Three Mile Island Accident

Presented By: Mona Yousse Soha Makhyoun

Contents:
Description of The Event. Initiating Event. Scenario of The Event. Lesson Learned from (TMI). Mitigation of The Accident.

Description of The Event:

Location of the event: Pennsylvania near Harrisburg.

Date of The Accident: March 1979.

Schematic Diagram of the TMI unit 2

Initiating Event:

The trouble started somewhere in the condensate polisher system. Some unknown event caused the polisher outlet valves to close. There are several ways that a saboteur could have made this happen without being detected by plant telemetry or subsequent investigations.

Scenario of The Event:

Failure of the condensate valve. The design of the vertical one-through steam generator. Heat of the reactor coolant. Opining of The relief valve. Turning off the emergency water injection pumps.

1. Reactor 2. Once-through Vertical Steam Generator 3. Pressurizer 4. Quench Tank or Pressurizer Relief Tank Green identifies the Reactor Coolant System flow path. Blue on right shows feed water going to and in the secondary side of the steam generator Blue in bottom of containment shows containment sump. Blue in upper left shows the Quench Tank. Note steam leaving.

Lesson Learned:
1- operator training needed to be improved:

operators a better understanding of both the theoretical and practical aspects of plant operations.

Licensed reactor operator training today is conducted on full-scale replica simulators of actual plants.
These simulators permit operators to practice and be tested in all kinds of accident scenarios.

2-Sharing of industry knowledge needed to be more effective

organizations have been effective in promoting excellence in the operation of nuclear plants and accrediting their training programs. INPo has had a profound impact on the way nuclear plants are managed and operated. improvement in plant performance in the 30 years since TMI. Plant capacity factors have increased to 91.8 % in 2007 from 58.4 percent in 1979.

3-Fission products don't escape in the real world

The

accident yielded insight into the "source term"--the amount of radioactive(FP)released in the event of a major accident. we learned that the release of volatile ( FP) was three to four orders of magnitude smaller than that provided for in the 1962 federal licensing criteria.

Since

that time, experiments have examined the timing, magnitude, and controlling processes for FP releases from the fuel, the primary system, and containment.
Today, the

magnitude of the source term available for release in an accident has been reduced significantly.

4-Control rooms: complex, poorly organized, and did not provide important information.

Improve design of control room with human factors in mind and with computer technology. Improve surveillance and instrumentation of critical systems required to cool the reactor and stop the escape of radio nuclides. Control rooms in the TMI generation of plants weren't designed with the needs of operators in mind. Necessary information wasn't readily available in a convenient and understandable form. After the event, important safety system modifications were made to detect and mitigate inadequate core cooling and post-accident conditions.

5-The consequences of a nuclear accident were less than we thought.

Develop emergency plans. Emergency Planning Zones (EPZ): Areas with preplanned emergency responses and notification channels. Plume Exposure Pathway: 10 mile radius zone with pre-planned evacuation methods or shelter-in-place directives as appropriate. Practice emergency plans with local, state and federal agencies to ensure proper operation.

Mitigation:
measures taken to limit the radiological consequences of an accident including: limiting release into containment limiting release from the facility reducing public radiation exposure by evacuation, off-site cleanup, etc.

Release Mitigation:
refers

only to measures taken to limit the release of radioactive material.

The

accident precursor program should have the following characteristics: The program should be driven by consistent goals and objectives that address the needs of the future.

from these precursors the program should provide insights into improving safety in the future. A system must be in place for collection data and Providing data when more detailed information is needed.

Systems and methods should be sensitive enough to identify an operational event as a precursor without generating too many false detects of events of little interest. event screening and selection criteria and processes must remain consistent over time to support trending and analysis. The program should provide correlate changes in industry design and practices with changes in the occurrence and nature of observed precursors.

potential accident sequences have been identified and that the models used to assess events are sufficient and only need changes that reflect the configurations and operating practices of specific facilities. Risk models must be updated to reflect improvements in facilities, but these changes should be made in a way that does not change the level of detail .

Thank you for attention!!