Thomas,
I wanted to shed a little light specific to the Three Mile Island accident. The radiation release from TMI was extremely small. No-one actually died from from the TMI accident itself (though according to some sources there were some deaths due to people evacuating). The TMI accident was mostly a crises due to high-level media involvement (the President went there to assist--he was a nuclear engineer by training) and the release of the movie "The China Syndrome" just a few days before.
Please understand, I am not trying to be argumentative, but the history of energy is an area of specialty for me (I have a masters in history and am doing some post-graduate work involving the history of energy, especially nuclear energy). Nuclear energy is one of the most feared and misunderstood forms of energy ever devised. But specific to TMI, it was really a vastly more minor issue than reported (and remembered at the time, especially by
local residents). It does highlight some of the limitations of the specific form on nuclear energy that we use today which is mostly based on pressurized water as a coolant. Essentially, no major technological advances have been made in the generation of nuclear power since the advent of the pressurized water reactor that had its roots in the 50s and was instigated by the US Navy which was looking for a good way to power submarines free from the need to surface periodically. Pressurized water did/has worked well for the Navy, especially for submarine propulsion. This technology was the fore runner for commercial nuclear power plants.
I am not trying to revisit an older
thread regarding nuclear energy which started out with many differing ideas/opinions yet was composed of highly civil discourse before things got ugly, but the nuclear industry is extremely regulated and has an excellent track record. Coal has a vastly worse track record and also kills people slowly (think asthma and COPD, etc.). Oil is similar. Even renewables are not perfect. The history of energy and its impacts is a highly intertwined, convoluted topic and it is very difficult to disentangle all the different interrelated factors. But nuclear has had an enviable track record for safety. Using pressurized water for a coolant is a problem for me. There are other forms of nuclear that do not rely on pressurized water and I support research on those types of nuclear. There are even some types of nuclear that are practically green by most any reasonable comparison to virtually any other form of energy.
For the record, I am not uncritical of nuclear energy, but neither am I a nuclearphobe. I do try to look clear-minded at these types of controversial topics, and as the history of energy is a great interest to me, I have to consider nuclear in the context of historical energy for my own research purposes. Like virtually every other member of Permies, I long for a day when we use only energy made from a benign source which ideally leaves no visible
footprint on the ground. Given findings of my own research, I can not personally rule out some advanced form of nuclear as being one of those sources. But it would not be the pressurized nuclear we use today.
Please don't take this offensively. I am only trying to shed some light on a controversial issue that almost always divides, never unites. I am writing this solely to illuminate and not to criticize. The TMI accident was very small in the grand scheme of accidents and by itself, no-one was killed, injured or made ill. I hope that if you are reading this you understand my intentions.
Eric
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