Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV, Documentaries, Entertainment
Cameron Frew
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV, Documentaries, Entertainment
A new Netflix docuseries exploring the worst nuclear accident in US history has a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Meltdown: Three Mile Island is centred around events on 28 March 1979, when a pressure valve failed to close in the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island, located in central Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River.
It was the worst commercial accident in the country's history of nuclear power. It wasn't anywhere near Chernobyl's level of damage - but the plant was less than half an hour away from a full meltdown and never-before-seen catastrophe.
Check out the trailer for Meltdown: Three Mile Island below:
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As per Netflix's official description, the series "tackles the near catastrophe at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania through the lens of chief engineer and whistleblower, Richard Parks, as well as the community it impacted.
"Insiders recount the events, controversies and lingering effects of the worst nuclear incident in US history."
The partial meltdown received a level five rating out of seven on the international nuclear event scale, classed as an 'accident with wider consequences'.
It was the result of a deadly combination: technical malfunction and human error, after workers halted the cooling system off the back of misread signals, which caused the plant to heat to dangerous levels.
While the docuseries chronicles the accident, it also focuses on the controversy surrounding the clean-up.
During the doc, Parks says: "There became an impetus on the political side and in the industrial side to push the cleanup faster... they would take every shortcut they possibly could."
Parks also discusses the plans for a polar crane, which would have threatened the entire 50-mile radius and its two million people if it broke.
He says: "We would never regain entry to that reactor building in any of our lifetimes because the radiation levels escaping would be horrendous... we had the potential for killing ’em. Period."
The reviews have been incredibly positive thus far. Variety described it as "a slow burn of well-controlled indignation, Meltdown makes Parks’ case methodically and well."
Decider wrote: "Instead of a rehash of an event that could be easily researched, Meltdown: Three Mile Island takes a familiar event from the past half-century and fills in people’s gaps in information and debunks commonly held beliefs about the event."
Reaction on social media has echoed critics' praise, with one user writing: "Netflix is providing the good tonight for their increased fee. The Three Mile Island documentary is incredible."
Another user wrote: "As someone who didn’t know much, or anything really, about the Three Mile Island accident, #MeltdownThreeMileIsland on Netflix is definitely worth a watch."
Meltdown: Three Mile Island is available to stream on Netflix now.
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