BBC News - Japan quake: Nuclear lessons from Three Mile Island

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15 March 2011 Last updated at 22:53 GMT

Anger over Japan nuclear exodus

By Katie Connolly
BBC News, Washington

Three decades before the current nuclear crisis in Japan, the eyes of the world were
on an unfolding disaster at America's Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
"The world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties
and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the atomic age," newsman Walter
Cronkite intoned on the CBS evening news, two nights after the disaster at the Three Mile
Island nuclear plant began.
"The horror tonight is that it could get much worse. It is not an atomic explosion that is
feared. The experts say that is impossible. But the spectre was raised of perhaps the next
most serious kind of nuclear catastrophe - a massive release of radioactivity."
Fortunately that did not happen, but such was the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty
surrounding a nuclear accident that ultimately resulted in comparatively minimal damage.
Still, it remains America's worst commercial nuclear accident.
Human error

The event that became seared into America's collective memory began at 4am on
Wednesday 28 March, 1979.
A relatively routine malfunction in a non-nuclear system at the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant
near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in America's northeast, caused a relief valve to open,

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releasing coolant from the core.

The valve should have closed after a moment, but it didn't, and a large volume of coolant
escaped.
There was no straightforward way for the plant's operators to know that the valve was the
problem. No instrument on their control panel indicated whether it was open or closed.
Operators knew something was going wrong, though - alarms sounded and lights were
flashing.
They mistakenly diagnosed the issue as being too much coolant in the pressuriser and shut
off the emergency core cooling system, the first in a series of missteps that escalated the
crisis.
"In not knowing what was going wrong and taking exactly the wrong action, they
exacerbated the problem by orders of magnitude," says J Samuel Walker, a historian who
worked for many years for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the US atomic
agency and nuclear watchdog.
Operators worked furiously for days to minimize the meltdown.
It wasn't until 1985, when sophisticated cameras were sent into the core, that authorities
understood the enormous extent of the meltdown.
The TMI disaster took over 12 years to clean up, at a cost of about $973m (605m).
Fortunately, little radiation was released, and multiple studies have shown no serious health
impacts.
There was no documented increase in cancers. Links between TMI and problems with
livestock in the area, including deaths and reproductive issues, have not been proven.
But, even though the TMI accident didn't end in a nuclear catastrophe, it is still a uniquely
terrifying chapter in American history.
Mixed messages

The entire country held its breath; nightly news broadcasts devoted entire shows to TMI. It
was truly a moment of national crisis.
The climate of anxiety stemmed in large part from mixed messages, misinformation, and a
cultural context that included doomsday films like The China Syndrome and anti-nuclear

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protesters seeding fears of disaster.

According to Mr Walker, Metropolitan Edison, the company which operated the plant,
initially sought to downplay concerns, partly because even they didn't have a full
understanding of the problem.
The understated equivocations of their spokesmen - and their genuine uncertainty about
the situation - engendered mistrust, particularly among those in the vicinity. Media
coverage citing concerned nuclear experts served to heighten fears.
Soon, misinformation about a hydrogen bubble, which had formed in the containment
vessel after zirconium-clad fuel rods were exposed, turned into full-blown and mostly
unfounded anxiety about an atomic explosion
Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh responsibly urged pregnant women and
children under five to evacuate the surrounding areas.
His warning was advisory in nature - a measure of caution, even though no increased
radiation levels had been detected offsite - but still raised concerns and an estimated
75,000 people evacuated.
"Nobody could say for certain that the plant was under control. People in the area, with
good reason, were very concerned. Each family had to make the decision as to whether to
evacuate voluntarily," said Mr Walker.
"People were making all kinds of excruciating personal decisions with no way of knowing
what the right decisions were."
On Sunday, the fifth day of the disaster, President Jimmy Carter travelled to TMI to allay the
public's fears, reassuring America and the world that everything that could be done was
being done.
But he was photographed wearing yellow protective booties over his shoes to guard
against radiation, which further distressed many Americans.
Legacy of TMI

TMI ended up mostly being a disaster averted, not really comparable to the tragedy of
Chernobyl several years later.
But it did have a lasting impact on nuclear policy, both in the US and abroad.
A presidential commission was ordered, a series of investigations were conducted, and

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significant changes were made to regulatory policies and processes.

Although the TMI operators couldn't have known differently when the accident happened,
human error played an enormous role in worsening the crisis.
After TMI, there was a new emphasis on operator training. Changes were made to control
room instrumentation, and other equipment improvements were implemented to counter
the possibility of hydrogen bubbles.
Several plants with similar designs were temporarily shuttered, and the entire US nuclear
power industry slowed for decades.
TMI reopened after several years and still produces electricity today, but the affected tower
has been mothballed since the accident.
The TMI disaster echoed around the world, and many other countries adopted the
recommendations of the presidential commission.
Mr Walker says he sees some similarities between TMI and the situation in Japan,
particularly in terms of the climate of concern and the worries of both nuclear specialists
and locals.
"The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric doing all they can to explain what is going
on, but what they know changes from hour to hour," he said.
But in the end, the radiation released from TMI was far from catastrophic.
"Hopefully things will turn out that well and that happily in Japan but, right now, we have no
way of knowing," Mr Walker said.

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