![]() ![]() This was further aggravated by a bizarre coincidence-a disaster movie called “The China Syndrome” had come out just twelve days ago, which had shown the catastrophe that can hit if there is a nuclear meltdown at a power plant. The company owning the site, MetEd, shut down the reactor and reported the incident to be a minor matter without any safety hazard to the community living close by, to both the government and the press.īut news of radiation leaks found in the form of radioactive iodine found in a nearby location got out, and there was gradually a state of fear among citizens living in the Middletown locality, very close to the power plant. Things started getting worse pretty soon, when high levels of radiation were also noticed in the unit 2 building, and then gradually throughout the premises. This was causing a loss of any freshwater across the reactor, which kept heating up rapidly, and it was also heating up the standing water around it towards boiling temperatures. Soon, a radiation protection supervisor was brought into the facility, and the operators now realized that a release valve in the reactor coolant chamber was stuck open and could not be shut back off. It is made very evident by the interviewees who talk about the incident in the present in front of the documentary crew, that cutting off coolant from a heating nuclear reactor is the worst thing to do at any time. Noticing the rising core temperature in the reactor and the level of water in the chamber shown to be almost full, one of the operators called for shutting down the pumps taking water into the reactor to cool it down. Despite multiple operators being present in the control room, the odd timing of the event, and also the unprecedented nature of it, left all workers confused and baffled about what was actually happening. On the morning of March 28th, 1979, numerous alarms started going off simultaneously in the control room of unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. What is ‘Meltdown: Three Mile Island’ about?
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