The traffic reporter for WKBO Radio in Harrisburg notices that there wasn’t any steam coming from 2 of the 4 cooling towers. He notifies the station’s newsroom, they start making phone calls….and the story begins.
It's a really interesting case study on how poor training can lead to disaster. At that time, operators were trained to never let a reactor cooling loop "go solid" (so much water is pumped in that it loses all steam in the loop). [In reality, going solid is much more preferable to a meltdown from not enough coolant.] So, operators, who believed the reactor had enough water because the pressure gauge didn't tell them all the water had already flashed into steam, shut off all water to the reactor to prevent that scenario. It wasn't until 15 hours after the start of the accident that someone finally had enough sense to tell the operators to turn the cooling pumps back on, finally bringing the reactor temperature back down and preventing further meltdown.
AE_WILLIAMS on November 23rd, 2025 at 23:47 UTC »
Hey! What are those two dudes doing on top of that one tower?
Channel258 on November 24th, 2025 at 03:35 UTC »
The traffic reporter for WKBO Radio in Harrisburg notices that there wasn’t any steam coming from 2 of the 4 cooling towers. He notifies the station’s newsroom, they start making phone calls….and the story begins.
eaglescout1984 on November 24th, 2025 at 05:39 UTC »
It's a really interesting case study on how poor training can lead to disaster. At that time, operators were trained to never let a reactor cooling loop "go solid" (so much water is pumped in that it loses all steam in the loop). [In reality, going solid is much more preferable to a meltdown from not enough coolant.] So, operators, who believed the reactor had enough water because the pressure gauge didn't tell them all the water had already flashed into steam, shut off all water to the reactor to prevent that scenario. It wasn't until 15 hours after the start of the accident that someone finally had enough sense to tell the operators to turn the cooling pumps back on, finally bringing the reactor temperature back down and preventing further meltdown.