Panique à la centrale: Three Mile Island

This is an amazingly well produced docu-series from Netflix once again. It's the gold standard in documentaries these days so you get what you expect. It seems to have been produced during covid lockdowns so even the main speaker is just alone in a room/studio talking to a camera with no one else there except on a speaker. Makes it very one on one with the audience whenever he's talking. He is very good. The story is great! Tragic and should be extremely highlighting in today's culture. JUST because someone in authority tells you something is safe, think beyond that and ask about monetary benefits or costs savings because deep down, all the government or beneficiaries care about is profit and economic progress on the literal backs of its citizens. My only issue is nearing the end it does trend on the anti nuclear power side of speech which is clearly biased as nuclear energy is produced in a lot of countries safely and is extremely efficient. I do think nuclear energy tech needs more funding and not less. If it can replace coal and or fuel power plants I think the green energy people should love it. BUT it HAS to be SAFE and strictly adhered to. No. Shortcuts.

I'm sure they were all virologists this morning and climate scientists in the afternoon.

I was eight years old when TMI happened. We lived in Mechanicsburg, PA, 18 miles away - - can remember getting picked up from school out of the blue by my parents and riding to my aunt and uncle's in Allentown. Part of the documentary is about that unknown and just how worrisome it was for those who lived in South Central PA.

For those who say there weren't any "experts" heard from in the documentary, I'm not sure what they were watching. It's pot calling kettle black for everyone who is claiming bias with the film - - multiple experts are interviewed, but obviously not ones such reviewers want to hear from. It does spend most of the time in the later episodes with the whistleblower. It has a point of view. Other than that, the complaints are what is overblown, not the story of TMI as rendered here.

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.

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.