Three Mile
Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical
Perspective
by J. Samuel Walker
The University of California Press, Berkeley,
CA, 2004
315 pp., illus. 22 b/w. Trade, $24.95
ISBN: 0-520-23940-7.
Reviewed by John F. Barber
School of Arts and Humanities, The University
of Texas at Dallas
jfbarber@eaze.net
On March 28, 1979, the worst accident
in the history of commercial nuclear power
in the United States occurred at the Three
Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station
(TMI) near Middletown, Pennsylvania when
a substantial portion of the core of one
of the two reactors melted. For five days,
the citizens of central Pennsylvania and
the entire world followed with growing
alarm the efforts of private, state, and
national authorities to prevent the crippled
reactor from spewing radiation into the
environment.
Now, 25 years later, J. Samuel Walker,
historian for the United States Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, provides an authoritative
account of this critical event. His book,
Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in
Historical Perspective, provides a
minute-by-minute account of the accident,
as well as assessments of the long-term
aftermath. Walker's insightful review
of the acrimonious national controversy
over nuclear power that preceded the TMI
accident, as well as his accounting of
how TMI remains to this day the single
most important event in the commercial
nuclear power industry, and its regulation
provides substantial context and perspective.
In brief, the accident began at 4:00 am
on March 28 when pumps circulating cooling
water into the reactor's core failed.
Falling coolant levels exposed the reactor's
fuel rods, which ruptured releasing dangerous
amounts of hydrogen. Temperatures in the
core rose to over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sections of the reactor's core crumbled
into a molten mass. As the alarms continued
to sound, officials from the Metropolitan
Edison Company and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) realized they faced a
serious challenge in trying to cool the
core and prevent a complete meltdown that
might have destroyed the defensive containment
system surrounding the reactor.
Five days later, the situation at TMI
was declared under control. The hydrogen
bubble in the containment building was
dissipated, thus greatly diminishing the
possibility of an explosion destroying
the building and releasing radioactive
material. The contaminated water in the
plant's cooling system was collected and
cleaned of radioactive elements. The reactor
was shut down, and its molten core removed.
As Walker makes clear, from the start
of the accident, the situation was more
complex than anyone knew, or led others
to believe. This lack of clear information
about the situation inside TMI was paralleled
by the lack of clearly defined roles and
lines of authority at the private, state,
and federal levels. The result, says Walker,
of misinterpretation of information and
poor communications, was an atmosphere
of crisis and danger.
Despite the danger, Walker notes that
no humans, livestock, or agricultural
products were exposed to adverse levels
of radiation. The corporate and political
outcomes were less bright, however. As
Walker recounts, the TMI accident incited
widespread criticism of nuclear power
technology, the nuclear industry, and
the NRC. Critics faulted the industry
and the NRC for their lack of performance
both before and after the accident. The
international attention garnered by the
crisis redoubled the determination and
enhanced the credibility of the antinuclear
movement. Arguably, the United States
nuclear industry never recovered.
As Walker concludes, TMI was "a severe
crisis that resulted from mistakes, oversights,
and misjudgments" (3). While a number
of equipment failures led to the TMI emergency,
it was the "human-element" that converted
these minor malfunctions into a severe
accident. Despite the generally favorable
outcome of the accident, and the subsequent
efforts to improve nuclear safety, the
memories of the tension, the uncertainty,
and confusion made a strong impression
on popular perception and TMI is widely
recalled as a major catastrophe, the worst
in the United States' nuclear industry.
Ultimately, TMI demonstrated the potent
of nuclear power, beyond other modern
technologies, to inspire fear. The dual
outcome was to galvanize both regulatory
and operational improvements designed
to reduce the risks of another such accident
as well as opposition to the expansion
of nuclear power.
In his book Three Mile Island: A Nuclear
Crisis in Historical Perspective,
Walker captures the high human drama surrounding
the TMI accident, sets it in the context
of the heated debate over nuclear power
in the seventies, and analyzes the social,
technical, and political issues it raised.
His account of the days and events surrounding
the TMI accident clear up misconceptions
and his discussion of the aftermath provide
thoughtful and sober grounds for the continued
debate over the role of nuclear power
in our contemporary world.