A MORASS OF REPORTS AND OTHER SUCH PROCESSES
This is the second of five entries about the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, the thirtieth anniversary of which is just ahead. Today's material covers the responses, especially the formal and mandated reports, that the meltdown and madness at Middletown produced. The 'official' materials show up first, followed by other expressions of concern, analysis, or reflection.
Reports, Investigations, Official and Popular Responses
AN EXECUTIVE ORDER AND THE OFFICIAL VIEW--
While unacknowledged mega-doses still spewed forth from the crippled reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the affected utilities had begun to plan for an erstwhile public investigation of the accident that remained firmly under their control. Jimmy Carter formally mandated such detective work on April 11, giving the appointed team of interlocutors six months to deliver results. The primary source for a surface understanding of TMI remains their report, as the Kemeny Commission, which finished fact finding in early Autumn and issued its analysis October 25, 1979.
Report of The President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island
Technical appendices are also available to truly dedicated researchers, not only in the Federal Archives, but also online as "staff reports" and other commission report supplements. Moreover, in addition to the archival materials presented yesterday, several universities and other organizations have collected the views and recollections of participants, politicians, and others who in one way or another had a role in the Three Mile Island experience, or related matters.
Duke University Libraries
BUILDING THE FIELDS OF NUCLEAR ENERGY AND NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT, 1950-1999
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
In addition to the Kemeny group findings in mid Autumn, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released its own assessment of the accident in July, as cited in yesterday's post. Furthermore, numerous congressional reports, hearings, and investigations have over the years dealt with one aspect or another of the TMI events. A partial list of these voluminous citations might include such findings as these:
Donnelly, W. H., United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Subcommittee on Energy Nuclear Proliferation and Federal Services., et al. (1980). Impact abroad of the accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant: March-September 1979. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
McCullough, D. G., L. Schreiber, et al. (1999). Meltdown at Three Mile Island. [Alexandria, VA], PBS Home Video.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Military Installations and Facilities. (1979). Civil defense and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident: report of the Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, December 18, 1979. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Military Installations and Facilities. (1979). Civil defense aspects of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident: hearings before the Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. (1979). Accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear powerplant: oversight hearings before a task force of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session. Washington, U.S. G.P.O.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Subcommittee on Energy and Power. (1980). NRC's response to the report of the President's Commission on Three Mile Island: hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, Novemeber 5, 1979. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works. Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation. (1979). Three Mile Island nuclear powerplant accident: hearings before the Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works. Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation., United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island., et al. (1980). Report of the President's Commission on the Three Mile Island Accident: joint hearing before the Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, and the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, October 31, 1979. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Human Resources. Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research. (1979). Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 1979: hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session. April 4, 1979. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. (1979). Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: the need for change: the legacy of TMI. Washington, The Commission: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. and S. M. Gorinson (1979). Report of the Office of Chief Counsel on emergency preparedness, emergency response. Washington, President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. and S. M. Gorinson (1979). Report of the Office of Chief Counsel on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Washington, President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. and S. M. Gorinson (1979). Report of the Office of Chief Counsel on the role of the managing utility and its suppliers. Washington, President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Emergency Preparedness and Response Task Force. and R. R. Dynes (1979). Report of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Task Force. Washington, President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Public Health and Safety Task Force. and J. I. Fabrikant (1979). Reports of the Public Health and Safety Task Force on public health and safety summary, health physics and dosimetry, radiation health effects, behavioral effects, public health and epidemiology. Washington, President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Public's Right to Information Task Force. and D. M. Rubin (1979). Report of the Public's Right to Information Task Force. Washington, President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
United States. President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Technical Assessment Task Force. (1979). Reports of the Technical Assessment Task Force. Washington, D.C., President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O.
Still, almost any quick look into what happened at TMI starts with the roughly hundred eighty pages of the investigation conducted by a group led by the President of Dartmouth College, John Kemeny.
The members sitting with Kemeny, advised by folks from the NRC in DC and government lab scientists from Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos, included Bruce Babbitt, then Governor of Arizona, whose papers often show up in a huge cache of materials in Tucson, where in fact one can locate one of the most important archives of data about the accident. A leader of Texas Instruments, engineers from Princeton and Berkeley, both a journalism and a health sciences professor from Columbia, and a sociology/Afro-American studies professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, comprised the busienss and academic presence on the committee. Harry McPherson, a prominent attorney, Russell Peterson, the leader of the National Audubon Society, and Anne D. Trunk, a woman from Middletown, made up the independent, environmental, and local citizen voices on the board respectively.
Briefly, the Kemeny report found that, despite chaos and confusion and dire human error, the technology and management systems in place had done their jobs and averted a catastrophe. The Commission's conclusion, that the NRC needed to toughen and specify its regulations about equipment, training, and the procedures that should govern emergencies, did in fact lead to significant intensification of nuclear power regulations in, among other places, the Code of Federal Regulations.
Nevertheless, citizen groups and scholars and eyewitnesses have consistently argued that the Kemeny findings were superficial and easy to sidetrack. As both Mary Olson and Eric Epstein point out, 'you can't point to your tough regs as proof of safety if you constantly offer exemptions to the utilities about the regulations.' Moreover, various voices contend that a cover-up of important evidence had occurred, that certain testimony received no hearing while other opinions were accepted as prima facie fact. As enormous as the official record of the accident is, the unofficial criticism of the process and findings of the official record may be nearly as extensive. Just a very few notes about these critiques follow.
WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor
Nukefree.org - Popular Reactions th the Accident at Three Mile Island
Political Habitat: The Lie of Three Mile Island by Peter Dykstra
Victims of the Nuclear Age by Rosalie Bertell
GMU Three Mile Island Survey
25 Years after Three Mile Island, Industry-wide Problems Increase by Waste Awareness and Reduction Network
The initial chronology of the accident above mentions anonymous witnesses who have seen fit to communicate specific allegations of fraud and deceit on the part of utility and NRC personnel. Many other sources also allege a cover up at Three Mile Island. Jane Rickover, for instance, signed the following notarized statement in Toronto in 1998.
"In May, 1983, my father-in-law, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, told me that at the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident, a full report was commissioned by President Jimmy Carter. He [my father-in-law] said that the report, if published in its entirety, would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry because the accident at Three Mile Island was infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public. He told me that he had used his enormous personal influence with President Carter to persuade him to publish the report only in a highly "diluted" form. The President himself had originally wished the full report to be made public.
In November, 1985, my father-in-law told me that he had come to deeply regret his action in persuading President Carter to suppress the most alarming aspects of that report."
Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a nun and Ph.d. epidemiologist, founded the International Institute for Concern About Public Health. She signed a sworn affidavit concerning evidence of a TMI cover up, after she led a community commission that paralleled the Kemeny conclave. She also implicated Carter, calling on him to release findings that as President, she asserts, he saw fit not to air publicly. A self-described "prominent whistleblower" and nuclear engineer, Paul Blanch wrote a letter to Dr. Bertell some time later, to the effect that,
"I have documented evidence, which I have given to the NRC, that the primary containment was breached shortly after the hydrogen explosion that occurred on March 30, 1979.
This breach occurred at a time when the radioactivity in the containment was close to its peak. Preliminary estimates indicate that as many as 40 million curies may have been released during the following hours. The NRC and the licensee estimated the maximum of 10 million curies of releases."
At a minimum, a dozen other witnesses, experts, or investigators have averred that critically important data about the accident never received a hearing or otherwise became a part of the public record.
Similarly, groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and scores of other non-profit, independent entitities decry the flaws in the Kemeny Commission's publication, backing up Eric Epstein's critique of government findings that little or no radiation found its way into the environment and thus little or no impact on public health occurred. Immediately following the issue of The Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: The Need for Change; the Legacy of TMI, for example, Ralph Nader wrote,
"The commission's report was carefully written to avoid a clarity of response (about) a construction moratorium (that) a majority of the commission generally favor(ed)... .This lack of decisive follow-through ... also is apparent in the ... observation that "the fundamental problems are people-related problems and not equipment problems"... . There are machines and technologies which place an unrealistic burden on human operators and managers. ...(C)an such strains in rapidly developing emergencies with such catastrophic consequences be realistically met wherever such plants are operating?
...The commission surprisingly neglected to mention ... provisions for insuring citizen access and rights in the agency's decision-making processes. Such well-studied reforms as intervener funding, whistleblower protection and consumer advocacy received no consideration. ...
In the final analysis, of course, nuclear power failures become very real people problems. As the commission said: "We must not assume that an accident of this (Three Mile Island scope) or greater seriousness cannot happen again, even if the changes we recommend are made."
...The commission unnecessarily read its mandate as not considering whether nuclear power should be stopped or displaced by superior alternative ways of producing and using electricity. Such a mandate was left for the contemplation of free-thinking citizens."
A "Supplemental View" of The Need for Change that John Kemeny himself wrote essentially admitted the rectitude of Nader's criticisim. "I was also one of four commissioners who voted for a stronger version of the above recommendations," the watered-down but still suppressed expression of which was supported by six of the ten participants, to withold any further licensing until the NRC could demonstrate compliance with the rec's.
The Audubon Society's Russell Peterson concluded his supplemental remarks as follows:
"As a final comment, I wish to emphasize my conviction, strongly reinforced by this investigation, that the complexity of a nuclear power plant -- coupled with the normal shortcomings of human beings so well illustrated in the TMI accident -- will lead to a much more serious accident somewhere, sometime. The unprecedented worldwide fear and concern caused by the TMI-2 "near-miss" foretell the probable reaction to an accident where a major release of radioactivity occurs over a wide area. It appears essential to provide humanity with alternate choices of energy supply. Accordingly, I recommend the development by our federal government, before we become more fully committed to the vulnerable nuclear energy path, of a strategy that does not require nuclear fission energy."
Governor Bruce Babbitt, as always deeply thoughtful--an amazing quality for a politician inasmuch as those on either end of any policy debate will find him fair game for dismissive derision--also expressed profound doubts about the Commission's efforts.
"(T)he utility in charge at Three Mile Island was not qualified to do and was not doing an adequate job. The record includes a listing of failures and inadequacies from maintenance to management, from operator's training to a lack of nuclear expertise at higher management levels. Our own findings state ...'as a result of these deficiencies, the safe operation of the TMI-2 plant was impaired.'...This ... far reaching indictment of the utility in charge, the entity given the responsibility for controlling 15 billion curies of radioactivity. By the nature of its charge, the Commission explored in depth the operation capability and performance of just one nuclear utility and found it seriously wanting. But there are many indications that Met-Ed is not an aberration, and that there are other nuclear utilities that do not measure up to even minimal standards. ...I must believe that our findings do support more than what we have said here by way of recommendations. We cannot simply urge the utility, industry, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pay more attention to safety and to establish higher standards."
Bruce Babbitt's concluding lines echo across the decades, if we are capable of listening.
"There are still unresolved questions about what happened at Three Mile Island; the answers to these may well lead to other recommendations about the responsibilities of utilities operating nuclear reactors....While this Commission has clearly addressed the institutional shortcomings of the NRC in its recommendations, it has not addressed the institutional problems of the industry."
One of the committee members who did not make supplementary remarks, Cora B. Marrett, after a distinguished career as a teacher and social scientist, went on to lead science education development at the National Science Foundation. She contributed a chapter in 1988 to Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology in which she drew on her experience on the Kemeny Commission. "Closure and Controversy: TMI" provides evidence and analysis for a powerful case supporting a more people centered science policy process, though she herself stops short of rendering such a judgment. Her words can guide us if we pay them the attention that they are due.
She notes that on the single day that the Kemeny commissioners listened to the testimony of local citizens, they begged for a more inclusive approach and a more expansive mission, neither of which the committee managed to fulfill.
A legislator said of his constituents, 'They are seeking new ways of handling the dangers and the potential of nuclear power, and they are seeking a credible conviction that the lessons learned at TMI will mean the problems...will never again be repeated....(The)Commission has an opportunity to provide the people...with those kinds of assurances.' A physician from the area proposed that the Commission answser these questions. Is low-level ionizing radiation dangerous? How should radioactive waste be disposed of? How close was the accident. to a full-scale meltdown?
Only the last inquiry, and at that only in a way that permitted attenuated conclusions, received anything resembling the commissioners' full attention.
Doctor Marret details the way in which, despite a majority desire to involve community voices and deepen the investigative process, ultimately they all stopped far short of shouldering such a mandate. She notes the similarity between the Kemeny Commission's protocols and standard operating procedure at Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing or other policy hearings. She labels contemporary governmental operations of this sort one form or other of "Closure Through Circumscription," a way of manipulating outcomes while following the forms of democracy without achieving democratic norms.
Those who wish to challenge... application(s)--the intervenors--must indicate their interest in being heard and establish the bases for their challenge. The hearing boards...admit only some matters into discussion. No commentary for or against nuclear power as such or any such encompassing topic can be introduced; nor can presenters raise generic safety issues, issues that would apply to several different facilities The hearing policies demand that presenters cover only the specific facility whose application is under review.
Speed and finality are the point of such procedures, with a bias against hypothetical problems and in favor of empirical expertise about issues decided in advance to be the only matters of legitimate concern.
The circumscribing of an issue, then, facilitates the pace of decision-making and enhances public acceptance of the results. But circumscription does not resolve the underlying question or questions.
And, whether we will or no, the questions remain, and they will loom up again in the fullness of time, to the chagrin of those in charge and the damage of those downwind. As Mary Olson is wont to insist,
"the issues of the nuclear debate haven't changed a bit."
Whatever the final truth of what truly went down thirty years ago, certain matters of process--of openness, of access, of transparency, of respect--clearly are things that Kemeny and many other commissioners recognized individually. But because of the nature of their institutional charge and the veto power expressly granted to the minority of industry boosters present, the overall findings either ignored such key issues outright or so discounted them as to eliminate their potential impact. To this annalist, no other lesson of TMI is more critical to acknowledge and address.
LONG-ARMED, SHORT-REACHING LAW--
To read of such matters as these can be numbing. After all, technology and error and subterfuge and uncertainty and chaos and randomly bizarre cosmic jokes seem to combine in shapeshifting forms hard to comprehend tangibly. In one recollection of March 30, a middle-aged woman remembers being certain of impending doom during a day of sirens and warnings of meltdowns and evacuation. So convinced were she and a young opportunistic suitor of the proximity of holocaust, that, unwilling to exit this life without at least once experiencing sex, they coupled, tentatively and yet dutifully, which did not help their friendship when everything returned to 'normal' and they had to sit next to each other in class five days a week.
Under such circumstances, the utility's spokespeople must have a point, mustn't they? No one died, at least not right away. Overblown fear was the rule, not the exception. The Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners and other high officers of the United States can't have been taking part in this keystone cops cover up, could they? They were heroes, were they not? Such responses seem reassuringly plausible amidst the craziness attendant on a misprepresented and misunderstood meltdown. And such hopeful views, in the 'he said/she said' pattern that seems ineluctably to emerge from the fog of time and memory in cases such as this, seem eminently rational. In this sort of context, a bracing account of criminal charges might return the onlooker to something like a grounded state.
In November, 1983, the Justice Department brought an eleven part indictment against Metropolitan Edison, which had adopted a different name, General Public Utilities, in an attempt, in the parlance of Eric Epstein, "to distance itself from itself." The eleven counts concerned lies and falsification in regard to radiation monitoring records and other communications during the meltdown and its aftermath. On February 29, 1984, guaranteeing that only once every four years would the company have to remember, perhaps, GPU Nuclear pled guilty to one count and no contest to six other charges.
In the words of District Judge Sylvia Rambo, who repeatedly decided in favor of the company over the course of twenty years of civil litigation,
Met Ed pled guilty to criminal falsification of leak rate data. A Statement of Facts submitted to the Court by the United States Attorney in connection with the sentencing specified that although 'the evidence would establish that a number of employees of the Metropolitan Edison Company engaged in the criminal activities charged in the indictment,' 'the evidence presented to the grand jury and developed by the United States Attorney does not indicate that any' of the directors or officers of GPUN from its inception in 1982 'participated in, directed, condoned, or was aware of the acts or omissions that are the subject of the indictment.'
In other words, the company didn't try to continue covering up its cover up, once caught in flagrante delictu. Judge Rambo, having ruled against the admission of the majority of intervenors' testimony and evidence, cited the company's criminality midway through her argument that found in favor of permitting GPU to reopen TMI Unit One.
A CULTURE OF EVIDENTIARY REJECTION--
James Hurst speaks proudly of Yale professors willing to help him and his fellow residents argue against reopening Unit One. Beginning with the earliest moves to create a class action attack on Metropolitan Edison, however, those whose testimony might have served communities that contended they had suffered as a result of the meltdown did not withstand the scrutiny of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Supreme Court combined, under what lawyers label the 'Daubert Standard,' to disallow almost all input into analysis and investigation of the accident that went beyond the parameters of the utility's and NRC's representations of reality. Such oxymoronic 'realism,' since anyone honest admits that we don't have answers to large numbers of key questions, cannot help but shut down both an honest accounting and public faith. If this is the intention of established administrators and technicians, then obviously, we should continue in like fashion. If, however, reliable and valid and trusted evidence and policy are our goals, then opening up the fact-finding and interpretive aspects of such matters as TMI is essential.
Dr. Rosalie Bertell, whom the reader may remember from the previous section, clearly articulated the frustration of the citizens who, guaranteed that their ideas and input would find a place in the record, discovered that they were merely window dressing for a whitewash.
I was on the Citizen's Advisory Council to the Blue Ribbon Panel set up by Preident Carter to investigate the TMI accident. The members of this public panel did not have FBI clearance, with the possible exception of Dr. Kemmeny who had worked on the Manhattan Project. The staff, selected from those who worked for the NRC or DOE, did have such security clearance, and therefore they were able to withold any information they or their superiors wanted to declare "classified", from the Panel. The nuclear weapon program demanded that workers and the military personnel handle this radioactive material and the nuclear ordinance, therefore health effects of radiation could be classified for national security to prevent rebellion.
At the first meeting of the Citizen's Advisory Council to the Kemeny Commission, I brought up this potential problem and asked what provisions had been made for the Commission members to have security clearance so that they might have full access to the truth about the accident. Another Advisory Council Member asked who was in charge of reactor operations during the accident. These two questions were never answered, and they were enough to cause the dissolution of the entire advisory panel. In fact, Dr. Kemeny even stated publicly to the press that we had never been invited to Washington [although the Commission paid our air fare and hotel bills]. The Industry Advisory Council to the Kemeny Commission continued to function during the investigation.
Dr. Bertell has maintained a presence in these matters over the years, participating in SERMCAP's audio archive about TMI, and much more, as readers will find out in the next overall section.
Other citizen commentary and critique also took place, despite the lack of forums for and official uptake of their presentations. TMI Alert, as previously noted, has a varied and richly detailed web and actual presence in the TMI area. Pennsylvanians Against Nuclear Energy has on occasion impacted discussion and data collection about the accident and continuing concerns about nuclear energy. As well, national groups have monitored and updated their constituencies in regard to the issues raised by TMI. If nothing else, interested onlookers ought to glance over one or another of the fantastically detailed timelines that different community groups have created, despite the fact that they had not a single ratepayer to bill for their efforts. A sampling of such sources would have to include at least these sites:
Online Ethics Center: Timeline of Events
Atomic Archive: Three Mile Island
Public Citizen: Anniversary of Three Mile Island
Citizens Awareness Network: Three Mile Island 30th Anniversary
Online History Project on Three Mile Island
NukeNet Network
RESTART, CLEANUP, AND OUTSIDE INPUT--
Given this inability to be heard, no one should deem surprising the failure of almost every citizen and community attempt to find satisfaction at law, for damages arguably suffered from the meltdown. Though immediate attempts to bring TMI Unit One back into service did not succeed, Judge Rambo permitted this reinitiation of an atomic Harrisburg in 1985.
Metropolitan Edison, and then General Public Utilities, almost immediately began planning for the clean up of Three Mile Island, though even initiating the disassembly and relocation of core reactor components took several years, allowing time for some of the intense radiation onsite to dissipate. Moreover, this purported 'cleansing' effort generated still more venting of and exposure to radionuclides. The day prior to the initial cleaning crew's presence on the island, for example, in mid July, 1980, Met-Ed let loose an estimated 40,000 curies of gases to make their technicians' work less likely to be lethal.
In total, as many as ten thousand or more workers participated in this process, which discovered, among many other things, much more significant damage at the heart of the Babcock and Wilcox reactor than anyone had acknowledged as possible. While contending that "no deaths among workers were acceptable," the utility simultaneously elected not to track workers, not to monitor long term health outcomes, not in other words to do anything that might provide citizens and scientists the information necessary to ameliorate harm and to assess real risk. Somehow, a model that guarantees unmeasurable results is preferable to honest assessment.
The completion of the disassembly and relocation of the reactor and the long-term isolation of the containment and other highly contaminated areas at TMI took nearly fourteen years, and it cost upwards of a billion dollars. Pennsylvania rate-payers footed the bill, just as citizens and workers--not corporate leaders or shareholders--bore the brunt of distress, disease, and death that were all consequences of embalming TMI's toxic legacy. The belief among nuclear supporters that the technology's monetary benefits are real does not include such matters as these. Folks who want just a taste of the huge concentration of data on the web about this apsect of the case can turn to the following New York Times feature.
The phrase in the South, "No nukes, ya'll," came from the double whammy of the near loss-of-coolant accident at Brown's Ferry--a much less publicized but nearly as catastrophic mishap in Northeast Alabama--and the disaster at TMI. The fact that the South has become something of an atomic cesspool also contributes to this attitude. In any event, numerous anti-nuclear organizations, many of which offer better monitoring of local conditions than anything that comes from the government or the utility industry, sprang up following the near miss in Pennsylvania thirty years ago. Just a sampling of these data banks takes place here, though again observers are welcome to ask for more or list additional personal favorites.
Alsos - Digital Library for Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Files
Proposition One Committee: Anti-Nuclear Web Sites
Downwinders
Cleanenergy.org
Nuke Free Texas
NC Warn
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
Nuclear Energy Information Service
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance
MULTIPLY REDUNDANT REPORTS--
Not that anyone except a fanatic such as this humble correspondent needs further rabbit holes to chase after the elusive nuclear genie, but a few more citations do convey even more powerfully the breadth and depth of this matter in contemporary history. The first of the listed citations hails from the National Museum of American History; though its overall presentation clearly slants toward industry and NRC views, it does offer some balance as well. One of the following citations emanates from radiological epidemiologist who finds himself mainly favorably disposed to nuclear power generation but wanted to address issues that the Kemeny Commission precluded. Two others are smaller accounts from physicists and engineers who either participated in or were on the fringes of dealing with the situation in Pennsylvania itself. Three others are perspectives that citizen-expert conglomerates have assembled, criticizing nuclear options generally and in particular propounding the notion that the way that we've dealt with TMI is utterly inadequate.
Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: The Need for Change; The Legacy of TMI
US EPA Documents
Comptroller General Report to Congress
Alice Stewart: The Woman Who Knew Too Much
SAO/NASA Astrophysics Documents
Nuclear Accident and Recovery at Three Mile Island: a report (1980)
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies; "Long Term Consequences of Hypothetical Releases," a report by Jan Beyea
Three Mile Island Aftermath and Impact, A Los Alamos editorial by Jay Boudreau
Three Mile Island and Multi-Failure Accidents/A Los Alamos Science Report
In addition, literally dozens of books and tens of thousand of articles also examine this turning point in America's technological history. A few titles and citations for such materials appear here, and readers are always welcome to ask for further material or to suggest other important works. Though only the first couple of sections of this article attempted even a simulacrum of thoroughness, readers may rest assured that, for every point in this story, this humble correspondent has access to vastly more comprehensive materials and might, with the merest prod, produce much more extensive arguments, data, anecdotes, and narrative. For now, however, we will trek on into other areas of concern, albeit these too will be short and sweet instead of complete.
"People Died at Three Mile Island", Ch 14 of Killing Our Own
Biographies of Key Players of Atomic Age
We All Live on Three Mile Island, by Greg Adamson
Hostages of Each Other, by Joseph V Rees
UPenn Library: Nuclear Energy - Public Opinion
Doubt is Their Product, by David Michaels
TMI 25 Years Later, by Bonnie Anne Osif, Anthony J. Baratta, and and Thomas W. Conkling
Three Mile Island, by J. Samuel Walker
Meltdown: A Race Against Nuclear Disaster at Three Mile Island A Reporter's Story, by Wilborn Hampton
Emergency at Three Mile Island , by Aaron Feigenbaum
Secret Fallout: Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three Mile Island Ernest J. Sternglass