TABLE OF CONTENTS Three Mile Island on the Susquehanna River is located about 16 km SE of Harrisburg Pa, USA. It is a flat island with a surface of several square kilometres. Some years ago it was chosen as the site for a nuclear power station with two units named TMI-1 and TMI-2. Each unit has its own reactor and turbine-generator group for the conversion of steam into electric energy. The two units could supply 1700 MW to the grid, sufficient for the needs of 300 000 families (based on the average consumption of a US family).
The power station was the joint property of the Pennsylvania Electric Company, the Jersey Central Power & Light Company and the Metropolitan Edison Company. The three companies were part of a holding , the General Public Utilities Corporation (GPU). Operational responsibility was vested in Metropolitan Edison.
The nuclear part of the plant (i.e. the reactor and its auxiliary systems the nuclear island ) had been supplied by the Babcock & Wilcox company. The architect engineer, Burns & Roe, had built the remainder of plant.
The plant, equipped with a pressurized water reactor, is represented in a simplified way in Figure A17-1.
The vessel (1) contains the reactor core (2) in which the control rods can be inserted from above (3). The cooling system is formed by two circuits (in the figure only one is represented), each one provided...
