The three Mile Island incident was a horrific accident that started on March 28, 1979 when unit 2 partially melted down. This occurrence that has been dealt with numerous times started a chain reaction of incidents. After the turbine had shut down and radioactive fluids started overflowing the release valves were opened and coolant waters were rushed in. This coolant water cooled the turbines but then was exposed to the radiation. Now there had already been a couple technical errors that occurred leading up to this so the workers there could not get a lucky bounce this day. The release valves that had previously been open had a technical fault occur because of the radiation affecting the wiring. Coolant water that was now radiated …show more content…
The water kept rising and wasn’t being shut off do to yet another technical issue that other instruments were going through sending false readings to the people who were now seeing that the reactor core was not fully covered in coolant so they kept a high water pressure which caused the coolant to flow even more. As water started seeping out the valve workers were finally capable of manually overriding the coolant tanks. With the pressure being stopped from the tanks they were at the right water pressure to cool down the core, at least they thought. There was an unexpected loss of pressure from the water seeping out the still opened valve causing even more pressure to be lost. This small island just off the coast of Pennsylvania had just thought to escape what could have been a catastrophic event. Little did they know that their devices used to give readings on the heat of the core. Now that the core had lost all the cooling water through the open valve it started over heating. The core’s temperature got to the point of which metal pipes that hold the nuclear energy they were making started melting. Nuclear energy, thought to be a great discovery only side effect is radiation poisoning, now starting to be released into the air on Three