- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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Story time!
In (I want to say) 1981, my dad packed us all in the 1967 Plymouth Fury for a road trip vacation to Hershey, PA, from Illinois. Since it was “on the way,” he decided that we should stop at Three Mile Island.
I’m 11 years old, sitting in the left rear seat, right behind my dad. He pulls the car off of the two lane road onto a wide gravel drive that came up to a tall chain link fence gate topped with barbed wire. Apparently, we were going to Three Mile Island.
There’s a uniformed officer there who steps up to the driver’s window, which my dad has rolled down. He’s standing to the rear of the driver’s door, like a cop would, which puts him right next to my window. The guy’s gun is out of his holster.
“Turn the car around,” he says. Dad: “We were just coming to --” “Turn the car around.” “But we wanted to see --” “The observation deck is over there. Turn the car around.”
Shortly after, there was a picture taken of me from the observation deck in my Reeses Peanut Butter Cups shirt with my arm “resting” on a cooling tower.
Is this being posted because of the Microsoft deal?
I posted it because I read the article, and thought other people might like to read about it too. So tangentially yes.
I’d say inb4 someone who doesn’t know anything about the incident or read the linked page makes a comment about scary nuclear power disaster, but I’m already too late…
I am a DOE licensed nuclear power plant operator. I worked in the engine room of an aircraft carrier for 4 years. I have received an insane amount of training on TMI.
TMI is terrifying, but not for the reasons people think. The qualified operators of the plant were fucking idiots. They didn’t understand that they had reached saturation conditions in the primary loop. Basically, they created a steam bubble where water should have been. They didn’t understand this. They have all the training and experience required to work the water boiling factory and they didn’t understand water boiling. They assumed that their instruments were malfunctioning, that they knew better. If they were in a more serious casualty situation with their incompetence and egos it would have been a disaster.
Brushing off the incident at three mile island as “just a little leak” completely misses the point. Three Mile Island proves that Chernobyl wasn’t just communist incompetence. It can happen anywhere.
I think for most who are anti-nuclear, it’s absolutely human error that makes it scary.
Facts get overshadowed by constant oppressive news cycling. And nuke plants do have a chance of going badly wrong… But even Chernobyl stayed operational in one of its units until December 2000.
Knowledge is power.
