1 marzo 1979 anni - 3 mile island accident

Descrizione:

Three Mile Island: A nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, where a reactor core neared meltdown in March 1979. The incident at Three Mile Island triggered a major slowdown in nuclear plant construction, though the United States is now the leading global nuclear power producer.

A brewing controversy over nuclear power foreshadowed that schism. In the 1950s, Americans had greeted the arrival of atomic energy with delight, imagining the many benefits of inexpensive electricity from splitting the atom. By 1974, U.S. utility companies were operating forty-two nuclear power plants, with a hundred more planned. Given the oil crisis, nuclear energy might have seemed a godsend. Unlike coal- or oil-driven plants, nuclear operations produced no air pollutants, but environmentalists voiced serious concerns. Reactor meltdowns loomed as potential catastrophes, and radioactive waste could poison the earth for centuries. Nuclear fears ratcheted up in March 1979, when the reactor core at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, came close to meltdown. More than 100,000 people fled their homes. A prompt shutdown saved the plant, but the near catastrophe enabled environmentalists to slow the rapid expansion of nuclear energy. After the incident at Three Mile Island, no new nuclear plants were authorized for thirty years, though a handful that were already planned were built in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite this slowdown in construction, today nuclear reactors account for 20 percent of all U.S. power generation, and the United States is the leading nuclear energy producer in the world.

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