Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
old enough may remember the movie
“
The China
Syndrome,
with Jane Fonda. In the movie, which came
out at about the same time as the TMI accident, a core
meltdown occurred and the molten core was supposed
to go on to melt its way through the bottom of the
reactor, through the
”
floor of the building and down into
the Earth, causing terrible things to happen. I don
t
remember how the hero and heroine saved the situation,
but save it they did.
In the real world, the TMI reactor core-meltdown
caused no signi
'
cant harm outside the reactor building
because of safety standards that included a requirement
for a containment building strong enough to hold any
material that came from a damaged reactor vessel.
However, it caused a rethinking of the operating systems
on nuclear reactors, and required the modi
cation of
those already built and the redesign of those under con-
struction. Delays dramatically increased costs and no new
reactors were ordered in the United States after that time.
Nuclear reactors continued to be built in many other
parts of the world until the Chernobyl accident in
.
This did cause much damage and some countries, particu-
larly in Europe, stopped building new reactors, some
planned to shut down their old ones, while others con-
tinued a nuclear power build-up.
Today there are about
nuclear power plants
operating in the United States without the emission of
any greenhouse gases. Replacing one gigawatt of electri-
city generated from coal with the same amount generated
from nuclear power would reduce CO
emissions by
eight million tonnes per year. Nuclear electricity is
available
hours a day,
days a week (called base-load
