The great Nuclear Debate
...ore simply melts. Such an event would release amazing amounts of radioactivity. There are many emergency cooling systems and back-ups to prevent the reactor from getting to meltdown temperatures. One problem that was not stopped was the incident at Chernobyl. The Chernobyl plant reached 150 times its normal power level. The pressure inside the water holding tubes there became so great that finally the plant just blew itself apart. Poor construction and operation of the power plant caused the disaster. The disaster killed 31 people and 20 square miles of land now have to high of radiation for anyone to live there. Some people say that the Chernobyl accident is responsible for many cases of cancer all across Europe. The scientists and environmentalists fighting against nuclear energy use this accident as an example of what can go wrong with a nuclear reactor. But that was not an American made reactor, they used different methods and different reactors than what we do now. Using Chernobyl as an example of what can go wrong would not be a strong argument. A better argument would be three mile island. It actually happened in the US. The accident began about 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant. The main feed water pumps stopped running, caused by either a mechanical or electrical failure, which prevented the steam generators from removing heat. First the turbine, then the reactor automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. In order to prevent that pressure from becoming excessive, the pilot-operated relief valve (a valve located at the top of the pressurizer) opened. The valve should have closed when the pressure decreased by a certain amount, but it did not. Signals available to the operator failed to show that the valve was still open. As a result, cooling water poured out of the stuck-open valve and caused the core of the reactor to overheat. Because enough cooling was not available the long metal tubes which hold the pellets ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. Although the three mile island meltdown happened in the US it was still 25 years ago. So many technological advances have been made since then. Now every par...