#Reactor meltdown 2 review movie
#Reactor meltdown 2 review series

#Reactor meltdown 2 review movie

This was further aggravated by a bizarre coincidence-a disaster movie called “The China Syndrome” had come out just twelve days ago, which had shown the catastrophe that can hit if there is a nuclear meltdown at a power plant.

The company owning the site, MetEd, shut down the reactor and reported the incident to be a minor matter without any safety hazard to the community living close by, to both the government and the press.īut news of radiation leaks found in the form of radioactive iodine found in a nearby location got out, and there was gradually a state of fear among citizens living in the Middletown locality, very close to the power plant. Things started getting worse pretty soon, when high levels of radiation were also noticed in the unit 2 building, and then gradually throughout the premises. This was causing a loss of any freshwater across the reactor, which kept heating up rapidly, and it was also heating up the standing water around it towards boiling temperatures. Soon, a radiation protection supervisor was brought into the facility, and the operators now realized that a release valve in the reactor coolant chamber was stuck open and could not be shut back off. It is made very evident by the interviewees who talk about the incident in the present in front of the documentary crew, that cutting off coolant from a heating nuclear reactor is the worst thing to do at any time. Noticing the rising core temperature in the reactor and the level of water in the chamber shown to be almost full, one of the operators called for shutting down the pumps taking water into the reactor to cool it down. Despite multiple operators being present in the control room, the odd timing of the event, and also the unprecedented nature of it, left all workers confused and baffled about what was actually happening. On the morning of March 28th, 1979, numerous alarms started going off simultaneously in the control room of unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Methodical, gripping and well-paced, Meltdown: Three Mile Island is another solid Netflix documentary and well worth a watch.What is ‘Meltdown: Three Mile Island’ about? Alas, Three Mile Island is a timely reminder of that – and a damn good docu-series at the same time. In our hyper-capitalistic world, we’ve seen recently that profits and power is far more important than the livelihood of people. It’s a tale that’s both eerily surreal and concerning in equal measure. Without giving away the whole story, cost-cutting “solutions” almost cause a catastrophic disaster – until one man steps up as a whistle-blower and stops them. history, what’s particularly scary here is how close Three Mile Island incident came to becoming a national disaster.

#Reactor meltdown 2 review series

Those who were gripped by HBO’s Chernobyl series should find themselves equally engrossed here to, with the show capturing that same urgency as the power plant begins to fail.īilled as the worst nuclear incident in U.S. There’s a rather balanced argument here too, with some of the later chapters bouncing interviews off one another simultaneously those in favour of using nuclear energy and those vehemently against it following this accident.Įach of the episode clock in at around 40 minutes or so, allowing for a rather brisk and pacey run-time that’s certainly welcome given how long some of these documentaries have become recently. The four episodes work well together to paint a comprehensive picture of what happened here, including plenty of interviews and eye-opening insight from insiders who recount everything that happened.

Beginning at 4am on March 28th 1979, this significant accident in nuclear power plant history exposed numerous failings along the way, opened the door for anti-nuclear safety concerns and showed a shocking amount of corporate greed and personal issues across the community that are still felt to this day. Specifically, the series dives into the events, controversies and issues surrounding the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennyslvania.įor those unaware, the Three Mile Island accident was caused by a partial meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor. Meltdown: Three Mile Island is a new four-part docu-series on Netflix, centering on a nuclear disaster that gripped the East Coast of America back in 1979.