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What Have We Learned From Three-Mile Island After 17 Years ?
(Implications for Future Chernobyl's )
Today in our energy hungry world, the reliance on nuclear power is getting larger and larger. Nuclear power is on top of the list
of forms of power available to generate electricities in the quantities, forms and reliability needed as we head towards the 21st
century.Current operating nuclear plants number approximately 430 through out 26 countries (1).
Nuclear energy production will grow an average of 3.3 to 4.2% PER YEAR worldwide from 1988-2005 (IAEA News briefs,
Sept.1989). Though we have experienced if not the worst technogenic environmental disaster of the 20th century ten years ago
- Chernobyl, together with the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island seventeen years ago, most people today give only passing
thoughts to the issue of nuclear safety worldwide.These two cases are only mere examples of the ominous potential for
accidents of great magnitude within such nuclear plants worldwide (2).
It is vital that we understand both the logic and
outcomes of such disasters. Today 10 years later,effects of Chernobyl are still hazardous and have been detected all over the
world. Belarus, a country most affected by history's worst nuclear disaster does not even have a nuclear plant. The radiation
released from Chernobyl was 200 times more than that of the combined releases of the atom bombs that annihilated Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945 (3). Due to prevailing winds, 25 percent of the land in Belarus is uninhabitable. All normal life has
stopped there, people are afraid to move, stay, marry and afraid to have families. The costs of the accidents after-effects are
monumental; resettlement of people affected, medical and clean-up costs are just a few on the priority list.
The problem lies in ignorance of...