Talk:Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
          This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:
WikiProject Pennsylvania (Rated Start-Class, Low-importance)
WikiProject Pennsylvania Logo.png This article is within the scope of WikiProject Pennsylvania, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Pennsylvania on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
Start-Class article Start  This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale.
 Low  This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
WikiProject Energy (Rated Start-Class, Mid-importance)
Oil well.jpg This article is within the scope of WikiProject Energy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Energy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
Start-Class article Start  This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale.
 Mid  This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
WikiProject Disaster management (Rated Start-Class, Low-importance)
SanFranHouses06.JPG This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
Start-Class article Start  This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
 Low  This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Accident

Holy shit, what's happened to Wikipedia? Apparently now it's nothing but a shill for Special Interest Lobbyists. Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear incident in American history, and it gets a couple of paragraphs that basically boil down to "Oh, gee, it wasn't really THAT bad, it's just that hippies, communists, and the media blew it all out of proportion." God forbid there should be any actual information, and not just a huge snow-job for the Nuclear Power Industry.

[edit] Details

This page is about the details of the nuclear plant as a nuclear plant, and does not address the accident. The Three Mile Island article deals almost exclusively with the accident, and not at all with the plant. Thus, a redirect is not appropriate. Miros 19:56, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but it needed a better name than "Three Mile Island Nuclear". I gave it the full name provided by the other page and linked to it from there. --Fastfission 23:00, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

good deal. Miros 20:03, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It does not make sense for this article to be separate from the Three Mile Island Accident article. 100% of the users looking for information on the power plant will want information on the accident also.

[edit] Viva la Bam scene?

Wasn't the power station shown in Viva la Bam once?--[jonrev] 05:56, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I noticed a huge increase lately in vandalism taking place in this article. It's coming from one user in particular: 66.154.143.119. I officially applied for page protection...I hope it solves our long-term issue. Wrightchr 12:40, 01 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that by "Vandalism" you mean "people actually trying to add some relevant information". It's hard to believe that your idea of a decent wiki entry for Three Mile Island is "it wasn't as bad as the media made it out to be". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.180.91.207 (talk) 22:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Which is which?

Silly question, but which of the reactors is the dismantled one? The north or the south one? David.Monniaux 20:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Unit 2 is the one that suffered the accident and is decommissioned. I do not know which unit is where geographically. Lwnf360 (talk) 05:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe it is the southern one...Colonel Sev
Judging by the picture and text associated with it at the accident page ("TMI-2, which suffered a partial meltdown, is in the background.") and by looking at the satellite of Google maps I'll say your correct. --brother (accountless user) 2008-07-16 2:29 CEST —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.11.184.2 (talk)
Seconded. While both containment buildings are shown, the cooling towers in the photo are the TMI-2 towers; the TMI-1 towers are in front of and slightly to the left of the photo. HIGHLY misleading. There's a perfectly good photo showing the full facility at the accident page (and denoting which is which); it seems like this photo would be much preferable to the one currently shown. I'm watching this page; if no one objects in a month or so, I'll make this change. --Grndrush (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tags added

This article has no citations or references, so i added the wiki tags, Please add references and citations to prove this article is not solely original research. CrazyRob926 12:18, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Reference 10 cited does not mention anything about 20 workers being treated? Where is the source of this? No other source says anything about 20 workers needing treatment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.154.235.101 (talk) 14:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Clash reference?

I'm not sure you can claim that the line "a nuclear error" is attributed to this particular event... There have been many more (or is there some evidence for this?).jackkenyon1991 20:40, 10 April 2008 (GMT)

[edit] Containment considerations

It should be noted that there was a hydrogen explosion inside the containment as evidence and various instruments recorded the over-pressure. During the incident, the media portrayed a nuclear explosion with a huge mushroom cloud. What happened was a metal-water reaction that created hydrogen gas which did explode but was contained by the containment building which was exactly what the containment was designed to do. The interior of the containment was a mess and it took years to clean up but, again, it did was it was designed to do. Because the nuclear fuel was deprived of cooling water, it melted. It did not burn through the reactor vessel nor the concrete slab of the reactor building as predicted by some ("The China Syndrome") Instead, it melted into chunks similar to a to a load of rocks on a pick-up truck and fell to the bottom of the reactor vessel. Because the pressure boundary of the reactor had been compromised, radioactive gas (Iodine was one) was released inside the containment and was processed by the scubbers before being vented. Some fission products were released to the atmosphere and and some were released to the Susquehanna River. The manner in which the products were released diluted the concentrations and exposure to radiation. Test equipment and permanent instrumentation offsite indicated that exposure to anyone was well below established threshold values. It can, and should be, argued that there should be no release of radiation, that the experts said there would be none. The experts were wrong.

At every juncture in the design of a nuclear reactor, the possibility (indeed, statistical inevitability) of a Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) is studied. That's what happened at TMI-2. Because of poorly designed instrumentation in the control room, operators thought a valve had closed when it had remained open. They allowed the cooling water level in the reactor to go down (uncovering the fuel) for what would have been good reasons had the valve been closed. Had the operators left things alone, automatic systems would have kicked in so as to avoid exactly what happened.

There were many "Lessons Learned" at TMI and it cost close to $1 Billion to clean it up. However, despite everything, the safety systems worked as designed and the last line of defense (the containment structure)worked exactly as it was supposed to work. Human beings reacted to the initial indications as they were trained; when logic told them something had gone very wrong they worked long hours under tremendous pressure to mitigate the accident.

During an exit interview, one of the operators commented on the difficulty of concentrating while an alarm klaxon sounded off at better than 120 decibels and couldn't be turned off. The design engineer evidently thought that nobody should be allowed to turn it off in an extreme situation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.248.251.73 (talk) 08:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

All sounds good, but we'd need to write it in an encyclopaedic style, with references. Thanks, Verbal chat 09:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article cleanup

I cleaned up the article a bit, added missing sections and references. I copyedited the article a bit for better flow and readability. I have marked the places that still need references. I may come back to locate these. Kgrr (talk) 14:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Rogue economists"?

I removed the word "rogue" because it's so obviously biased (and certainly unsupported by the reference at the end of the sentence). If anyone has any objections, please provide ample evidence that describing these authors as "rogue" is justified and not a blatant violation of NPOV. 70.226.78.119 (talk) 19:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The entire sentence has been removed -- didn't belong in this article to begin with. Cgingold (talk) 15:46, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where is it?

The article says Three Mile Island is in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, but that links to a disambiguation page. Can someone clarify which Londonderry it's in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.238.45.90 (talk) 16:25, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Clearly, reading the actual article can be helpful in situations like this, since the introduction indicates which county it is in. However, it goes to show how important continuity of information and thoroughness in detail is in these articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.238.45.90 (talk) 16:40, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Piped link in lead fixed. Qpm (talk) 15:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)