Three Mile Island
Article
Three Mile Island is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 07, 2023 and July 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “terrifying meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl”; “That changed after Three Mile Island, when support plummeted below 40%”; ""the Three Mile Island nuclear plant had its ‘loss of containment’ event"". It most often appears alongside Chernobyl, 1960 Valdivia earthquake, Aaronson.
Metadata
- Category: Places
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: March 07, 2023
- Last seen: July 01, 2023
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Chernobyl (2 shared issues)
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- 1960 Valdivia earthquake (1 shared issues)
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- Aaronson (1 shared issues)
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- activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s (1 shared issues)
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- AEC (1 shared issues)
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- AI (1 shared issues)
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- Atomic Energy Commission (1 shared issues)
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- Bayesian priors (1 shared issues)
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- Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Plant (1 shared issues)
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- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1 shared issues)
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- C. Montgomery Burns (1 shared issues)
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- California (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Here’s an example I think about constantly: activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s felt absolutely sure that they were doing the right thing to battle nuclear power. At least, I’ve never read about any of them having a smidgen of doubt. Why would they? They were standing against nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrifying meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and radioactive waste poisoning the water and soil and causing three-eyed fish. They were saving the world. Of course the greedy nuclear executives, the C. Montgomery Burnses, claimed that their good atom-smashing was different from the bad atom-smashing, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?
The Davis-Besse reactor was a near-twin of reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. If you, like me, grew up in the 1970s and 1980s you might have heard of Three Mile Island, as in 1979 it made some news. The next failure at Davis Besse exactly followed that script: “the pilot-operated relief valve cycled open and closed three times to relieve primary coolant pressure before it stuck open, just like at Three Mile Island.”
I was eight when the Three Mile Island nuclear plant had its 'loss of containment' event. I was 15 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. I understood these events in the same terms an adolescent understands anything: The adults are lying to us. To a teenager, there was no point in entertaining a defense of the industry. The entire enterprise dripped with poison.
Nuclear energy was quite popular in the early 1970s, with support in the US in the range of 70-80%. That changed after Three Mile Island, when support plummeted below 40%. But then, weirdly, in the 1990s support stabilized. Despite Davis-Besse, despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, in the US support for nuclear has stayed roughly in the bound of about 40-60% in the three decades since. Nuclear energy is perhaps unique as a technology, in that no amount of experience seems to change society’s comfort with it. The topic is forever radioactive.