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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, a whoops edition. That's right. You know it's not a whoops, though. Oh, I can guess where this is going. stuff at Sea Voyage. That's right. It's the most deliberate voyage ever created. That's completely unaccidental. That's right. Five-night, adults-only sailing trip, it says.
And we're going to be doing our live podcast from New York City to Bermuda, not the whole way, just like one time. Right. Yeah, there's going to be other stuff, too. We're going to be meeting and greeting. And I'm guessing there'll be other opportunities to hang out with us, maybe, rather than just the one meet and greet. Yeah, for sure.
This all goes down October 2nd through 7th of this year aboard the Valiant Lady. And you can go check everything out at virginvoyages.com slash stuff. Very nice, Chuck. Let's see. So you want to start talking about Three Mile Island? Yeah, the nuclear, I guess it's still the worst nuclear disaster in American history, right? Yeah, I can't think of anything worse.
I mean, as far as actual disasters go, it wasn't that bad. But how close it came to being like Chernobyl level is kind of breathtaking, actually. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And this all went down when I had just turned eight years old on March 28th, 1979. Yeah, and really interestingly, just 12 days before this accident happened at Three Mile Island, a movie called The China Syndrome came out. Yeah.
Starring Michael Douglas. Crazy timing. Yeah, and Jane Fonda, which makes it even weirder. Because The China Syndrome, if you've never seen it, it's a pretty good movie. I would say go watch it. It... It was basically this. It was essentially what happened. What happened to the movie China Syndrome happened at Three Mile Island 12 days later. It's really bizarre. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: What led to the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster?
That was the thing that kicked it all off. But this nuclear reactor, the control panel was designed to sense like when it started to overheat. And it did overheat because there wasn't enough coolant and it shut itself down. And everything with that was working properly. The control rods went in. Nobody had to do anything. The system shut itself down because it was overheating. Right.
So, so far, so good in a certain sense. Yeah. But things really kind of went pear-shaped after this, as you used to say a lot. You don't say that much anymore. I miss pear-shaped. I'll try to bring it back then. I'm bringing it back. So they had to lower the pressure in the system. So a pilot-operated relief valve opened. And that's great.
This thing should have stayed open for about 10 seconds or so, just to let a little pressure out. And it was designed to close automatically when it returned to normal. It did not close automatically. It got stuck, but they didn't know that it got stuck. That was the big problem up front. Yeah, and that caused another problem.
So first of all, remember, it's overheated because there's not enough water. Now the pressure is lower in the whole reactor. And lower pressure means that water will boil at a lower temperature. So the water is boiling more and more. So you're losing more and more. And it's creating more and more steam. That's also raising the temperature.
That's another thing that the operators should have noticed, right? Or they did notice. They were like, oh, the temperature in the reactor is really high.
going up but they all generally agreed that it was just wrong there had been problems with that pilot operated relief valve for apparently weeks and they rather than fix it they were just falsifying the information and dealing with it like just living with the problem
Yeah, and we should point out that there were two nuclear reactors there, TMI, not too much information, Three Mile Island One and Three Mile Island Two. They built these things in 1968 and TMI One opened in 74 and TMI Two in 78. And TMI Two, the one that had the issue here, had only been open for three months. I think, yeah, just about three months when this accident occurred.
So it wasn't even online that long. And so it must have had that leak kind of from the get go, it sounds like. Yeah, I think you're right, because, yeah, it must not have ever worked properly and they just didn't really know it or care. Well, they already cut the ribbon with those giant scissors. Too late. Yeah.
Yeah.
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