, and funds some of the worst cartoon teddy bear run regimes in the world.
That was the entire point of blowing the accident out of proportion
@@elijahstorm9740 Not really a hot take when pollution causes millions of premature deaths every year.
TMI engineers: So let me get this straight... You designed a system of safeties and fail-safes...
"Uh huh"
... That can automatically prevent a core melt down?
"Yup!"
... So when it triggered, you shut off the emergency system?
"That is EXACTLY what we did!"
...
"What?"
... BRILLIANT!
The operator’s training was based on naval reactors. These are small enough for natural cooling to deal with decay heat. Utility scale reactors need forced cooling at all times. Remove that flow and you will destroy the core. Plant design and operational procedures should deal with the issue. TMI and Fukushima were both failed by poor designs in both areas.
@@davidelliott5843 I think it's worth pointing out that the Fukushima reactor was supposed to be built farther away from the coast. That was part of the original design. However that cost more money. It wasn't bad design it was bad implementation.
If you rally want to boil it down it was greed that is responsible for what happened.
They tried to blame my brother because he made the valves including the ones that prevented a much worse problem but it was proven later that the valves worked as designed. In November 1979 someone tampered with the steering system in the car he had driven to a concert and he and his girlfriend and another couple were killed in a accident coming back from a Kansas concert in Shreveport Louisiana.
@@baneverything5580 If this is true, the fact that they would go so far to cover things up is absolutely horrifying. Either way, I'm sorry for your loss.
@@davidelliott5843 Yes. Another reason that the Naval background of the operating crew is critical to the story is that for the reactors they were experienced with OVERFILLING the cooling system would cause a critical failure and so their instincts when the emergency systems continued to flood the system worked against them.
It just shows that bad information can cause panic for so many years and a fear of something could happen if all these bad things happen in sequence at the same time
People still protest against nuclear plants thinking they’re sitting on a bomb, they won’t look into things so they go with what they believe
I was recently on a crew of truck drivers that hauled giant concrete barriers to TMI to aid in the closing and securing of TMI. It’s crazy to think of what happened there not that long ago.
I've been in the nuclear industry for almost 40 years, since shortly after the TMI event. I've run the TMI scenario on a simulator. While I understand the event itself and the operator actions, I was not aware of the extremely poor PR after the event. It's no wonder the public lost confidence in the industry.
Looking at many of the comments both in favour of nuclear power and against, it seems more than clear that the vast majority of people still don't understand the technicalities fundamental to the industry. Perhaps the "normal accident" was the amount of misinformation that would be released by authorities, who themselves didn't understand it.
Don't overlook how the PR failings were exacerbated by a news media eager to play the incident up as Armageddon. The whole TMI incident was clickbait long before clickbait was even a thing. They didn't care about the facts. "If it bleeds, it leads" was the byword back then just as much as it is today, not to mention reporter's personal bias against nuclear power factoring into how they chose to cover it.
@@sean_hare Very good point... Public opinion needs to be factored in as an element of accident control. Even more so now, with the public having greater access to a volume of information, but... Not necessarily having the tools to interpret said information.
A few years after the TMI event I got to meet two young engineers that were in the control room. They worked for Babcox & Wilcox and were sent over to monitor the situation. They said the whole affair was overblown by the media and environmentalists.
@@billwilson3609 If you love outside the Immediate area of three mile island, sure you can feel that way. But I doubt you would feel that way raising your young kids right next to it. Or any nuclear reactor.
Kyle, I was 10 years old when this happened. And yes the stress was real.
My father had worked for Met-Ed subsidiary of GPU and he knew people from the plant and he was not afraid of a meltdown.
I’m so glad you put this out. My father basically retired underneath the vice president of what’s now FirstEnergy around 1998. For years he’s been saying what you’ve described in your video.
People have become so biased around here about nuclear energy it’s ridiculous.
I will share this on Facebook to hopefully change some opinions.
JD
FirstEnergy is a great stock. 👍
I was 11, living in Montreal. We understood your far & I must agree that this incident likely prevented much nuclear power in Canada. In my province of Quebec it appears that a "Slowpoke" reactor remains in use at the University of Sherbrooks, although information is scarce. Our neighbours in Ontario have a few "real" nuclear plants, plus one well-sized one at McMaster University. 5 or 6 commercial, 1 for education, and - maybe - a handful of "Slowpoke" reactors that provide power for a university. For Canada, that is it.
So it’s safe because it melted down but didn’t explode… what you fail to realize is that is bad… that’s all it takes… tmi thankfully was contained… and only didn’t get worse by chance… and few good choices… at anytime those choices weren’t made… it was minutes away from detonating a dirty hydrogen bomb … Pennsylvania would be left as a 20 mile hole in the ground… and much of the east coast would be uninhabitable…. Half lives are not a measure of stored energy in charged particles either… which are released unfiltered directly from the core… the bypass tanks are used for non emergency balance… in a closed loop… all venting of nukes is direct to atmosphere… including any solid particles… if a melting core…
Can we please stop sugar coating nuclear power??? Look for better alternatives than promoting something that is deadly… in any amount… because it is not something we have in our natural world… none of the things used in or produced by the process are safe in any amount… it does damage. Lots of damage.
@@pazsion lol. so what is it, a hydrogen explosion or a 20 mile hole in the ground? yeah, TMI shouldnt be sugar coated, but you left the real world pretty early in your comment
@@pazsion like, the more i look at your comment, its amazing how much you look like you are saying something but none of those words go together
Dude, your narration is so good. Clear and consise, well modulated, and a soothing tone. Very nice.
They turned off the HPSI (high pressure safety injection) pumps because their procedures told them to. The design of the TMI HPSI pumps was such that their max pressure was above the lift point of the PORV (power operated relief valve) and turning them off was a measure taken to prevent the Reactor system from going to a solid water condition and dumping coolant to the pressure relief tank. That tank has a blow out panel designed to break under high pressure and hence the reactor coolant ends up on the containment floor.
TMI is a Westinghouse design and all Westinghouse designs at the time worked like this.
I spent 22 years in Control Room operations with a Combustion Engineering design starting 1 year after the incident.
I know this is an old video but if anyone has questions I'd be happy to answer.
Sure. How do modern nuclear reactors work then? Do modern nuclear engineers also have to balance between liquifying coolant and venting too much of it out of the reactor?
@@roadent217 I've been retired for a bit so I don't know if the Westinghouse design has been modified in any way. The Combustion Engineering design has it's high pressure injection pumps shut off head at 1200 pounds and the power operated relief valves set to 2400 pounds. Therefore the high pressure injection pumps can't overpressure the system.
Flawless story telling execution. I love your videos man. Love the pro nuclear stuff as well. It’s one big part of our energy future and people like you are making more and more people aware of the misunderstood past.
For all the missteps and misapprehensions I feel blessed to live in an age when alchemy machines are real and have saved millions of lives by providing clean energy. And I can hope the passive safety strengths of next gen reactors may make that future brighter still
Hello legit verified channel.
Not only are you my favourite FPV pilot, you're sensible af about nuclear power too. I wish my country would embrace it. Climate change wouldn't even be as much of a thing if the world had taken a different path and gone at least 70% nuclear, like France did.
I'm a big fan of your fpv drone videos and am building a Mr Steele frame for trout fishing vids in the mountains
Thorium reactors I’m waiting for lol.
Amazing job! I’ve been reading books, diaries even and you slayed this historic moment of company bulls hat! Great work and keep ‘‘em going❤
Finally got around to watching this. What a powerful and illuminating work. Excellent.
Started listening to an overdramatic podcast about this accident and quickly decided I wanted to know more--but with less sensationalism. I found it here. Thank you for an excellent, very informative presentation!
Then you may want to know that even though Kyle says it was a no never mind, a 3 moth old multi billion dollar nuclear plant was trashed. $1 billion to just clean up the melted fuel and kyle lied , the containment is so contaminated that it is not scheduled to be cleaned up till 2039, 60 years after the accident. I would not consider this YT video to be very correct.
This was great and very informative! That Netflix doc was infuriating to watch. It was pure fear mongering "legitimized" by Michio Kaku. It's sad that your doc won't reach as many people and more people will come to fear Nuclear power. Most people if you explain it in a way that they can easily understand tend to loose their fear of it. They will probably still be rightfully cautious but that's a good thing. Heck I watch plane crash docs because they explain how things led up to that point and failed and how we fixed it. I was never scared of flying but now I'm even less so because I understand.
This video could have been better. Assume people watching it only know of the horror stories shared and nothing else. The video starts by talking about everything that went wrong and it's not until the end where it was mentioned that xenon isn't dangerous. If the video had started with a partly detailed explanation of how radiation is dangerous then explained the accident and how none of the conditions needed for radiation to be dangerous were met then people would probably be more accepting of the video. But that would require repeating a lot of the same information in videos like these but if you want to change peoples opinions it's something that has to be done. A lot of people probably wouldn't have made it halfway through the video before deciding confirmation bias "TMI was dangerous".
@@namename9998 this is the 13th video in a series. The criticisms you are leveling are invalid as it clearly states its part of a series where those things have been previously defined. To reiterate it at the beginning of EVERY video in the series is ridiculous and unnecessary.
@BulletWilliam i watch air crash investigations for the same reason. I still don't like flying but thats because i hate sitting still for long periods of time like required for flying more than an hour and im slightly scared of heights which doesn't help the approach to the airport of my capital city (approach is over the water and in the case of approaches from the north includes a 180° turn over the water)
I couldn't even finish the Netflix documentary, I quit after episode two. As a not-at-all nerdy hobby I study nuclear reactors, and you cannot do that without reading about Three Mile Island or Chernobyl at some point. Since I bothered to actually read the extensive report about TMI, I was absolutely gobsmacked by what I saw. Even obvious conspiracy theories were presented as factual. And every other minute there was a "Nuclear Bad!" punchline with accompanying scary music to drive the point home to the unsuspecting viewer. The worst of it all? The poor TMI reactor didn't do anything wrong at all! It scrammed when it was supposed to. It was a faulty stuck open valve, combined with a badly designed control room and poorly trained staff that made matters much worse than they should have been. And this goes double for the Chernobyl accident. The way the Unit 4 staff absolutely manhandled that reactor to catastrophic failure, combined with Soviet design flaws and shoddy build quality, leaves one gasping for air. How could they ever think that it was going to end well?!?
Being cautious is never a bad thing around powerful technology. We have to treat reactors with the respect they deserve. They are extremely powerful machines that can do wonderful things for us if we give them the proper care and respect. From where I'm sitting we need nuclear power as a clean energy source. Renewables like Solar/ Wind alone are not going to cut it.
@@cassandrakarpinski9416 1-you shouldn't be expected to watch other videos in order to understand the current one (at least in this series) 2-based on the titles they wouldn't be relevant to this video.
3-By 0:55 it's already mentioned "getting half as hot as the surface of the sun so began the worst accident in the history of the u.s nuclear industry". That would turn many away who were already afraid of the stuff.
4-As for being a part of a series the only mention of it being in a series is a title card at 1:47. Many people have videos playing in the background so they wouldn't have seen that card. It's not even included in the title ("America’s worst nuclear accident: Three Mile Island")
5-As for previously defined, which video discusses nuclear medicine exposing people to dangerous levels of radiation in order to save lives (and the long term effects of radiation therapy)? It doesn't matter if it seems ridiculous if your goal is to alleviate fears that's why it's better to give good news first because if the bad was first the good news wouldn't matter.
6-The beginning can be the same but relevant to the topic like the part about xenon should have been moved to the beginning ("the type of radiation released was xenon and these are the reasons it wasn't dangerous..."
He didn't provide anything new to the topic but he did cause more questions to be asked and it's probably the same for the other videos.
"The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power station in Pennsylvania released a large quantity of the radioactive noble gas xenon-133 into the surrounding environment."
"Xe 133 decays by beta and gamma emissions"
"How much concrete does it take to block gamma radiation?
To reduce typical gamma rays by a factor of a billion, according to the American Nuclear Society, thicknesses of shield need to be about 13.8 feet of water, about 6.6 feet of concrete, or about 1.3 feet of lead."
"Radioisotopes with short half-lives are dangerous for the straightforward reason that they can dose you very heavily (and fatally) in a short time. Such isotopes have been the main causes of radiation poisoning and death after above-ground explosions of nuclear weapons."
If xenon was safe then why would you need 6.6 ft of concrete or 13.8 ft of water to block it. Being a gas it would seem more dangerous than solids.
What was the time stamp that this was mentioned in the video about the Goiânia accident
"Doctors use radioactive cesium chloride salt, which contains the isotope cesium-137, to irradiate blood before it is given to patients in blood transfusions. The radiation is aimed at preventing transfusion associated graft-versus-host disease (TA-GVHD), a rare but nearly always fatal complication to blood transfusions, in which transfused white blood cells attack the recipient’s tissue. This treatment helps to save lives, and in the United States alone, 500 blood irradiators irradiated almost 2 million blood units in 2013."
And when was it discussed in that video that there isn't a need to stop using cesium because of security issues (DSHS Texas has a page explaining why you don't have to worry about potassium iodide and dirty things).
What was the time stamp discussing The China Syndrome "The March 1979 release was met with backlash from the nuclear power industry's claims of it being "sheer fiction" and a "character assassination of an entire industry".[11] Twelve days later, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. While some credit the accident's timing in helping to sell tickets,[12] the studio attempted to avoid appearing as if they were exploiting the accident, which included pulling the film from some theaters.[13]"
What was the time stamp that clearly stated how many people died because of tmi? When you have stuff like "Dr. Helen Caldicott (letter, Oct. 31) refers to “a New York Academy of Sciences report from 2009” on the Chernobyl disaster when estimating that “nearly a million have already died from this catastrophe.”" it's important to point out what actually happened (KH used a lot of words to say "0 people died because of tmi". He could have done both-simple in the first few minutes and detailed later in the video).
His videos don't put nuclear in a better light even though he is pro nuclear they're just made for people who already like nuclear not for the average person who is more likely to believe Caldicott. All they are is the equivalent of an investigation after a plane crash (planes are the 1st or 2nd safest method of transportation).
If someone were to ask me why tmi was considered dangerous/is rated a 5 in the ines scale I wouldn't be able to answer based on this video (one of the criteria is "Several deaths from radiation." compared to 4 is "At least one death from radiation.". TMI- " An inter-agency analysis concluded that the accident did not raise radioactivity far enough above background levels to cause even one additional cancer death among the people in the area")
It's still a good video but not for the average person who is scared of nuclear.
I love all your content, but this one is so technically compsoed and excellently delivered, its impossible to not understand the conveyed content. Always been fascinated by engineering accident and or disasters.... as an aviation error orrcurance investigator it never fails to astound me the random and almost impossible chain of events and actions which lead to an inevitable accident....
Thank you for a great video.
You do realize the Kyle outright lies. He said it was cleaned up in 1993. The containment is so contaminated that it is not even scheduled to be cleaned till 2039, 60 years after the accident.
Does anyone simulate all possible action to identify corner case?
@@DrDeuteron what is a corner case?
I met one of the investigators. A single unit failed and the computer worked around it, then the operators failing to recognize the problem continued to shut down valves the computer was opening to maintain the cooling system until finally the computer ran out of options to protect the reactor and the meltdown started. Extreme case of stupid operator error.
I find accident investigation absolutely fascinating. The study of error-chains especially in my old industry of marine engineering. So many incidents and accidents blown completely out of proportion due to poor communication and/or P.R.
I started watching documentaries that investigate accidents like these, after I watched one about the Bhopal disaster in India, and I love it.
Especially if the press gets their hands on it. The media likes to take the barest, sketchiest details imaginable - whatever they can get their hands on to be the "first ones in the know" - and use it all to string together a probably completely inaccurate account of an event, based upon supposition by uneducated people who aren't skilled in the specific area in question.
@@ElZarigueyo Yeah that one was terrifying when I watched it as a 10yr old.
I was 10 years old at the time, and heard all the horrible news on tv and in school. Interestingly, my Dad was transferred to Kirtland AFB the next year. I remember saying something about the "disaster at 3 mile Island" in my teens, and my Dad simply said that "wasn't what happened." in retrospect, working at Kirtland a year after TMI happened would probably garner a more balanced story of what happened than what the media presented.
What happened is that a 3 month old multi billion dollar power plant had a partial meltdown. It cost $1 billion to just clean up the fuel and the containment was so contaminated that they do not expect to clean that up till 2039, that is 60 years after the event. It would have been worst if the core would have had more age on it.
Kirtland afb must have been a culture shock at that age. Im native to the area and at 18 saw trees everywhere for the first time and was the only light skinned guy in a Walmart. I wondered if black people feel like they stuck out. No one even looked at me. I love seeing everything through different lenses and understanding different perspectives. If only everyone did that.
@clarkkent9080 I think you misunderstood some stuff, it's nuclear clean up is complete, the core has already been removed that was 14 years of hard work finished in 1993, the building sat dormant since, with some usable parts being refurbished and sold to other npp in the country. Now that both are closed and the process of removing and decommissioning has started ractor 1 will finish decommissioning in 2079 while the rest of reactor 2 will be finished in 2052. Decommissioning isn't cleaning up nuclear material from the incident, but removing everything. Including any and all machinery, like control panels, backup generators, pumps, and miles of wire and pipe. There are of course more radioactive stuff that needs to be properly disposed of, but not from the incident. They aren't treating this like a regular building or like cpp or damns, were you removed the most central component and leave everything else for nature, and I imagine instead of throwing it all away they will sell and refurbish what they can to other npp in the country. Speculation they may be by law required to removed everything they can. Either way they are removing everything they can which is why it will take so long.
I think you have the best "narrator voice" of all the videos I've seen (and I've seen probably 100 in the last 6 months). Time to binge!
Thank you for making great videos!
i love it when people explain stuff with actual math and science :) it is just so satisfying
Mood
And unfortunately so rare, too!
Math and science is a great way of obfuscating information from lay people.
He just read the breakdown of reports and known events. Not sure if much math and sci went into it beyond talking of the chemistry of gasses mentions and their impacts. But again came from what was written by people at the time
your father fired approximately 40 to 500 million sperms into your mother giving you a .025%-.002% chance of existing and you were the fastest sperm cell in your father's testicles to reach the oocyte produced by your mother's ovaries during their act of coitus on one fateful night where they performed a mating ritual followed by sexual reproduction that resulted in your chance existence into this world to read me describing your parents having sex.
Math and science are awesome, huh?
I watched this doc on Netflix and had to suppress laughter the whole time lol. It was like a big ol' shock factor documentary meant to make nuclear power look bad.
Netflix has a habit of digging up old controversies that the media lied to the public about and reporting on said lies like they were fact decades after they've been debunked repeatedly. They did the same shit with Michael Jackson.
I haven't watched it, but that sounds less funny and more infuriating to me.
My friends and I who grew up in the Yocumtown area (one of them still lives in one of the houses you see in the Goldsboro shot, on the left before you reach the town square) were laughing out loud ever time we saw that particular shot. It was so played up to be dramatic which was a hysterical juxtaposition from the years we spent there watching the train go by, swimming in the creek, playing baseball, and playing emulators. It's just Goldsboro, not some horrific nightmare town! LMFAO
Strongly disagree. It illuminated the shady business of private energy. Where there is money there will be death.
@@husskiii Yeah. All those zero deaths that resulted from the 3MI incident. Such a tragedy.
Long Island, NY. While this was happening, the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station was being built. When it was completed, everyone was too scared to turn it on and it was decommissioned without ever producing electricity. It cost BILLIONS to build, which the resident are still paying off to this day. 🤦🏽♂️
I consider this America's untold nuclear disaster that not many people know about. It's an interesting story. Look it up.
Edit: "The Proper People" (UA-cam channel) made a video of them exploring the abandoned building.
it wasn't until this video that I realized the cooling towers are NOT where the reactor is at.
And yet the towers are the most iconic part about 3 mile island, and where everyone thinks everything went wrong.
actually no. If you think cooling towers that are also present at coal and natural gas power plants had anything to do with a reactor, you are one of the uneducated that can be convinced of anything. I am not trying to be mean , just honest.
I've never been against nuclear energy but didn't realize how uninformed I actually was about nuclear power. Thank you for continuing to produce videos like this.
Now your even more misinformed. Congratulations.
I turned 17 on March 31, 1979 and I lived in West Virginia, a little over an hour south of Pittsburgh Pa. I remember these days well. This is a very smartly done video! I remember The China Syndrome movie came out close to this time and had some effect. The fact that there was a partial meltdown was eventually proven. A close call. Thanks! J
Thank you for the story and the support Jeff! Means a lot
Do you remember the radiation tablets they gave out for every 5years for 25 years? It was a pleasant reminder. Wasn't it🙂
I'm a little older but looking at it from the outside I am surprised and a bit disappointed that Jimmy Carter didn't tell his country not to worry. You can trust me.
@20chocsaday it's crazy to realize we once had a president who understood nuclear energy.. now we can't get one who can pronounce the word nuclear
I'm a bit younger, and I remember when we went over US history we addressed nine mile island as a footnote of one week..it was a kinda odd day at school when our teacher went over the facts rather than the controversy a good chunk of us had known. Also nice to see someone else within 24 hours of being a April Fools baby.
I really enjoyed this video and I learned a lot. Thank you for all your work. When the Three Mile Accident happened I was a parent with young children living in south Jersey only a hundred-odd miles east of (and downwind of) TMI. The aggravation and stress due the conflicting and often phony-sounding information spewed out from the media (and near total lack of information updates from any local government sources) still bothers me deeply right up until today.
How are they gonna say nuclear energy is more dangerous than coal energy. Like nuclear power only rarely causes problems, meanwhile, coal causes guaranteed problems.
I was nine when the Three Mile Island accident occurred. I remember the words "Three Mile Island," I remember that nuclear energy was involved, and I remember being afraid.
Watching this and knowing that nothing terrible came of it is comical as a communications and, as you said, public relations catastrophe.
What a tragedy to have corporate greed and secrecy dovetail with the scientific desire to say NOTHING until there is certainty.
Thank you for filling in the gaps of the information I never knew as a child. This was clear, well-done, and fascinating.
A multi billion dollar nuclear facility that was just 3 months old has a partial fuel melt down and it costs $1 billion to just clean up the fuel, it never ran after that and the containment is so contaminated that it is not expected to be cleaned up till 2039, that is 60 years after the accident.
Sure thing, nothing terrible came out of it.
If you think communications and scientific desire issues have been solved just look at the media BS occurring over a simple balloon? Do you think a TMI today would be communicated any better?????
To be fair to the scientists... the journalistic institutions had already proven that, anything the scientists say,will be taken for absolut fact.
So they wanted to be sure that they only spoke absolutr facts.
Yeah. Like at 9 you knew enough to associate "Three Mile Island" and "nuclear energy" and be "afraid" as a result. Especially when the actual ENERGY produced by NUCLEAR REACTORS is heat even or rather especially when there is no accident underway.
The only "fear" 99.9% of people "affected" by the "accident" had when they finally learned of it hours after it was OVER were "blackouts" and higher electric bills.
I was 12 years old when this happened we were about 30 miles away we didn't know if we were going to have to evacuate or not
My grandfather was a chief investigator for the nuclear regulatory commission whenever this happened. A helicopter showed up on his lawn to take him to work that day. My mom asked him if it was as dangerous as they made it out to be on the news, and he said "if it was, do you think id be near it?" I inherited his fed wallet that he carried, looks like the id's you see fbi guys flip open in old movies.
Back in 1986, I was in my 1st year at Carson Long Military Institute in New Bloomfield, PA, about an hour NW of Harrisburg. My dad would drive up from NC to pick me up for a weekend trip every 4 to 6 weeks. One of those trips was to go to Atlantic City for the weekend, but on Friday morning, after he picked me up, we headed down to 3 Mile Island. They had a great visitor's center and discussed the accident in detail. About 8 years later, I started working at DC Cook Nuclear Plant in Michigan. I have always been an advocate for Nuclear Power. I am for wind and solar too. Hydroelectric is great too, went it doesn't stop fish from migrating. But Nuclear Power, is by far the best when the plant is properly operated.
Kyle dude, as an up coming new science guy. I appreciate these awesome documentaries. When I'm getting flooded with the fake science crap that has some how plagued the tube, I escape to here to learn about something new. Keep up the good work buddy.