exposed. march 1979, a partial reactor meltdown at pennsylvania s three mile island nuclear facility releases radioactive material. no one is killed. the cleanup takes years making it the worst nuclear accident in u.s. history. ron carsmar helped develop the facility 40 years ago. i m concerned. i m very concerned. william tucker authored a book on nuclear power. this is not a never could or would be a chernobyl. that s out of the question. why is that? very simply, the saudis didn t have a containment structure. reporter: fukushima does have a containment structure, a giant building of concrete and shield, and the reactors shut down after the earthquake, then an emergency system pumped in water to cool the fuel rods, but the cooling system failed so did the backup system when the tsunami hit. now operators are using sea
the design so i can t tell you how the controls worked. and you need power. that was ron carsmar, he helped develop all of the control panels and nuclear sensors inside that plant about 40 years ago. i m going to bring in chad myers to explain what actually happens here when a nuclear reactor shuts down? to put some people s fear a little bit on the lesser state, any newer nuclear reactor that shuts down goes down all by itself, it cools down all by itself. you could literally take all the people in the control room and walk them away and it will cool down all by itself. this one started in 1967 and finished in 1971 did not have that capability. i asked couldn t you just retrofit that? and there s no possible way to