The China Syndrome And Why We Wussed Out On Nuclear Power
The China Syndrome was a movie about how dangerous nuclear power plants are that, fortunately for the producers, came out 12 days before the Three Mile Island disaster. You can thank it for why we’re still reliant on coal power.
The name of the movie refers to a downright-preposterous idea that if a nuclear power plant in America melted down, it would melt through the entire Earth and pop out in China. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that there are some holes in that logic.
The timing of the movie coming out tying in with Three Mile Island may have been lucky for the producers, who suddenly had a huge blockbuster hit on their hands, but it was less lucky for boosters of safe nuclear energy. Since that meltdown, the production of nuclear power plants has gone down significantly despite the fact that there were no deaths or even recorded cases of cancer caused by Three Mile Island—the amount of radiation that the people near the plant were exposed to is said to be similar to that of getting an X-ray.
Instead, we had a movie that hysterically made up fake info about the danger of nuclear power and the evil intentions of those behind power plants that turned a relatively minor accident into a huge outcry against nuclear power. And now here we are 30 years later, still skiddish about what is probably the safest and most eco-friendly source of power we’ve got. Thanks for nothing, Jack Lemmon!
Gizmodo ‘79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analogue age gave way to the digital, and most of our favourite toys were just being born.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
maybe this was true back in the day, and we now know that nuclear power is very safe, but now, nuclear power is a pointless expensive stepping stone to true enviromentally friendly renewable energy.
The idea the nuclear power is ‘green’ (hehe as in you will be…) is the same misconception that leads to surprise when hearing a V8 merc beat the toyota prius in the first ‘Greenest car’ tests. because the environmental costs of creating and deposing of the batteries was so high.
“…probably the safest and most eco-friendly source of power we’ve got”
No matter how safe you make it, there’s always the possibility of failure. Failure with other methods of power generation usually mean there’s just no power for a while. Failure with a nuclear power station can mean events like Chernobyl.
There’s also the matter of nuclear waste, which I won’t even bother to go into here.
Sure, if we somehow eliminated those two issyes, nuclear would be fantastic and we should have it everywhere, but we haven’t, all we’ve had recently is a huge push by companies that would stand to make money off the tech pushing it as “green”. Simple as that.
Solar, wind, hydro and thermal are what we need to be getting into. They have the same infrastructure costs and none of the spectacular drawbacks
The safety of nuclear power is now much higher than that of the days of Chernobyl so stop thinking it is a A-bomb waiting to go off. Even if there was a royal f#ck up then there are o many safety systems in place that it would not create a Chernobyl like event.
Nuclear power is safe.
Nuclear waste can be disposed of by burrying it under ground so that it can not affect the enviroment. while burried underground the waste would eventualy lose all of its radiation. this is a better option for the enviroment than masses of coal powerstations.
Saying “we need green power” does not work as we need the power now not in the time it takes to put all of the green power in place, also we have the infrastructure to build a nuclear power plant now.
Also the reason why Chernobyl happened was because they actually turned off the safety systems when conducting a retarded experiment.
If the safety systems where running then that would never have happened.
In today’s nuclear power stations the safety systems are always on.
There is an old Chinese saying about travel that is worth mentioning:
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
With regard to the frequently mentioned “China Syndrome” we have completed the experiment and analyzed the results.
At Three Mile Island, the operators took action that stopped all cooling flow within minutes of full power operation and did not restore that cooling until many hours later. In the interim period, more than 40% of the core melted because of decay heat. In other words, the accident was not a near miss; the core experienced a substantial meltdown.
One of my good friends, Ted Rockwell, was one of the leaders of MPR Associates, an engineering company assigned to the clean up and analysis of the effects of the event.
He told me that his company was part of the team that determined, through physical examination with remotely controlled tools, that the melted “corium” froze when it contacted the metal cladding of the pressure vessel. The MAXIMUM penetration of that material into the cladding was 5/8 of an inch. There was still more than 8 inches of steel pressure vessel before the core even left its original container. Before the corium could leave the containment vessel, it would have had to penetrate foundations and more than 4 feet of concrete reinforced with thick steel bars.
Since there are approximately 8,000 miles of soil, rock, magma and other assorted materials between Pennsylvania and China, one can compute that the “journey” to China STOPPED after the corium traveled less than 1 of the 507 MILLION inches necessary to make it to the end.
With that data in hand, it is possible to stake my personal credibility on stating that anything close to a “China Syndrome” from a nuclear reactor meltdown is a complete impossibility that can only serve to cause fear among people who have NO IDEA what they are talking about.
You neocon yanks were the surrender monkeys on nuclear power plant construction, the liberal French gutsed it out with ‘logique supérieure’.
China Syndrome and TMI DID NOT kill the nuclear industry in the US. It died five years earlier. That is when all the utililties started canceling plants. The reason. MONEY. The US did not need the elecricity, plants tooks too long to build, it cost 13 percent or more per year to borrow construction money. Therefore, nuclear lost its commercial appeal. By 1979, the year of China Syndrome and TMI, the nuclear industry in the US was already dead. There had been no new orders for years!!! Get the facts right! Stop repeating the old errors.
Sutter> “Failure with a nuclear power station can mean events like Chernobyl.”
No it cannot, unless you repeal laws of physics.
While you present your lack of knowledge (or hidden agenda) by swooning about Chernobyl – successfully operating coal plants in the US without an accident kills at least 24 000 Americans, that is 6x as much people a year as is the maximum conservative theoretical bound of people who could *ever* die because of Chernobyl.
Solar, wind, and hydro are all *more dangerous and risky* than nuclear power, in terms of deaths per unit energy generated. This is a matter of fact, not a matter of hysteria, which the antinuclear industry relies upon. Here is a summary: http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html
Actually the worse accident in energy sector, much worse than Chernobyl, happened in 1975 with relation to one of your favorite renewable energy.