But how does that affect residents living nearby? If you watch the docuseries, it’s easy to understand why people were so concerned at the time of the accident, and still are. The island itself will remain a radioactive site for the foreseeable future. Since Unit 1 was only shutdown a few years ago, the decommissioning process is expected to take until at least 2078. Both Units are working toward decommissioning, but they are owned by different companies.ĮnergySolutions is in charge of the Unit 2 process and hope to be finished by 2037 while Unit 1 was originally owned by Exelon but recently transferred to Constellation Energy. “TMI is going to remain radioactive for the rest of human history,” says Eric Epstein, a Harrisburg-based nuclear watchdog speaking with Lancaster Online.Īs mentioned, decommissioning the nuclear power plant will take decades, likely upwards of 60 years, and even after that, some nuclear waste will likely remain onsite. Even Chernobyl still has areas that are permanently sequestered due to radiation. Unfortunately, radiation doesn’t just go away. The backlash against the usage of nuclear energy after the accident was tremendous and halted the industry’s growth.Īs of 2022, Three Mile Island is no longer in operation and both units are undergoing a decommissioning process that will take several decades to complete. Unit 2 was permanently shutdown after the accident in 1979 while Unit 1 continued to operate until 2019 when it was shut down after the plant had been struggling financially for decades. Unit 1 opened in 1974 and Unit 2 in 1978. Three Mile Island consisted of two units. Is the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant still running?
#Has there ever been a reactor meltdown in the united states series#
Meltdown is a four-part series that explores the incident, how it happened and the eventual fallout. soil, although, thankfully, no one died due to the accident. People did not believe that a major accident could happen, but Three Mile Island became the worst commercial nuclear accident on U.S. For those unfamiliar, the Three Mile Island accident included a partial meltdown of one of the power plant units only a few months after its installation.Īt the time, nuclear plants were being sold as progress toward a better, cleaner future.
The new Netflix documentary series Meltdown: Three Mile Island is out now and streaming on the platform.
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