Originally posted by Frank Krawczyk:
[qb]I only thought that somnething like this could only happen in Russia..But we also had a near miss, at Three Mile Island in PA.[/qb]
But it didn't happen in Russia. It happened in Ukraine. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Actually, it's a common myth, made even more seemingly "real" by the news, that disasters take place almost exclusively in "Russia" (which is what the whole former USSR is incorrectly, but often, referred to), and that these disasters tend to take place on a more or less regular basis.
But, as you said, the U.S. isn't immune.
It was just lucky that the problem at Three Mile Island didn't progress further than it did. At Chernobyl, unfortunately, some idiot decided to see what would happen by shutting down the safety systems and the cooling water, and wanted to time how quickly it would take to start everything up again. Unfortunately, his "test" drastically reduced the power output of the reactor to far below tolerable levels, which produced a huge amount of steam once the water was reintroduced. Eventually, the steam built up so much that it just blew the lid right off the reactor. If you have seen video of this, it was truly a disaster. Radioactive materials were scattered over a long distance, the radioactive gas has already spread all over Europe. Even the nuclear core had become visible as a glowing mass.
It was very scary indeed.
