The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the U.S. was a partial meltdown.
The original No Nukes concerts, held after the Three Mile Island accident, helped derail the growth of nuclear power in the United States.
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After 1979's Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, it took more than two years before operators were able to get a camera into the reactor to examine its condition, he said.
Peter Bradford, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, said the accident exposes shortcomings in risk analysis as well as engineering.
In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, the NRC was strengthened to withstand much of the political and industry pressure that existed prior to 1979, and has mandated reforms and requirements that have cost the industry plenty, more than any other energy sector.
And although a growing nationwide movement in favor of nuclear power exists, no new plants have been announced since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
The nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, for example, elevated the importance of environmental risk factors in the markets.
The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island was much smaller in scale, and emitted far less radioactive material into the atmosphere.
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Then, just when miners thought there would be a commercial market from a proliferation of civilian power plant orders and plans, came the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.
The attempt by the Lt Governor of Pennsylvania to interfere in the control room of Three Mile Island, and which made the accident worse, was one of the drivers for a strong NRC.
No new plants have been ordered there since the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 (when radioactive gas escaped from a nuclear power plant), though some that were being built were completed.
Even after radiation levels in the Fukushima main control room had spiked to 1, 000 times normal levels, radioactive steam had been vented into the environment, and hydrogen explosions had demolished large parts of two reactor buildings, sending radioactive debris a thousand feet into the air, NISA only raised the threat assessment to level 5 the same as the far less catastrophic accident at Three Mile Island.
That said, Fukushima is already worse than Three Mile Island and closer to the awful Chernobyl accident.
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Still, it would be foolish to ignore the possibility that the repercussions of the present crisis will be made much more far-reaching if it precipitates the sort of panic that took hold after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in 1979 or the oil leak off Santa Barbara a decade earlier.
To be sure, the recent Fukushima meltdown, like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island before it, was a serious industrial accident that will be costly to clean up.
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Bringing back the ghosts of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, investors have decided to shun nuclear energy on fears that the current accident could put a stain on what appeared to be a booming trend in clean energy.
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The government admitted that it is likely to raise the JCO Co. uranium-processing plant accident rating on an international scale to the same as that given the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant catastrophe.
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