Meltdown: l'incidente alla centrale di Three Mile Island

I'm not sure why so many nuclear power fans are upset by this docuseries. It does lean on the dramatic, but the message of pro-nuclear power is repeated over and over by one of the main interviewees. The concern is not the technology, but the rich men we entrust to run nuclear plants safely. All this docuseries want is responsibility in the operation of public utilities, and I can't see why anyone would find that bad. It's a compelling view into the, pardon the pun, fallout of the accident, and worth the time for people interested.

Whoever produced this documentary clearly doesn't like nuclear power. Nearly every single interview & pundit gives an anti-nuclear biased account. The primary pundit (and only employee of TMI) is a disgruntled former employee who fell in love with an anti-nuclear campaigner in the middle of this thing, and greatly over-dramatises his account. A lot of focus is also put on near-clueless residents of the nearby town, who are quite irritating with their over-acted "minute of fame" accounts, and blame every rash on their butt on the incident. They certainly deserve to be heard, but shouldn't be used as replacements for educated voices. And there are barely any educated voices in this documentary. No international opinions, no voices from the current nuclear industry, no industrial safety experts, zero defence or applause of the actions taken by highly skilled people which probably saved many lives, zero mention of the fact the design of the facility worked exactly as it should and prevented a release, and no mention of the vastly improved safety record of the industry. The whole thing is accompanied by cheesy dramatic music to build tension and doom. It's a step down from Netflix's usual standard for documentaries - like something from 15 years ago - and certainly doesn't touch Chernobyl for viewing intrigue. In fact, Chernobyl probably does a better job documenting the incident, and it's not even a documentary.

A few years after the meltdown, I was working for Air Products and Chemicals, an industrial gas company as a sales rep out of York, PA. TMI was my account and I went up there to do a cylinder count as they were paying thousands a month in rental charges for 5000 cylinders that had been on the island for 10 or more years. After my walk through I found only 200 cylinders. Big mystery until I talked to an old timer at the plant. Seems at the time of the meltdown and thereafter, employees would take full cylinders with 3000 psi, over to an embankment overlooking the Susquehanna River, lay them across two railroad ties and then knock the heads off the cylinders with a sledgehammer shooting them out over the the river a few hundred feet. These were the people running the plant.

{NOTE: the 1-star review "Do not watch for accurate facts" is relevant (but also incomplete) IMHO}

This documentary is excellent ... by Netflix standards. An example of a terrible documentary is the one they did on MH370, which was overly-long and spent copious time on inane conspiracy theories.

Meltdown: TMI goes a great job showing the cover-up attempts and related corruption, as well as the toll on the residents. It does NOT do a good job explaining the details of the initial accident and the misguided response. You have to have a VERY good reason to turn off cooling pumps and/or High-Pressure Injectors (HPI) when a reactor's temperature is getting out of control, and this was poorly explained. To be fair, some details of this accident were NEVER properly explained (see Wikipedia), but still -- Netflix could have done a better job, instead of showing the same distraught locals over and over and over again.

There are some unanswered questions. The NRC still claims very little radiation was released, despite the dead fish observed and a least one person with radiation "burns" (lesions) over much of her body. What happened to this person? Why wasn't she Exhibit A in (eventually) refuting the platitudes the NRC and GPU (the plant owner) told the public?

This documentary had the potential for ten stars. However, given the flaws, I'm giving it eight (8) stars. Mind you, it's still gripping and effective; I'm still angry the next day. FYI, I'm an engineer and have some actual knowledge of the cooling systems and related thermodynamics. I even tested my knowledge on a NPP failure simulator.

I didn't feel like this was about fear in nuclear energy. This event set it back, but it's still viable and prevalent. This is about human error, regulation failure, and high level corporate and government corruption.