Three Mile Island is a distant memory, hardly the stumbling block for nuclear power today. Chernobyl and Fukushima are, on the other hand, fresh enough in people's minds to cause them to fear nuclear power.

I toured a local nuclear plant last year and the majority of the questions from the tour group were not about TMI, but about Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The story of Fukushima is further complicated by a tsunami and an evacuation increasing the chaos and death toll. Chernobyl's story was further complicated by an incompetent and corrupt government. So, the death toll and chaos resulting from both those incidents cannot be blamed entirely on nuclear power.

According to WHO, the population around Fukushima is not in danger of increased cancer risks. Whereas the population around Chernobyl was left in the danger zone for far too long due to government incompetence for that incident to reflect the dangers of Western nuclear power plants, which have much more stringent safety protocols than the old Soviet ones.

By the way, HBO's Chernobyl mini series is a decent watch, despite its flaws. You won't be an expert on nuclear power after watching it, nor an expert on life in a police state, but you will come to see how such a tragedy was created not by nuclear power, but by a corrupt and incompetent government more concerned with maintaining order and the privileges of government officials than with the safety of its people. It's been argued, and not without some merit, that Chernobyl was the fatal wound that killed the Soviet Union.

The design of the Chernobyl reactors was, let's just say, not a good idea. I think it might have been motivated by the idea of dual use (civilian and military, for production of fuels or isotopes), but I'm not sure. In any event, it was a horribly unstable design, and it was probably inevitable that something would have happened eventually, even if they had had good operating procedures. Which they didn't.

A lot of people may not remember Three Mile Island, but they remember The China Syndrome, which was motivated (read: timed to cash in on) Three Mile Island. The movie hugely exaggerated the risks, and that probably effected public perception more than the accident itself. And in an example of Big Lie propagandizing, celebrities got on board to claim that thousands of people had been killed indirectly by the accident, and volunteered their labor to things like the "No Nukes" concert. And so construction of nuclear power in the U.S. was effectively banned for two decades, through the mechanism of hyper-regulation.

All of the commercial power reactors now operating in the U.S., and the control systems that manage them, are based on 1950s designs. The technology has advanced hugely since then, but until very recently, there has been no investment money to build a pilot plant, in considerable part due to the vehement opposition of environmentalists. Make no mistake: the very last thing the environmentalists want is clean, safe, inexpensive electricity. What they want is to wipe out modernity and take humanity back to the Middle Ages.

"The China Syndrome" was released 8 days before the TMI accident. It was remarkable timing and was later marketed to cash in on the incident, but it was clearly not inspired by it.

For anyone whose interested, the Discovery Channel had a show on how the Russians are working with international engineering firms to enclose the reactor at Chernobyl to keep it from spewing out radiation. It’s very interesting what all has gone into it and how many challenges it presents. I think the show was Modern Engineering Marvels. We saw it over the holiday.

Cassandra is a bad analogy... Cassandra was RIGHT

Fayd is correct... I got the timeline wrong. Mea culpa. However, my point is that a lot of people subsequently thought that the movie was an accurate representation of what happened at Three Mile Island.

We tend to be inherently afraid of invisible dangers. People are more scared of sharks than of crossing the street but thousands are killed every year crossing the street but a thousand aren't killed by sharks world wide in a decade. People are afraid of preservatives but without the preservatives the deaths from food poisoning would be high. More people die mining coal in the US in a year than all the nuclear related deaths in history. We are mostly innumerate monkeys howling in the trees when the wind blows.

> So, the death toll and chaos
> resulting from both those
> incidents cannot be blamed
> entirely on nuclear power.

I see the word 'entirely,' but that's still an affirmation that weather, evacuation and government response can or should be relied upon to alleviate suffering in crises.

Disney hired Italian Aldo Rossi to design their headquarters in the 1990's. The result was a famously attractive building... But they nickel'd and dime'd him all the way home.

So when they called again seeking a design for the new ABC Television Headquarters in Los Angeles, he took the job... And his design cues for the result are almost nakedly derivative of the original Chernobyl 'sarcophagus', perhaps the most famous — and despised — building in the world at the time.

(The reminiscent buttresses at the top of the middle section are a favorite flourish.)

This might be the best joke, and deepest fuck-you, in 20th-century architecture. I can imagine then-CEO Eisner and his executive henchmen smiling in the sunshine of the ribbon-cutting, chirping at Rossi—

'Great work, Aldo! Beautiful! It has a contemporary urgency that I can't quite put my finger on... But I love it!'

And it's just sitting there by the busy freeway, snickering, with all its poisonous resentments entombed within. I used to chuckle driving past it everyday.

...that's still an affirmation that weather, evacuation and government response can or should be relied upon to alleviate suffering in crises. ~ Crid at January 15, 2020 2:20 PM

Not in the least. There be monsters.

Back in the day (40 years ago or so) there was a bumper sticker which read "More people died at Chappaquiddick than Three Mile Island."

"And his design cues for the result are almost nakedly derivative of the original Chernobyl 'sarcophagus', perhaps the most famous — and despised — building in the world at the time."

That's hilarious. And you're right; I see the resemblance. I can't think of a more deserving customer. The ironic thing is that the original sarcophagus has since been replaced with a structure called the New Safe Confinement. It looks like an overgrown old-fashioned aircraft hangar.

"More people die mining coal in the US in a year than all the nuclear related deaths in history."

OTHER people. Small-town Deplorables in Appalachia; not the urban elites who actually use the electricity.

"What they want is to wipe out modernity and take humanity back to the Middle Ages."

I call it hairshirt environmentalism. An idea's environmental soundness is solely a function of how much it inconveniences humans.