Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima ― Curse of the Nuclear Genie

This book will examine the three most well-known and socially important nuclear accidents (Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island). Each of these accidents had significant, yet dramatically different, human and environmental impacts. Unique factors helped shaped the overall pattern and scale of each disaster, but a major contributing factor was the different designs used for each reactor. Fukushima was a boiling water reactor (BWR), Chernobyl was a graphite moderated boiling water reactor, and TMI was a pressurized water reactor (PWR). The book will predominantly focus on how these 3 distinctly different reactor designs came into being and how the different design types contributed to each disaster. The book will trace the history of nuclear power and the development of each reactor type. It will examine how GE’s work with a sodium cooled design did not fare well with the Navy, and lead GE to promulgate the BWR design. It will examine the Russian atomic bomb program, its use of graphite moderated reactors (some borrowed from the first US plutonium production installations) and their design modifications to create power production units. It will trace the history of reactor development in the US that lead the navy to select the PWR design, and the PWR to become the design for nearly 2/3 of all US commercial reactors. In sum, the book uses the three major nuclear accidents as a lens to trace the technological history of nuclear energy production and to link these developmental advances with long-term (and often unanticipated) societal and environmental consequences.