It is significant to know what happened at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl even though there regardless of the little interest in science or engineering due to many factors. The Chernobyl accident in Belarus and Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania made us aware that the error in technological systems can result in life destructive situations. Even though there are several benefits and gains from advanced technology, engineering and science, it can result in life threatening situations as well in case of fault conditions. These incidents help to understand the …show more content…
Were there similarities? What were they?
There were both similarities and differences in both accidents. The similarity is that both accidents is due to the coarse failure of nuclear reactors and resulted in uncontrollable damages. In both accidents, the core of nuclear reactor damaged completely. As a result, the radiation has caused to release the fuel element shell with high force. It also caused the explosion of outside control barrier in both accidents.
The major difference is the difference of both reactor types. In Chernobyl disaster, the atomic pile caught fire. These atomic piles were created using graphite blocks for moderators. In this case, explosion was a disaster that resulted from the burned core of massive clouds of highly reactive fission by-products. This disaster caused to evacuate the nearby areas as a ghost town. There were many fatalities in Chernobyl accident. These radioactive by-products caught fire and flounce up with smoke. At Three Mile Island there was no fire, but accident was due to release of radiation. Three Mile Island accident was horrible because of explosion resulted from the high radiation of failed fuel element cladding and fission fragment that released in uncontrollable manner. It was purely an accident. There were no fatalities in Three Mile Island