Abstract
Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective By J. Samuel Walker, University of California Press, 2004, 315 pages; $24.95
TMI 25 Years Later: The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Accident and Its Impact By Bonnie A. Osif, Anthony J. Baratta, and Thomas W. Conkling, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004, 160 pages; $24.95
Samuel Walker opens Three Mile Island with a description of a malfunction at a commercial nuclear power plant. Events were complicated by a faulty indicator, which led control room operators to take actions that exacerbated the situation. The plant was near a population center, and consequently a throng of reporters rushed to cover the story. Statements from officials of the operating utility generated public mistrust and suspicion. After a period of suspense, uncertainty, and conflicting statements from experts, the reactor was stabilized with limited impact on public health. But under other circumstances, it could have been much worse. An independent physicist warned that a more serious accident could “render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable” from radioactive contamination.
Walker took his opening narrative from The China Syndrome, a fictional movie released in mid-March 1979, starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon. Less than two weeks after its release, the worst accident in the history of U.S. nuclear power took place at the Three Mile Island Reactor Unit 2, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with eerie similarities to the movie. The movie's “size of Pennsylvania” warning had been taken from a federal study calculating the consequences of a commercial reactor accident. Three Mile Island (TMI) thus became a strange case of reality imitating art imitating reality.
On the occasion of the accident's twenty-fifth anniversary, these books offer retrospection on events at the time. Each rendition has its particular strengths. TMI 25 Years Later was written by engineering librarians and an emeritus professor at Pennsylvania State University. The professor, Anthony Baratta, was involved in post-accident decontamination of the reactor, and one chapter covers decontamination activities, accompanied by an interesting set of figures and photos from those activities.
But Walker's book is clearly the stronger. His account is more detailed, more comprehensive, and provides historical perspectives both before and after the accident. As a published historian, Walker regards “fair and balanced” as a standard, not just a slogan, and he meets that standard admirably.
Walker establishes the context by describing how public opposition to atomic energy had developed even before Three Mile Island.
The accident began during the graveyard shift, in the early hours of March 28, 1979, when the feedwater pumps failed. That led to a turbine trip, a shutdown to protect the reactor, and the lifting of a relief valve to reduce pressure in the reactor cooling system. All these events were expected under the circumstances. But the relief valve stuck open, even though power to operate the valve, and its indicator light in the control room, shut off. Control room operators thus received conflicting signals–rising water levels in one section of the reactor, but decreasing pressure in the coolant system. Operators responded by turning off pumps supplying water to the fuel rods. In hindsight, this caused about half the reactor fuel to melt and release its radioactive contents. A supervisor fresh on the scene averted a more serious accident two hours into the event by determining that the relief valve was stuck and closing another valve.
Walker then provides daily narratives over each of the next four days. He presents a picture of people trying to do the best they could under extraordinary and unexpected circumstances. The utility's engineering staff worked to stabilize the reactor in consultation with–and under the scrutiny of–outside technical experts and federal regulators. Reporters hungry for news took information as they could find it, but conditions were changing and public statements from the utility, the state government, the federal government, and even different speakers from the same organization, could be inconsistent. Consequently, information that the general public received, including estimates on the potential for more serious accident developments, was incomplete, subject to change, and at times contradictory.
On March 30, on the recommendation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Pennsylvania Gov. Richard Thornburgh advised pregnant women and preschool-age children within a 5-mile radius around TMI to evacuate as a precautionary measure. This advisory covered about 4,200 individuals. But faced with an uncertain situation, many more evacuated on their own: An estimated 144,000 people within a 15-mile radius of TMI left the area at some point during the days after the accident.
After several days, the reactor was brought under control; there were only limited releases of radioactivity offsite. Long-term health consequences from the accident remain a point of controversy, but as Walker points out, the scientific consensus is that public exposures were relatively low, and subsequent epidemiological evaluations of the “downwind” population have not detected statistically significant differences in health outcomes compared to those expected in populations not exposed from TMI. In contrast, the Chernobyl reactor accident in 1986 released much larger quantities of radioactive material and produced dramatic and measurable human health effects.
Perhaps the clearest long-term effects of the TMI accident are the financial impacts on the atomic industry. Removing damaged nuclear fuel and decontaminating Unit 2 cost nearly $1 billion, a sum beyond the capabilities of General Public Utilities (GPU), the holding company owning the reactor. GPU paid only $367 million of this sum; the remainder came from the insurance industry, other atomic utilities, taxpayers in the form of federal funds, and state taxes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the states served by GPU. It cost more to decontaminate the plant than it did to build it, Osif and coauthors report. These financial consequences, even from an accident where most of the reactor's radioactive inventory remained within the containment building, should give serious second thoughts to any utility executive contemplating investments in atomic power.
Consequently, the U.S. nuclear power industry has stagnated. No nuclear plants have been ordered since 1979, and all reactors ordered after 1973 have since been canceled. The industry peaked in 1990, at 112 operating reactors. The Energy Department's current count is 104, due to the retirement of some older units.
Nuclear energy provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, representing about 8 percent of total U.S. energy consumption. In contrast, the nation's foremost energy source remains petroleum, which represents nearly 40 percent of total consumption, and most of that consumption goes to automobiles and trucks. Moreover, imports now supply about half of U.S. petroleum consumption.
During the early days of the George W. Bush administration, rhetorical support for atomic energy resurfaced in both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. But the events of September 11, 2001 muted official support. With nuclear plants representing potential terrorist targets, public statements about safe and clean nuclear power evaporated. Recently, however, industry confidence in nuclear power seems to have reawakened; in late April a consortium of atomic energy companies offered to design a new reactor–if they can receive $400 million in federal subsidies.
After decontamination, TMI Unit 2 was placed in “post-defueling monitored storage” in December 1993. Twenty-five years after the accident, TMI remains a symbol of the potential dangers of nuclear energy. National energy policy should give priority to the more efficient use of energy, through applications that are economically feasible, and to renewable energy for new power sources. At 6 percent of U.S. energy use, renewable sources currently provide nearly the same amounts of energy as atomic power, and public discussion should turn to measures to expand this contribution.