Publication Laka-library:
Shut down; nuclear power on trial (1979)
| Author | |
| Date | 1979 |
| Classification | 3.01.0.20/04 (UNITED STATES - SAFETY) |
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From the publication:
Preface Two weeks after the first edition of SHUTDOWN! rolled off the press, one of the most serious accidents in recent history occurred within a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania. It had been a normal, quiet evening for the young, two-man crew that stayed in the control room through the Tuesday night "graveyard shift." Three Mile Island Unit 2 had been on line continuously for over a month. Two hours before the dawn of Wednesday, March 28th it was operating smoothly at 97 percent capacity. Then all hell broke loose. Alarms sounded, warning lights began flashing, and Craig Faust, 32, and Ed Frederick, 29, were jolted into desperate action. A water pump had failed and the lack of water had caused the turbine to stop turning. In just six seconds, pressure on the steam relief valve burst open with such an explosive force that it woke residents of the town of Goldsboro, across the Susquehanna River. The explosion blew radioactive steam high into the air with a long roar like a hot geyser. Nine seconds into the accident the reactor tripped off automatically as pressures inside skyrocketed up, climbing 25 pounds per square inch every second. Steam temperature shot to the top of the scale. In the first fifteen seconds Faust and Frederick pulled and pushed as many as fifty buttons and levers. But they needed more water to cool their rapidly overheating reactor; water that was unavailable because three hand-operated valves had been left closed by maintenance crews who serviced the reactor a few weeks earlier. Faust and Frederick activated the Emergency Core Cooling System, but two minutes later it was shut off. The operators had made a crucial mistake. A pressure level indicator in the steam pipes leading away from the hot reactor had risen sharply and had gone off scale on the high side. The operators thought the system was flooded. Actually it was drying out. The pipes supplying water to the reactor core were shut. The steam relief valve which burst open to relieve the rising pressure now allowed radioactive water to overflow, flooding the floor of the reactor containment building.
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