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Some people here may remember the movie, The China Syndrome.
...allegedly leading to a complete meltdown of the core. Note that in spite of the movie's title, the notion of the core going all the way to China is rebuffed even in the movie.
I never saw the movie until recently, so I never realized that it opened twelve days before the incident at Three Mile Island!
Talk about bad luck for the nuclear industry... and great luck for Hollywood!
Then, four years later came the movie, Silkwood.
Not only that, in 1979 we also saw Love Canal.
This certainly raised suspicion in the public mind in regards to the storage of toxic waste; including the storage of nuclear waste. The point? I just thought it was interesting to note the timeline of these events and the role that they certainly played in helping to shape the public perception of nuclear power.
TV news reporter Kimberly Wells (Fonda) and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) visit the Ventana nuclear power plant outside Los Angeles as part of a series of news reports on energy production. While viewing the control room from an observation room, the plant goes through a reactor SCRAM (emergency shutdown). Shift supervisor Jack Godell (Lemon) notices what he believes to be an unusual vibration during the SCRAM. Checking their gauges, the control room staff finds that water levels in the reactor core have risen to high levels; they begin opening relief valves in an effort to prevent too much water from damaging the plant. However, the needle in the water level gauge turns out to have been stuck, and when Godell taps the glass cover on the gauge, the needle rapidly drops to indicate that the water level is actually far too low, and the core has almost been uncovered. The staff begin restoring coolant systems, but for several agonizing minutes, the crew doesn't know whether the core is undergoing a meltdown or not. Eventually, backup systems are able to raise the water levels, and the reactor is brought under control.
...Meanwhile, Godell, suspecting there to be more to the strange vibration he felt at the beginning of the SCRAM, does some investigating of his own and uncovers evidence that the plant is unsafe. Specifically, he finds evidence to suggest that another reactor SCRAM at full power could cause the cooling system to be severely damaged...
...allegedly leading to a complete meltdown of the core. Note that in spite of the movie's title, the notion of the core going all the way to China is rebuffed even in the movie.
I never saw the movie until recently, so I never realized that it opened twelve days before the incident at Three Mile Island!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_SyndromeThe film was released on March 16, 1979, just twelve days before the real-life events at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. The Three Mile Island accident helped propel The China Syndrome into a blockbuster.[4][5]
Talk about bad luck for the nuclear industry... and great luck for Hollywood!
Then, four years later came the movie, Silkwood.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/silkwood.htmlKaren Silkwood died on November 13, 1974 in a fatal one-car crash. Since then, her story has achieved worldwide fame as the subject of many books, magazine and newspaper articles, and even a major motion picture. Silkwood was a chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee's plutonium fuels production plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, and a member of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers' Union. She was also an activist who was critical of plant safety. During the week prior to her death, Silkwood was reportedly gathering evidence for the Union to support her claim that Kerr-McGee was negligent in maintaining plant safety, and at the same time, was involved in a number of unexplained exposures to plutonium. The circumstances of her death have been the subject of great speculation.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086312/The story of Karen Silkwood, a metallurgy worker at a plutonium processing plant who was purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing blatant worker safety violations at the plant.
Not only that, in 1979 we also saw Love Canal.
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htmThe Love Canal Tragedy
by Eckardt C. Beck
[EPA Journal - January 1979]
Quite simply, Love Canal is one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history.
But that's not the most disturbing fact.
What is worse is that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again--anywhere in this country--unless we move expeditiously to prevent it.
This certainly raised suspicion in the public mind in regards to the storage of toxic waste; including the storage of nuclear waste. The point? I just thought it was interesting to note the timeline of these events and the role that they certainly played in helping to shape the public perception of nuclear power.
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