Derek Yen - 2018 Near Scholar

2017-18 JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient Critical Mass: Examining the Unique Circumstances that Elevated the Newsworthiness of the Three Mile Island Accident Derek Yen, Class of 2018

Critical Mass: Examining the Unique Circumstances that Elevated the Newsworthiness of the Three Mile Island Accident

Derek Yen 2018 John Near Scholar Mentors: Ms. Julie Wheeler, Mrs. Meredith Cranston, Mrs. Lauri Vaughan April 11, 2018

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The March 28, 1979 accident at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island (TMI) is indisputably the most well-known American nuclear accident among both pro- and anti-nuclear activists and the general public. The anniversary of the accident has been used as cause to stage demonstrations, host symposia, and publish articles on nuclear energy year after year, and any discussion of nuclear energy’s merits and dangers invariably discusses TMI alongside the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 and the meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011.

The continued remembrance of the accident should perhaps be no surprise: in the minds of many, Three Mile Island is the most significant American nuclear crisis. As the memorial plaque to the accident near the reactors claims, “as a result of technical malfunctions and human error -- Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 Nuclear Generating Station was the scene of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident.”1 Variants of this claim have been made by various organizations: contemporaries of the accident and modern commentators, supporters and opponents of nuclear energy, journalists, scholars, and government agencies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s background information website on the Three Mile Island accident calls it “the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history.”2 The Union of Concerned Scientists’ “brief history of nuclear accidents worldwide” states that it is “considered the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history.”3 The first published New York

1

This plaque, a Pennsylvania state historical marker, was dedicated by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1999 and is located on Route 441 near the island itself.

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident,” United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, last modified December 12, 2014, accessed February 9, 2018.

2

Union of Concerned Scientists, “A Brief History of Nuclear Accidents Worldwide,” Union of Concerned Scientists, accessed February 9, 2018.

3

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Times piece in March 1979 covering the accident describes it as the “worst ever at an American nuclear generating plant.”4 Even though Three Mile Island is certainly the most well-known American nuclear accident, its grouping with Chernobyl and Fukushima as the three most significant nuclear accidents seems undeserved, as Chernobyl and Fukushima were far more dangerous accidents.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s system of ranking the “safety significance” of nuclear accidents, the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), places the Three Mile Island accident at a 5—an “accident with wider consequences”—on its scale from 07. In contrast, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has rated Chernobyl as a 7, a “major accident.”5 A month after Fukushima, the IAEA announced that the disaster would also be ranked as a 7.6 This gap between the ratings is noteworthy considering that the INES is logarithmic, meaning that the IAEA deems Chernobyl and Fukushima to be at least 100 times more significant than Three Mile Island.7 TMI’s comparatively low rating is appropriate. Chernobyl and Fukushima dwarf Three Mile Island in terms of ecological and health impact. The Chernobyl accident contaminated land in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, resulted in more than 30 deaths due to exposure to radiation,

Donald Janson, “Radiation Is Released in Accident at Nuclear Plant in Pennsylvania,” New York Times, March 29, 1979, accessed February 9, 2018.

4

International Atomic Energy Agency, “INES: The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale,” International Atomic Energy Agency, accessed February 9, 2018.

5

International Atomic Energy Agency, “Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log,” International Atomic Energy Agency, last modified April 12, 2011, accessed February 9, 2018.

6

International Atomic Energy Agency, “International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES),” International Atomic Energy Agency, accessed February 9, 2018.

7

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and has led to an increase in thyroid cancer for residents of the surrounding region.8 The Fukushima disaster caused the evacuation of 160,000 people, the cleanup process is predicted to take at least another 30-40 years and billions of dollars, and the stigma attached to the Fukushima province and experienced by the disaster’s survivors continues to today.9 Though there is increasing recognition of this sharp difference in seriousness, and many modern discussions of nuclear power disasters will primarily focus on Chernobyl and Fukushima only, Three Mile Island continues to be widely recognized as a defining element of American nuclear history.

Even when only considering American nuclear accidents, it is disputable whether TMI is truly the most serious. Though TMI is peerless in the extent to which it is historically remembered and recognized, it is by no means the only American nuclear accident of its era. The obscurity of these other domestic accidents demonstrates that the causes for TMI’s historical permanence are not easily explained. Three Mile Island was not an unprecedented public health risk: the partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi power plant near Detroit, Michigan, a little over a decade before Three Mile Island also threatened a major metropolitan center with the possibility of radioactive contamination but did not receive nearly as much coverage. Neither can Three Mile Island be understood solely as the product of an exceptional time for public discourse about nuclear energy, as the Church Rock uranium mill spill occurred three months after Three Mile Island but also received a dearth of coverage despite representing a greater risk to public health and the environment. Both the Enrico Fermi and Church Rock accidents are scarcely

United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, “The Chernobyl Accident,” United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, last modified July 16, 2012, accessed February 9, 2018.

8

Martin Fackler, “Six Years after Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel,” New York Times, November 19, 2017, accessed February 9, 2018.

9

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remembered today, even against Three Mile Island’s continued infamy. The Three Mile Island accident must have possessed some unique characteristic beyond public hazard, technological severity, or timeliness that has graven it into the annals of history.

The Three Mile Island accident entered the historical record not because of any especial technical features unique to the accident, but because it attracted persistent journalistic coverage.

The sheer amount of coverage TMI generated sets it apart from all other American nuclear accidents, and it was this publicity that elicited local and federal government responses to the accident, instigated reforms to the nuclear industry, and encouraged public discourse about nuclear energy. These real impacts legitimize TMI’s position as a historical event and are the true consequences of TMI—not the direct outcomes of the accident itself. Even though TMI is not unique as an accident, TMI is truly unique as an event: only TMI ever garnered the formation of a Presidential Commission to investigate its causes and impact; only TMI ever created a weeklong national and international news story; only TMI remains a household name to this day.

The Three Mile Island accident’s historical impacts are therefore the direct result of media coverage of the accident. Understanding why TMI was the target of so much press coverage compared to other nuclear accidents will explain how TMI has earned its central position in the history of the American nuclear energy industry.

Reactors 101 Describing the Three Mile Island accident first requires a brief explanation of the operation of a pressurized water reactor, the kind of reactor at Three Mile Island.10 There are two buildings that comprise the reactor: a primary system that hosts the nuclear portion of the plant,

10

J. Samuel Walker, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 71.

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and a secondary system that hosts the non-nuclear portion.11 The primary system houses the reactor core, which is comprised of radioactive fissile fuel encased in protective cladding.

Nuclear reactions carried out by the core—a fission chain reaction—produce heat. This heat is harnessed by the rest of the reactor and converted to electricity. A series of pipes, the primary coolant loop, passes pressurized water through the core. The heat produced by the core’s nuclear reactions is transferred to the water, cooling the core and heating the water, which has been pressurized so that it will remain liquid despite its high temperature. In the process of gaining heat from the core, the water of the primary coolant loop also becomes radioactive from exposure to the core’s radiation. The entirety of the primary system is enclosed within a containment building made of thick concrete to contain its radiation in the event of an accident.12 The primary coolant loop then transfers its heat to a second series of pipes containing water, the secondary coolant loop, located in the secondary system. This heat transfer boils the water in the secondary system to steam but does not render the water radioactive. The steam of the secondary system is then passed through turbines to produce electricity and cooled back into liquid water in the condenser. The curved concrete towers associated with nuclear power plants are in fact not part of the nuclear generator itself but are hyperbolic cooling towers used as part of the condenser. Now that the steam of the secondary coolant loop has been converted back to water, the water can be pumped back to be heated to steam again by the primary coolant loop, creating a self-sustaining cycle.13

Union of Concerned Scientists, “Safety Issues with Pressurized Water Reactors,” Union of Concerned Scientists, accessed February 9, 2018.

11

12

Ibid.

John G. Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1979), 89.

13

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The chief risk with a pressurized water reactor is the possibility of meltdown. The fission chain reaction creates a considerable amount of heat that, if not properly mediated, can melt parts of the core’s cladding and allow radiation to leak out into the containment building.14 In an extreme scenario, the components of the core become hot enough to melt through the walls of the containment building, allowing radiation to escape into the environment. Accordingly, it is critical that plant operators ensure that the core is always covered with coolant water. When the core is uncovered, there is the risk that radioactive material could leech into the coolant water.15 To contribute to the safety of plants, most of the plant’s components have automatically operated backup systems, constituting the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS).16 Many ECCS safety features were triggered in the Three Mile Island accident but were manually overridden by plant operators, obviating their protective benefit.17 What Happened at TMI According to the report of the President’s Commission created to investigate the accident, the Three Mile Island accident began on March 28, 1979, 36 seconds past 4:00 a.m., when a pump that supplied water to the secondary coolant loop of the Unit 2 power generating station (TMI-2) stopped working.18 The shutoff of this water pump automatically resulted in three emergency pumps activating, but the emergency lines had been closed—these three emergency

14

Ibid., 176.

15

Ibid., 87-88.

16

Ibid., 89.

17

Ibid.

This paper presents the account of the accident in the Report of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Only one source’s account is referenced in this section for consistency. There is a strong consensus on the sequence of events at Three Mile Island, and other accounts agree with the account of the President’s Commission.

18

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pumps were not supplying any water to the steam generators.19 Plant operators failed to notice that the emergency pumps were not working because the indicator light was covered by a tag.20 No longer cooled by the secondary system, heat accumulated within the primary coolant loop, building up pressure. A relief valve on the primary coolant loop automatically opened to release some of the water and steam and relieve pressure, but pressure continued to build. The reactor automatically shut down to stop the reaction and prevent the creation of additional heat, but radionuclides in the primary coolant loop continued to produce heat through radioactive decay.21 Without water from the routine pump or from the emergency pumps, the core continued to heat.

Unbeknownst to plant operators, the release valve that had automatically opened earlier had not closed as it should have, and continued to drain off thousands of gallons of water from the secondary coolant loop, greatly diminishing the flow of coolant water.22 In response to the low pressure and high temperature, two high pressure injection pumps automatically activated to cool the core by pumping water into the primary coolant loop. Due to a misassessment of the event, plant operators—in accordance with their training—decided to turn off one of the high pressure injection pumps and greatly reduce the flow of the other.23 All of these events occurred within four minutes after the accident began. About an hour later at 5:00 a.m., the four primary coolant pumps began to vibrate, and plant operators feared that the pumps would be damaged.

Accordingly, the operators turned off all four pumps—again in accordance with their training.24

19

Ibid., 90.

20

Ibid., 46.

21

Ibid., 90.

22

Ibid., 91.

23

Ibid., 93.

24

Ibid., 99.

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Together, the mechanical malfunction of the relief valve and the series of inappropriate overrides of ECCS features by plant operators caused heat to accumulate within the core and, at times, for the core to be uncovered. At one point, up to two-thirds of the core was uncovered.25 With no way for heat to leave the system, the core suffered a partial meltdown: the core’s cladding was breached.26 Had the operators closed the relief valve, or decided against overriding the ECCS, the accident would have ended without much incident.27 State of the Nuclear Industry before the TMI Accident The nuclear industry’s regulatory procedures before the accident—or lack thereof—made an accident like Three Mile Island essentially inevitable. To investigate the accident, President Jimmy Carter created the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, also known as the Kemeny Commission after its chairman, John G. Kemeny, a mathematician and then President of Dartmouth College.28 To ensure that the Commission operated without conflicts of interest and could not be accused of corruption, President Carter staffed the Commission with people who had never previously worked in the nuclear industry.29 President Carter also selected individuals who were not strongly for or against nuclear energy so that the Commission could fairly investigate the accident without preconceived notions.30

25

Ibid., 100.

26

Walker, Three Mile, 78.

27

Kemeny and President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 91.

28

Ibid., 1.

Ronald M. Eytchison, “Memories of the Kemeny Commission,” Nuclear News, March 2004, 61, accessed April 10, 2018.

29

30

Walker, Three Mile, 210.

Yen 10 In its report, the commission ultimately concludes that “fundamental changes will be necessary in the organization, procedures, and practices – and above all – in the attitudes of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, to the extent that the institutions we investigated are typical, of the nuclear industry.”31 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created through the split of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into two bodies by the Energy Reorganization Act in 1974.32 The AEC’s purpose was both to promote the use of nuclear energy and license/regulate nuclear power plants, creating an inherent conflict of interest that undermined confidence in the Commission’s ability to adequately serve the public.33 By the early 1970s, the prospect of splitting the Commission’s two distinct functions into two separate agencies gained support both from nuclear skeptics who believed the AEC had been derelict in its oversight of plant operation and nuclear industry officials who believed a dedicated safety firm would expedite licensing and streamline regulations.34 Despite this intent of removing the conflict-of-interest and separating the regulators from the industry that motivated the NRC’s creation, the Three Mile Island accident revealed that the new commission had not fully shed its roots. As the Kemeny Commission notes, “the purpose of the split [of the Atomic Energy Commission] was to separate the regulators from those who were promoting the peaceful uses of atomic energy. . . . We have seen evidence that some of the old promotional philosophy still influences the regulatory practices of the NRC. . . . The evidence

31

Kemeny and President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 7.

32

Walker, Three Mile, 33.

33

Ibid., 29.

34

Ibid., 31-34.

Yen 11 suggests that the NRC has sometimes erred on the side of the industry’s convenience rather than carrying out its primary mission of assuring safety.”35 Certain events suggest that the NRC failed to sufficiently regulate the nuclear industry. In 1977, a very similar accident to Three Mile Island occurred at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ottawa County, Ohio, located about 25 miles east of Toledo.36 The same problem occurred: an emergency valve stuck open and continued to release water, and the operators’ training suggested shutting off the backup pump, which exacerbated the situation. The operators at Davis-Besse eventually recognized the problem and closed the valve, preventing an accident.

Safety experts from the plant’s designer, the Babcock and Wilcox Company, penned a memorandum that described how an accident like Davis-Besse could become serious if plant operators further decided to turn off the emergency cooling pumps—as was done at TMI.37 Nothing came of this memorandum, however. Though the NRC investigated, they did not circulate information to utilities informing them about how this oversight within operators’ training could lead to a loss-of-coolant accident.38 How the Story Broke to the Press The first member of the press to learn about the Three Mile Island accident was a local Harrisburg traffic reporter who had heard a notice distributed to state police on his radio. He informed his news director, who called the TMI plant and was mistakenly connected to the TMI control room, where a busy plant operator, saying “I can’t talk now, we’ve got a problem,” redirected him to the Reading, Pennsylvania headquarters of the company that operated the plant,

35

Kemeny and President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 19.

36

Walker, Three Mile, 73.

37

Ibid., 69.

38

Kemeny and President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 29.

Yen 12 Metropolitan Edison (Met-Ed).39 Met-Ed’s Manager of Communications Services, Blaine Fabian, answered the phone: “the plant is shut down. We’re working on it. There’s no danger off-site. No danger to the general public.”40 The story had broken, and the Associated Press sent its first piece at 9:06 am.41 By the afternoon, reporters from across the country would converge on Dauphin County in Pennsylvania to cover the event.42 Foreign press reporters from Japan, France, Sweden, and West Germany, among others, also picked up the story.43 In total, somewhere between 300-500 reporters would cover Three Mile Island over the course of the first week of the accident.44 Reasons for TMI’s Intense Coverage The Staff Report to the Kemeny Commission states that reporters generally cited seven reasons why Three Mile Island “deserved such intense press scrutiny.”45 The seven reasons are listed as follows: 1. The accident had uniqueness and was the first of its kind; 2. The fear associated with radiation made the event especially newsworthy; 3. TMI’s geographic situation in a populated area near a state capital and two significant news centers (New York and Washington) encouraged coverage; 4. The conflicting information about the accident encouraged

39

Walker, Three Mile, 92.

John G. Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report to the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: Report of the Public’s Right to Information Task Force (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1979), 90.

40

William Lanouette, “Three Mile Island + 10: Will Press Coverage Be Better Next Time?” (paper presented at A Colloquium at the Media Studies Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, March 28, 1989), 10.

41

42

Ibid., 12.

43

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 1.

44

Ibid., 171.

45

Ibid., 172.

Yen 13 reporters to gather more information; 5. The coincidental release of the film The China Syndrome two weeks earlier primed perception of the accident; 6. The potential for catastrophe encouraged coverage; and 7. The accident fit into a broader discussion of energy consciousness.46 Historical comparisons between TMI and two contemporary nuclear accidents—Enrico Fermi and Church Rock—reveal that only one of these reasons is a viable explanation for Three Mile Island’s unprecedented coverage.

“We Almost Lost Detroit” The first of the hypothetical explanations offered in the Staff Report to the Kemeny Commission for TMI’s extensive coverage is that the accident had “uniqueness. Reporters saw the accident as a first.”47 While the word “unique” is too vague to completely dispute, it would not be correct to claim that TMI was the first accident of its kind. As is cited in the Kemeny Commission’s report, a very similar accident had occurred at the Davis-Besse plant in 1977.48 Granted, the Davis-Besse plant is in Ohio and may not have provoked as much concern. The population density is lower, and the cities may not be as large. For comparison, the Three Mile Island power generating station is located about 80 miles west of Philadelphia in the middle of the Susquehanna river in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. In addition to Davis-Besse, a second accident more than a decade prior also throws the validity of the “uniqueness” approach into doubt.

46

Ibid., 172-73.

47

Ibid.

48

Walker, Three Mile, 73.

Yen 14 The Enrico Fermi Unit-1 reactor in Newport, Michigan, suffered a partial meltdown in 1966.49 It too threatened a major urban area—the reactor is due south of Detroit, about 25 miles away. Despite potentially causing a release of radiation into an urban area, the Enrico Fermi accident is relatively unknown. Little research exists on it, whether academic or journalistic, and it certainly did not lead to substantial industry reform. Because the accident did not gain the attention of the press and the public, Enrico Fermi did not encourage the formation of a Presidential Commission as Three Mile Island did. The obscurity of the Enrico Fermi accident also demonstrates that reasons citing geography and potential for catastrophe are not comprehensive explanations for TMI’s coverage. An accident of a similar threat and proximity to population did not provoke nearly the same response. As risk communication expert Peter M. Sandman, who served on the Kemeny Commission, notes, “TMI was by no means the only nearmiss in the history of nuclear power . . . but TMI was the only near-miss that captivated public attention for weeks, that is widely misremembered as a public health catastrophe, that is still a potent symbol of nuclear risks, and that as a result has had devastating repercussions for the industry itself.”50 The unexpected obscurity of the Enrico Fermi accident was not lost at the time. After Three Mile Island, a group of anti-nuclear musicians formed the Musicians United for Safe Energy and organized a series of “No Nukes” concerts. One song performed in the “No Nukes” concerts specifically referred to the Enrico Fermi accident: “We Almost Lost Detroit.”51 In its closing bars, the song laments the obscurity of the Enrico Fermi accident: “Damn near totally

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Fermi, Unit 1,” United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, accessed February 9, 2018.

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50

Peter M. Sandman, “Tell It like It Is: 7 Lessons from TMI,” IAEA Bulletin 47, no. 2 (March 2006): 10, PDF.

51

No Nukes, produced by Jackson Browne, et al., Asylum Records, 1979, LP, recorded September 19, 1979.

Yen 15 destroyed one time. / Didn’t all of the world know? Say didn’t you know? / Didn’t all of the world know? Say didn’t you know? / We almost lost Detroit!”52 The Radiation’s Background The Three Mile Island accident occurred in a time of upheaval in American society. A combination of trends elevated the newsworthiness of the Three Mile Island accident and potentially encouraged an extent of coverage that would not have been afforded had the accident occurred another time.

State of Journalism The TMI accident occurred in a time of greater public trust in journalistic institutions as a whole. Gallup conducted a poll of Americans in 1976 and 2016 asking respondents “how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media -- such as newspapers, T.V. and radio -when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly -- a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?”53 When polled in 1976, 72% of respondents stated they trusted mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount.” In contrast, when polled in 2016, only 32% of respondents stated they trusted mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount.”54 An understanding of the great trust the American public afforded journalistic institutions at the time of the Three Mile Island accident is essential to understanding the context of the accident.

As a Gallup News article analyzing the Gallup poll report claims, the “highest point in 1976, at 72%,” came “in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism

“We Almost Lost Detroit,” performed by Gil Scott-Heron, recorded September 19, 1979, on No Nukes, produced

by Jackson Browne, et al., Asylum Records, 1979, LP. 52

Art Swift, “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low,” Gallup News, last modified September 14, 2016, accessed February 4, 2018.

53

54

Ibid.

Yen 16 regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal.”55 Galvanized by stories of journalists combatting and exposing institutional conspiracies, both the public and journalists themselves may have been more ready to see missteps by Met-Ed and the NRC as suggestive of a cover-up. As Sandman writes, “the biggest source of outrage at TMI was undoubtedly mistrust—a growing sense that MetEd executives for sure, and maybe NRC officials as well, weren’t saying everything they knew.”56 Government Skepticism These high-profile government scandals in the decades before Three Mile Island led some citizens to become more skeptical of what they viewed as institutions, among which was nuclear energy. Comparing Three Mile Island and Watergate may seem completely unfounded due to the wholly different circumstance, deliberation, and nature of the two incidents, but the connection was drawn in some publications. In an August 1979 newsletter, the American Civil Liberties Union claimed that “as unlikely as it may seem at first glance, the development of nuclear power holds profound and dangerous implications for civil liberties.”57 The letter goes on to draw a connection between nuclear energy controversies and historic administrative scandals, claiming that a cover-up about nuclear weapons testing is “as serious an abuse of power as Watergate,” and that the prevention of the publication of an article on the hydrogen bomb denotes a “secrecy mania . . . even greater than the Nixon administration’s in the Pentagon Papers case.”58

55

Ibid.

56

Sandman, “Tell It like,” 12.

Joanne Omang, “ACLU's Campaign Delineates Threat to Civil Liberties from Nuclear Power,” Washington Post, September 6, 1979, accessed February 8, 2018.

57

58

Ibid.

Yen 17 The movements that would come to oppose nuclear energy framed their opposition as part of a broader struggle against governmental corruption. As American Studies scholar John Wills notes, “for citizens who endured both the Vietnam War and Watergate, claims of atomic conspiracy seemed eminently plausible.”59 Though not necessarily united by a common ideology or cause, the movements against the Vietnam War and against nuclear energy would overlap— often in part because nuclear energy was conflated with nuclear weapons. Exemplifying the fluidity between the movements, the first large American anti-nuclear organization, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, which was formed in 1957 to protest nuclear weapons testing, switched to focus on being an anti-Vietnam War group in the late 60s.60 The Kemeny Commission ultimately concluded that, even if not explicitly corrupt, the NRC “has sometimes erred on the side of the industry’s convenience rather than carrying out its primary mission of assuring safety.”61 The NRC possessed conflicts-of-interest that undermined its ability to impartially regulate the nuclear industry.

A 1976 study by watchdog group Common Cause on conflicts of interest in the executive branch found that 71.5% of the senior NRC staff surveyed had been employed by private energy companies.62 Of those staff members, 90% had been employed specifically by companies holding NRC licenses, permits, or contracts.63 The NRC did have regulations preventing

John Wills, “Celluloid Chain Reactions: The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island,” European Journal of American Culture 25, no. 2 (2006): 113, doi:10.1386/ejac.25.2.109/1.

59

Immanuel Ness, “Antinuclear Movement,” in Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004), 1294.

60

61

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 19.

62

Andrew Kneier et al., Serving Two Masters: A Common Cause Study of Conflicts of Interest in the Executive Branch (Washington, D.C.: Common Cause, 1976), 27.

63

Ibid.

Yen 18 employees from holding stock in energy companies, but the conflict of interest in staffing remains prominent.64 Similar numbers are seen with the consultants hired by the NRC: 73% of the NRC’s contracted consultants were concurrently employed by a private energy company. 65 Of the consultants concurrently working for the NRC and a private energy company, 89% were working for a private energy company that held NRC licenses, permits, or contracts. 66 The NRC was an insufficient regulatory body, wrought with conflicts-of-interest amongst its top-level personnel and remiss in its responsibility to ensure the safe operation of nuclear power plants. In the recommendations section of its report, the Kemeny Commission states that “the Commission found a number of inadequacies in the NRC and, therefore, proposes a restructuring of the agency. . . . the NRC does not possess the organizational and management capabilities necessary for the effective pursuit of safety goals.”67 Anti-nuclear Movement The anti-nuclear movement had begun to stage increasingly public demonstrations in the years before Three Mile Island. In 1977, more than 1,800 anti-nuclear protesters from the Clamshell Alliance walked onto the construction site of a nuclear reactor at Seabrook, New Hampshire to protest its creation. 68 More than 1,400 of the protesters were arrested and imprisoned for two weeks during which they refused to post bail, attracting national media coverage of the five-day protest.69 The Clamshell Alliance’s protests’ success led to the

64

Ibid.

65

Ibid., 29.

66

Ibid.

67

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 65.

68

Clamshell-TVS, “Clamshell History,” To the Village Square, accessed October 24, 2011.

Yen 19 formation of other anti-nuclear groups nationwide, including the Abalone Alliance in California.70 In addition to the increasing visibility of physical protests, intellectual protests of nuclear power also gained prominence. Of all the anti-nuclear books and movies published in the late 70s, one stands out in particular: The China Syndrome, released on March 16, 1979—less than two weeks before the Three Mile Island accident.71 The China Syndrome is a docudrama film that portrays three television reporters’ efforts to break the story of a partial meltdown at a power plant to the public despite opposition from industry personnel and cautious editors.72 A blockbuster hit, the film encouraged viewers to consider the true scope of a nuclear accident. In another eerie coincidence, a renegade nuclear engineer in the film describes a hypothetical meltdown scenario colloquially termed “the China Syndrome” where a nuclear power plant’s core melts through the ground, hits groundwater, and sends up a plume of radioactive steam that “might render an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.”73 Yet the film did not merely make waves with critics and the box office: The China Syndrome directly contributed to the anti-nuclear energy movement by galvanizing citizens to political action and creating a touchstone for real nuclear power plants. The stars of the film, including the actor-activist “Hanoi” Jane Fonda, led efforts in promoting the anti-nuclear energy

William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 1 (July 1989): 17.

69

70

Clamshell-TVS, “Clamshell History,” To the Village Square.

71

Wills, “Celluloid Chain,” 110.

Tony Shaw, “Rotten to the Core: Exposing America's Energy-Media Complex in The China Syndrome,” Cinema Journal 52, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 98.

72

73

The China Syndrome, directed by James Bridges, produced by Michael Douglas, performed by Jane Fonda, Columbia Pictures, 1979.

Yen 20 cause.74 Demonstrators led protests and distributed pamphlets outside movie theaters, and California Governor Jerry Brown referenced the film in a speech calling for the closure of a nuclear power plant in Sacramento.75 Anti-nuclear sentiment was definitely brewing within the public’s consciousness in the months leading up to Three Mile Island, and the creation and release of The China Syndrome only attest to increasing popular concerns over the safety of nuclear energy. In the first three months of 1979, before the Three Mile island accident in late March, news networks ran 26 segments featuring nuclear energy.76 Two days after the release of The China Syndrome, before the Three Mile Island accident, the New York Times ran a piece in which “nuclear experts debate” the accuracy of the film.77 The allocation of a piece to a specific film—and such a wellsourced one, run below the fold of the “Arts and Leisure” section—indicates that the New York Times’ editors recognized that the movie would inspire debate even before an accident guaranteed discussion. The “current national debate over atomic energy” that the piece recognizes was clearly alive. As the Kemeny Commission notes, one study “estimates that there has been a 400 percent increase in print media coverage of nuclear power issues between 1972 and 1976.”78 Three Mile Island clearly did not initiate the nuclear energy debate, nor did it cause

“Jane Fonda,” in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, online ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2013). Fonda gained the nickname “Hanoi” after making several widely publicized anti-war speeches in North Vietnam in 1972.

74

75

Wills, “Celluloid Chain,” 110.

76

Gamson and Modigliani, “Media Discourse,” 17.

David Burnham, “Nuclear Experts Debate The China Syndrome,” New York Times, March 18, 1979, Arts and Leisure, accessed July 12, 2017.

77

78

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 1.

Yen 21 the debate to enter the mainstream, but it brought renewed importance and a sense of immediacy to the discussion.

Energy Crisis During his term, President Jimmy Carter faced a historic energy crisis that had begun with the 1973 OPEC oil shock. Energy prices increased both for businesses and households, causing stagflation that harmed the American economy. This situation was exacerbated by the Iranian Revolution, which occurred a few months before the Three Mile Island accident and led to a second oil shock that further increased prices. Increasing energy prices had an indeterminate but unignorable effect on the reception of the TMI accident. It can be argued that the urgency of the energy crisis softened the accident’s impact on the nuclear industry due to its viability as an alternative energy source. President Carter invoked this interpretation of nuclear energy’s role within the oil crisis in an April 1977 policy statement: “many countries see nuclear power as the only real opportunity, at least in this century, to reduce the dependence of their economic wellbeing on foreign oil.”79 President Carter echoed these sentiments in a December 1979 address delivered in response to the completion of the Kemeny Commission’s report: In this country nuclear power is an energy source of last resort . . . but we cannot shut the door on nuclear power for the United States. The recent events in Iran have shown us the clear, stark dangers that excessive dependence on imported oil holds for our Nation. . . . We do not have the luxury of abandoning nuclear power or imposing a lengthy moratorium on its further use. A nuclear powerplant can

Jimmy Carter, “Nuclear Power Policy Statement on Decisions Reached following a Review,” speech, April 7, 1977, The American Presidency Project, accessed February 8, 2018.

79

Yen 22 displace 35,000 barrels of oil per day, or roughly 13 million barrels of oil per year.80 Rather than emphasizing the cost effectiveness of nuclear energy, President Carter specifically phrases the merit of nuclear energy in terms of oil. The Three Mile Island accident undoubtedly was linked to general energy anxieties resulting from the oil shock.

In short, the Three Mile Island accident was perfectly timed to provoke national debate over nuclear energy. It occurred at a nexus of renewed anti-nuclear activism, confidence in journalistic exposure, institutional skepticism, and broader debate over general energy production. The fear of radiation, coincidence, and energy consciousness are all viable supporting explanations for why a nuclear accident would become a national story. It is important to note that while these trends may have existed at the national level, they may not have been as influential in the specific locale around Three Mile Island. Dauphin County and its surrounding counties were politically conservative at the time.81 In the 1978 gubernatorial election, more than 67% of Dauphin county’s votes were cast for Republican Dick Thornburgh.82 The national anti-nuclear movement had not gained traction in Harrisburg. There was little local opposition to the plant’s construction, and the anti-nuclear organizations in the area “suffered from lack of public support.”83 The demographics of local opinion on nuclear energy would change after the accident, but it remains clear that Harrisburg was not generally in support of the

Jimmy Carter, “President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island Remarks Announcing Actions in Response to the Commission’s Report,” speech, December 7, 1979, The American Presidency Project, accessed February 8, 2018.

80

Sherry Cable, Edward J. Walsh, and Rex H. Warland, “Differential Paths to Political Activism: Comparisons of Four Mobilization Processes after the Three Mile Island Accident,” Social Forces 66, no. 4 (June 1988): 953.

81

Wilkes University, “Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Election Returns 1978,” The Wilkes University Election Statistics Project, accessed February 10, 2018.

82

83

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 39.

Yen 23 anti-nuclear movement. One local citizen converted to the anti-nuclear cause after TMI said that they had formerly considered anti-nuclear activists “radical kooks.”84 Any sensationalism on the part of television networks or the occasional newspaper would have had a muted effect on local opinion. Locals cited radio as their primary source of information during the accident.85 In the words of a news director of a local Harrisburg radio station, “you can't wait until the newspaper comes out, you're panicked now. Television doesn't interrupt its programming that way, nor could it keep constant coverage going. Radio was the medium at that time.”86 Studies support this statement: a survey conducted during the accident cited by the Kemeny Commission reports that 56% of locals first learned of the accident through the radio.87 In a survey conducted after the accident by a research group hired by the NRC, locals rated radio and local television networks as the most useful, with 67% of respondents rating each as either “extremely useful” or “useful.” In contrast, 50% of respondents rated newspapers as extremely useful/useful, and 55% of respondents rated national television as extremely useful/useful.88 The government skepticism that was present in some parts of the country was not a dominant force in Dauphin county. Confronted with the opportunity to evacuate, the majority of Dauphin county households did not: among households in which no one evacuated, 71% of respondents stated that they were waiting for an evacuation order; among households in which at

84

Cable, Walsh, and Warland, “Differential Paths,” 954.

85

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 218.

86

Ibid.

87

Ibid.

88

C. B. Flynn, comp., Three Mile Island Telephone Survey (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1979), 26.

Yen 24 least one person evacuated, 52% of respondents were waiting for the order.89 Despite the national prevalence of government skepticism and the anti-nuclear movement, the specific locale around Three Mile Island would not be aligned with these forces. Nevertheless, the establishment of an event as historically significant depends more upon broad recognition than local recognition.

These trends surrounding nuclear energy still provide a compelling, valid explanation for why the Three Mile Island accident may have been considered more newsworthy than the Enrico Fermi accident.

The Church Rock Spill These trends in American society in the late seventies—an enhanced trust in journalism, increased scrutiny of government institutions, a growing anti-nuclear movement, and an unprecedented energy crisis—help provide context for why the Three Mile Island story may have been considered especially newsworthy and attracted public interest. But even though these circumstances offer a strong explanation for why the Enrico Fermi accident did not gain nearly as much traction as the Three Mile Island accident, additional factors must have contributed to Three Mile Island’s greater media attention. Another nuclear accident around the time of TMI did not benefit from the atmosphere of heightened interest in nuclear energy these trends inspired and received only tepid coverage despite being more dangerous for public health. A spill at a uranium mine in New Mexico just three months after Three Mile Island led to the release of more than three times the amount of radiation, contaminated the surrounding environment, and directly harmed the health of the local community.90

89

Ibid., 21.

Doug Brugge, Jamie L. DeLemos, and Cat Bui, “The Sequoyah Corporation Fuels Release and the Church Rock Spill: Unpublicized Nuclear Releases in American Indian Communities,” American Journal of Public Health 97, no.

9 (September 2007): 1595, accessed March 20, 2018.

90

Yen 25 The Church Rock Mill was a Uranium Oxide mine located in Church Rock, New Mexico (about 17 miles northeast of Gallup, New Mexico), a predominantly Navajo community. The Puerco River near the mine was used by local residents as a source for medicinal herbs on the riverbank, a place of recreation for children, and a water source for their livestock, which also grazed near the mine. Waste from the mine was impounded within three lagoons separated by earthen dikes and surrounded by another earthen rampart.91 In the early morning of July 16, 1979, the earthen dam failed, releasing 46 curies of radiation as well as flooding the environment with toxic heavy metals.92 For comparison, the Three Mile Island accident released a total of 13 curies.93 Studies have suggested that the uranium content of drinking water supplies in Church Rock can explain the current higher incidence of kidney disease in the local Navajo population.94 Despite its considerable health impacts, little literature exists on the Church Rock spill. While the Church Rock spill has been discussed in grey literature, or papers written by authorities but not disseminated through traditional publication methods, little has been published in the scholarly press.95 Perhaps more pertinently, the Church Rock spill was underreported by journalism organizations both in scope of coverage and in timeliness. The first report on Church Rock by a national news organization, the Los Angeles Times, was released on July 23—a full week after the accident—and constitutes a single paragraph in a series of briefs on energy and the

91

Ibid., 1597.

92

Ibid., 1595.

93

Ibid.

Carrie Arnold, “Once upon a Mine,” Environmental Health Perspectives 122, no. 2 (February 2014): A47-48, accessed March 20, 2018, doi:10.1289/ehp.122-A44.

94

95

Brugge, DeLemos, and Bui, “The Sequoyah,” 1595.

Yen 26 environment.96 The Los Angeles Times would mention the story again intermittently over the next few months in briefs and editorials. Only once did the spill ever gain its own piece on August 22.97 In the present day, the Los Angeles Times has written seven additional pieces about uranium mining on Navajo land—all published in 2006 and 2007—and only two of the pieces reference the Church Rock spill specifically.

The New York Times covered the Church Rock spill with greater intensity, dedicating a piece to the spill on July 28.98 The piece downplays the severity of the accident: even though the text of the article denotes that the cleanup was underway, the article ran with a subhead stating the “radiation of spill easing.” That cleanup would ultimately only recover 1% of the estimated spill material.99 The scant coverage of Church Rock stands in sharp contrast to the coverage of the Three Mile Island accident. Both local and national newspapers converged on the TMI story and began coverage the day of, and articles were quick to identify it as a serious and historically significant event immediately. For instance, the Los Angeles Times’ first story on the TMI accident, released March 28, ran with the subhead of “Failure Called One of Most Serious Yet.”100 In contrast, the Los Angeles Times’ first story on the Church Rock spill reminds readers that “the dam . . . had been considered the best designed uranium tailings dam in the state.”101 Three Mile Island was

“Cost of Oil Production Delay Estimated,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1979, Energy and Environment, B2, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

96

Sandra Blakeslee, “Radioactive Waste Spill Called Worst Ever in U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1979, B3, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

97

Molly Ivins, “Dam Break Investigated; Radiation of Spill Easing,” New York Times, July 28, 1979, 6, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

98

99

Brugge, DeLemos, and Bui, “The Sequoyah,” 1598.

“Nuclear Reactor Accident Leaks Radioactive Steam,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1979, A2, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

100

Yen 27 immediately treated with gravity while the Church Rock spill was repeatedly denied concern.

The very first day of the Three Mile Island accident, Metropolitan Edison declared a general emergency, signaling the importance of the situation to the NRC and other agencies.102 When the Navajo Tribal Council’s Emergency Services Coordinating Committee requested that the Governor of New Mexico declare a state of emergency in August, the request was denied.103 The Church Rock Mill spill has been occasionally referenced in the modern era by national newspapers. On January 13, 2018, the New York Times ran a longform feature online detailing the effects of uranium mining on Navajo land: the Trump administration had expressed interest in rescinding protections for large swaths of National Monuments, and the uranium mining industry is interested in again mining Navajo lands.104 The piece mentions Church Rock a single time as a possible cause for elevated levels of uranium in Navajo drinking water, and does not elaborate further: not with a comparison of the difficulties the Navajo faced in having their voiced concerns heard then to now; not with a statement of the possible environmental impacts of new uranium mining in light of Church Rock’s known impacts; not with an analysis of the health risks that uranium mining entails. Even today, a piece that could perfectly incorporate the Church Rock spill into its discussion of uranium mining neglects to do so. The Church Rock spill has thus not even gained media recognition with time, while Three Mile Island’s cultural imprint has persisted.

101

“Cost of Oil Production,” Energy and Environment, B2.

102

Walker, Three Mile, 80.

103

Brugge, DeLemos, and Bui, “The Sequoyah,” 1598.

Hiroko Tabuchi, “Uranium Miners Pushed Hard for a Comeback. They Got Their Wish.,” New York Times, January 13, 2018, accessed February 10, 2018.

104

Yen 28 Any trends and factors that helped increase the newsworthiness of Three Mile Island should have also helped increase the newsworthiness of the Church Rock spill. If anything, it could be argued that the Church Rock spill ought to have been covered by local and national media to an even greater extent as public awareness of the Three Mile Island accident itself would count as a considerable newsworthiness-increasing factor. The Three Mile Island accident pushed the debate over nuclear energy into the mainstream, galvanized the anti-nuclear movement, and unilaterally caused the staging of nationwide protests over nuclear power. In this environment, any additional nuclear accident would be expected to attract greater coverage. As Brugge et al. note, “because the [Church Rock] spill happened in the immediate aftermath of nationwide coverage of the Three Mile Island release, the muted coverage and response is particularly striking.”105 However, there is one trend that possibly could have affected Three Mile Island without affecting Church Rock: the release of The China Syndrome. That the Kemeny Commission mentioned a popular film in a government report as a viable contributing factor to the press coverage suggests the importance of the movie in contextualizing the reception of the accident.

The China Syndrome seemed eerily prophetic not merely because it was about nuclear energy but because it specifically dealt with an accident at nuclear power plant being covered by reporters.

Parallelism with the Three Mile Island accident was strong, and the fact that the release of the film and the date of the accident were less than two weeks apart only heightened the coincidence.

The incredibly strong association between The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island, both in subject and timing, would not be formed with Church Rock. Even though anti-nuclear activists were concerned with the entire process of nuclear energy generation—including the

105

Brugge, DeLemos, and Bui, “The Sequoyah,” 1598.

Yen 29 environmental and health impacts of the mining of uranium ore and the storage of processed nuclear waste—only the actual operation of nuclear power plants was depicted in The China Syndrome. The movie and the Church Rock accident seem unrelated, only tenuously connected by the common subject of nuclear energy. Moreover, it is improbable that viewers would associate The China Syndrome with the Church Rock accident, as the release of the film and the accident are separated by four months. Hence, while the Church Rock accident would benefit from any external factors in the nuclear energy debate that increased coverage of Three Mile Island, the release of The China Syndrome likely only contributed to coverage of Three Mile Island. It seems unlikely, however, that the release of the film is the deciding factor that caused Three Mile Island to receive coverage while Church Rock did not. Ultimately, the similarities between the movie and TMI are simply coincidences. Though the film may have added to the initial interest in the accident, the amount of coverage devoted to Three Mile Island—sustained over several kinds of news media over a week—suggests reporters had an interest in the accident deeper than superficial comparisons with The China Syndrome. The China Syndrome cannot alone account for the differences between Three Mile Island and Church Rock.

As the obscurity of the Enrico Fermi and Church Rock accidents jointly demonstrate, Three Mile Island is not embedded in the annals of history because of its severity or even because of the broader national debate surrounding nuclear energy. Rather, Three Mile Island is a historical mainstay because it was covered extensively by journalists. This conclusion is not notable on its own, but to simply state that the accident was well-covered glosses over the considerable difficulties that reporters faced in breaking the story. Metropolitan Edison was wholly unprepared to provide useful information to reporters covering the story. Accordingly, the fourth reason cited in the Kemeny Staff Report—conflicting information—is the most

Yen 30 comprehensive of the reasons suggested, and it is the only one that is unique to the Three Mile Island accident and not Enrico Fermi or Church Rock.

Given that the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents were so destructive and impactful but nevertheless often considered alongside the deathless Three Mile Island accident, it is tempting to believe, as a modern commentator, that news organizations’ extensive coverage of Three Mile Island was unjustified and therefore sensationalist. After all, if the accident was only made historically known because of its coverage, and this coverage was unwarranted, it may seem that the coverage was sensationalized. This interpretation is not fully satisfactory for several reasons.

It is difficult to incontestably claim that media coverage of the event was sensationalist. For one, much of the coverage of the event was fair and non-alarmist. The “Public’s Right to Information Task Force” division of the Kemeny Commission surveyed 43 newspapers and concluded that only two were sensationalist: the New York News and the New York Post.106 Actual sensationalism in covering Three Mile Island certainly existed, but it was by far not the standard.

Moreover, it is difficult to pass judgment upon the entire way the accident was perceived based solely on trends in only some news organizations. It is easy to speak of “the media” as a monolithic unit that covered the accident, but this is of course false. There was considerable diversity in how organizations approached and organized their coverage of the accident, and the organization from which one learned about the accident could leave considerably different impressions. Local and non-local stations covered the accident with different tones. In the words of a local resident who had also served on the Kemeny Commission, “distant news was always

106

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 227.

Yen 31 more depressing than local.”107 The different mediums that disseminated news of the accident— radio, print, and television—also approached the topic differently. While print coverage of the accident tended to balance reassuring and alarming quotes, television stations were more alarming.108 For instance, after the evacuation order sent on March 30, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite described the accident as follows: We are faced with the remote but very real possibility of a nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island atomic-power plant. The danger faced by man for tampering with natural forces, a theme familiar from the myths of Prometheus to the story of Frankenstein, moved closer to fact from fancy through the day.109 The literary tone of this segment makes it tacitly apocalyptic: Cronkite floats the possibility of meltdown and immediately afterwards invokes stories of forbidden knowledge punished by divine reckoning. What makes this segment more significant is that, unlike an alarmist print piece, it is harder to dismiss. In contrast with the hundreds of publications, each of which has different, geographically confined circulation, there were only three television news networks at the time—CBS, ABC, and NBC—and each of them reached all American televisions. One of the three channels being sensationalist would have an outsized effect on national perception of the accident. Moreover, Walter Cronkite’s respected status as the “most trusted man in America” lent his words with especial weight.110 Overall, it is difficult to claim that coverage was

107

Federal Research Division Library of Congress, Media Interactions with the Public in Emergency Situations: Four Case Studies, by LaVerle Berry, Amanda Jones, and Terence Powers (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1999), 11, accessed March 20, 2018.

108

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 58.

Edwin Diamond and Leigh Passman, “Three Mile Island: How Clear Was TV's Picture?,” TV Guide, August 4, 1979, 11.

109

110

“Walter Cronkite,” in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, online ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2013).

Yen 32 sensationalist. From paper to paper, medium to medium, the way the accident was framed varied considerably.

It is disingenuous to argue that coverage of TMI was unjustified using the benefit of historical hindsight. Editorial coverage decisions are made in the spur of the moment, and what was especially unique about Three Mile Island amongst nuclear energy accidents was that it was the first to be covered by journalists while it was happening rather than after it had concluded— in fact, coverage of the Three Mile Island began only hours after the accident.111 Past coverage lacked “the drama and urgency of an ongoing news event.”112 Whether local or national, print or television, all journalistic organizations faced common difficulties in covering the accident.

The Information Channels of Met-Ed and the NRC The Three Mile Island accident began because of a break in the pipelines that carried water from the nuclear power plant’s cooling system, but the Three Mile Island accident continued because of a break in the pipelines that carried information from the nuclear power plant’s officials. The information channels that Metropolitan Edison and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission created were wholly inadequate in informing both the public and the press about the accident. Without even discussing the confused and often contradictory content of Met-Ed and the NRC’s statements, several structural features of the information channels themselves hindered the industry’s ability to effectively communicate with the press and the public.

Neither Met-Ed nor the NRC had prepared for distributing information to the public and press in the event of a disaster.113 Previous accidents had ended before coverage began, allowing

111

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 1.

112

Ibid.

113

Federal Research Division Library of Congress, Media Interactions, 5.

Yen 33 Met-Ed and NRC officials to take time in responding to press inquiries. With Three Mile Island, coverage started and continued during the accident, and officials had to answer questions on the spot.114 Unprepared for handling public relations with an accident of this type, Met-Ed and the NRC disseminated information in a slipshod, uncoordinated fashion.

There was no officially designated spokesperson for Met-Ed in the event of an accident.115 John Herbein, Metropolitan Edison’s Vice President for Power Generation, informally served as Met-Ed’s spokesperson for the accident but had never been specifically appointed for the role of Public Relations manager: in fact, Metropolitan Edison did have a designated Manager of Communications Services, Blaine Fabian, but his services were largely unutilized. 116 Asked about why he often ignored Fabian’s suggestions, Herbein said that “PR isn’t a real field. It’s not like engineering. Anyone can do it.”117 With no prior incidents of this type, Met-Ed and the NRC had never seriously considered how to conduct public relations. This lack of preparation would become apparent over the course of the accident.

Even when communication with the press was established, reporters, Met-Ed, and the NRC found themselves speaking separate languages. Industry representatives issued technical statements and were unable to explain themselves without using nuclear engineer jargon.118 In addition, the vast majority of reporters assigned to cover the accident were not informed about nuclear energy, and were consequently incapable of asking meaningful questions.119 Worsening

114

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 1.

115

Ibid., 6.

116

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 19-20.

117

Peter M. Sandman, “Tell It like It Is: 7 Lessons from TMI,” IAEA Bulletin 47, no. 2 (March 2006): 10, PDF.

118

Federal Research Division Library of Congress, Media Interactions, 8.

119

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 5.

Yen 34 this knowledge gap, Met-Ed and the NRC did not provide sufficient briefing information to help inform reporters.120 With sources only capable of phrasing answers in technical language, the press faced inherent difficulties collecting meaningful information.

The flow of information was also stifled by Met-Ed and the NRC’s decision to “speak with one voice” to reduce confusion—authorizing only certain individuals to speak to the press and instructing others not to release information.121 Traditional journalistic policy of verifying information with multiple sources, as well as a lack of information, encouraged reporters to seek alternative sources. Reporters tracked down Met-Ed employees independently and interviewed them off-duty, receiving “patchy and often mistaken” information.122 While the “one voice” policy was instituted to reduce confusion, it also introduced difficulties of its own.

Metropolitan Edison’s credibility amongst the public suffered for these actions. After the accident, a research organization contracted by the NRC surveyed locals about whether they believed a certain source (Met-Ed, the NRC, Governor Thornburgh) was an “extremely useful” source of information and whether they believed they were “totally useless.” Only 2% of locals believed that Met-Ed was extremely useful; 67% of locals believed they were totally useless.

Respondents were more equivocal about the Governor and the NRC, with 22% believing the Governor and 29% believing the NRC to be extremely useful, and 14% and 12% believing the Governor and the NRC to be totally useless, respectively.123 From their very structure, the communication channels established by Met-Ed and the NRC were incapable of effectively providing information to the press and the public. The Kemeny Commission effectively sums up

120

Federal Research Division Library of Congress, Media Interactions, 7.

121

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 18.

122

Sandman, “Tell It like,” 13.

123

Flynn, Three Mile, 25.

Yen 35 the state of the press releases: “the public’s right to know was not served because the conditions under which all parties operated were such that the public’s right to know could not be served.” [emphasis in original]124 Even government officials often received their information about the accident through news reports.125 The communication channels for the accident were not sufficient to fully inform the government either. “There are a number of conflicting versions of every event that seems to occur,” Governor Thornburgh said to reporters after issuing the evacuation advisory on March 30, the third day of the accident. “I have just got to tell you that we share your frustration. It is a very difficult thing to pin these facts down.”126 Uncovered Core, Covered-up Story?

Due to the uncoordinated nature of Met-Ed’s communication with the press, statements made by different Met-Ed spokespeople often contradicted each other. For instance, on the first day of the accident, March 28, “while Met Ed President Walter Creitz was telling some reporters that there had been small off-site radiation releases, Met Ed public information officials in the same building were telling reporters there had been none.”127 In addition to causing Met-Ed to lose credibility with journalists and the public, journalists were unable to report effectively.128 “The only type of ‘accurate’ reporting possible under the circumstances was the presentation of contradictory and competing statements from a variety of officials,” notes the Kemeny Commission.129

124

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 6.

125

Lanouette, “Three Mile,” 10.

126

Richard D. Lyons, “Children Evacuated,” New York Times, March 31, 1979, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

127

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 4.

128

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 57.

129

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 4.

Yen 36 The contradictions enhanced the perceived newsworthiness of the story. Due to the number of contradictions, some reporters suspected that there was an industry cover-up. While no such cover-up existed, the coverage increased nevertheless.130 As Rod Nordland, a reporter who covered TMI for the Pennsylvania Inquirer, notes: If they had been willing or able to tell the story, it might have been different. Only a couple of reporters from Philadelphia would have gone if Met-Ed had told the truth from the beginning. It might not even have been a story if they had flacked [represented] it right -- if there hadn't been so many contradictions. The Governor's office broke it on Wednesday when they said they were getting conflicting stories and didn't know whom to believe. Editors heard that and sent out the reporters.131 While it is impossible to definitively declare that Three Mile Island would not be a weeklong story if the press communication was handled well, the confusion created by repeated contradictions amplified readers’ and editors’ interest in the accident. As William Lanouette, a journalist and author on topics in nuclear energy, notes, “confusion among the ‘official’ sources continued to pose problems for reporters, and through much of the accident the real and apparent discrepancies became ‘news’ in itself.”132 By any measure of severity or consequence, the Three Mile Island accident should not have registered in the popular conscience as the one most well-known nuclear accident. Its impacts are debatable, its severity is comparable to other nuclear accidents that were

130

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Report of the President’s, 18.

131

Kemeny and President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Staff Report, 172.

132

Lanouette, “Three Mile,” 15.

Yen 37 underreported, and it is overshadowed by the health and ecological impacts of the Church Rock spill. But the selection of events in the public memory is clearly not a conscious process, nor truly controllable. The Three Mile Island accident is remembered because it attracted such considerable media attention; and only because of this media attention did the TMI accident achieve what other accidents did not: lasting reform to the nuclear industry.

The findings of the Kemeny Commission resulted in substantive changes to the American nuclear energy industry and was the first real experience reporters and nuclear engineers had in distributing information about a nuclear accident to the public. These changes could have happened in response to any nuclear accident—it just so happened that Three Mile Island was the one that made it to the press, and even the disclosure of the accident to the public occurred unintentionally. Claiming that the particular event is not significant should not be confused with claiming the overall event of Three Mile Island is unimportant: the concrete reforms Three Mile Island caused legitimize its position in the history of nuclear energy. Rather, the Three Mile Island accident is best understood historically not as an accident at a nuclear power plant, but as the media event surrounding the accident. The coverage of the accident and the mishandling of press inquiries by Metropolitan Edison and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were what ultimately set Three Mile Island apart from all other American nuclear accidents.

Yen 38 Bibliography Arnold, Carrie. "Once upon a Mine." Environmental Health Perspectives 122, no. 2 (February 2014): A44-A49. Accessed March 20, 2018. doi:10.1289/ehp.122-A44.

Arnold Carrie details the health impacts of uranium mining on local the Navajo, starting with cases of lung cancer amongst Navajo miners in the 1950s to higher rates of kidney disease in the modern Navajo populations near these mines. Though these early cases of lung cancer were reported, the local Navajo were not aware of the extent of the uranium mine's impact until the Church Rock spill in 1979. Carrie is a freelance science writer who has written for Scientific American, Discover, New Scientist, and Smithsonian.

Blakeslee, Sandra. "Radioactive Waste Spill Called Worst Ever in U.S." Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1979, B3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

The Los Angeles Times released this article a month after the Church Rock spill discussing the progress of the cleanup effort and how the spill continues to affect the local Navajo community. This article is the only one the Los Angeles Times published that is solely dedicated to the Church Rock incident. In all other contemporary mentions of the accident in the Los Angeles Times, the Church Rock spill is addressed with a single brief in a series of energy and environment topics.

Brugge, Doug, Jamie L. DeLemos, and Cat Bui. "The Sequoyah Corporation Fuels Release and the Church Rock Spill: Unpublicized Nuclear Releases in American Indian Communities." American Journal of Public Health 97, no. 9 (September 2007): 1595600. Accessed March 20, 2018. ProQuest.

Doug Brugge, Jamie L. deLemos, and Cat Bui address two underpublicized nuclear accidents that affected American Indian communities: the Sequoyah Fuels Corporation Release and the Church Rock Mill Spill. The paper compares the ecological and health impacts of these two accidents with the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents. The comparison between Three Mile Island and the Church Rock spill is particularly useful as both accidents occurred in the same year (1979). Brugge is a Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine; deLemos is with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts University School of Engineering; Bui is with the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.

Burnham, David. "Nuclear Experts Debate The China Syndrome." New York Times, March 18, 1979, Arts and Leisure. Accessed July 12, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/1979/03/18/archives/nuclear-experts-debate-the-chinasyndrome-but-does-it-satisfy-the.html.

The New York Times invites experts to discuss the realism of the film The China Syndrome. This piece was published after the release of the movie but before the Three Mile Island accident. The six people interviewed in the piece come from a diverse range of backgrounds: a pro-nuclear MIT professor, a nuclear critic from the Union of Concerned Scientists, an energy company VP, and two researchers. The fact that the New York Times' editors lavished special attention upon The China Syndrome with a factchecking article suggests that the editors believed nuclear energy was a hot topic of debate at the time. The article also has the inherent value of sampling opinions amongst

Yen 39 nuclear experts at the time. The pro-nuclear experts emphasize their confidence in backup systems, supporting the Kemeny Commission's argument that the industry focused on potential technical failures at the expense of considering human errors.

Cable, Sherry, Edward J. Walsh, and Rex H. Warland. "Differential Paths to Political Activism: Comparisons of Four Mobilization Processes after the Three Mile Island Accident."

Social Forces 66, no. 4 (June 1988): 951-69. JSTOR. Cable, Walsh, and Warland examine the circumstances that led Pennsylvanian citizens to form four different anti-nuclear organizations after the Three Mile Island accident. Two of the organizations come from Dauphin County, within a five-mile radius of the TMI-2 reactor, while the other two are in different counties. All of these counties were politically conservative at the time. The article compares sentiments towards nuclear energy from before and after the accident. The authors are from the University of Tennessee and Pennsylvania State University.

Carter, Jimmy. "Nuclear Power Policy Statement on Decisions Reached following a Review."

Speech, April 7, 1977. The American Presidency Project. Accessed February 8, 2018. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7316.

President Carter delivered this speech on his nuclear power policy two years before the Three Mile Island accident. This speech is a good touchstone to compare with his speeches after the accident to examine changes in the executive perspective on nuclear energy. Notably, President Carter specifically addresses how nuclear energy provides a potential means for America to gain independence from foreign oil: a critical appeal of nuclear energy during the Oil Shock. President Carter was a key figure in the Three Mile Island accident: he issued statements on the accident, visited the plant on April 1 in a widely publicized event, and ordered the creation of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (also known as the Kemeny Commission) to investigate the accident.

———. "President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island Remarks Announcing Actions in Response to the Commission's Report." Speech, December 7, 1979. The American Presidency Project. Accessed February 8, 2018. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=31788.

President Carter delivered this speech in response to the findings of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, which had been published two months earlier. President Carter outlines the changes he wishes to institute at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and announces his support of the President's Commission's recommendations but also reaffirms his perspective on the role of nuclear power in American energy production as a substitute for foreign oil.

The China Syndrome. Directed by James Bridges. Produced and performed by Michael Douglas.

Columbia Pictures, 1979.

The China Syndrome was released on March 16, 1979, less than two weeks before the Three Mile Island accident on March 28. This anti-nuclear docudrama thriller film depicts three reporters' efforts to break the story of an accident at a fictional nuclear power plant in California. The movie's release is an indicator of increasing popular

Yen 40 discourse on nuclear energy. Released so soon before the TMI accident, The China Syndrome seemed almost prophetic. In addition to the coincidence in release date and the superficial similarities of the movie's plot and the accident, the movie has a line where a scientist describes how a nuclear accident can render a swath of land the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable. The movie shaped how everyday citizens perceived the Three Mile Island accident and provided a popular way of relating to the accident.

Clamshell-TVS. "Clamshell History." To the Village Square. Accessed October 24, 2011. http://www.clamshell-tvs.org/clamshell_history/index.html.

This currently-offline webpage published by a group of former Clamshell Alliance members provides a history of the Clamshell Alliance and its protests. The Clamshell Alliance was one of the first major anti-nuclear protest organizations that hindered the construction of the Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear power plant through a series of protests. A 1,800-person protest of Seabrook in 1977 led to the arrests of 1,414 and was widely publicized nationally. As the Clamshell Alliance was formed before the Three Mile Island accident, the Alliance's history provides context for the nature of the antinuclear movement before Three Mile Island. Because the website is offline, the Wayback Machine was used to access it.

Diamond, Edwin, and Leigh Passman. "Three Mile Island: How Clear Was TV's Picture?" TV Guide, August 4, 1979, 4-12.

TV Guide published this piece written by Diamond, a journalist and critic from the News Study group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Passman, a member of the News Study group, four months after the Three Mile Island accident. Diamond and Passman analyze the coverage of TMI by television news networks and attempt to address whether broadcast coverage of the accident was sensationalist. They compare the varying amounts of airtime that each of the three networks (CBS, ABC, NBC) devoted to the accident and conclude that TV networks displayed restraint in reporting on the accident to the point of sometimes forgoing promising but unsubstantiated leads.

Diamond and Passman also recognize that TV news networks suspected a cover-up of the facts—a suspicion shared by print publications. This piece is also useful because it contains lengthy quotations from several news broadcasts which are otherwise difficult to access.

Eytchison, Ronald M. "Memories of the Kemeny Commission." Nuclear News, March 2004, 6162. Accessed April 10, 2018. http://www2.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/docs/2004-3-3.pdf.

Retired Navy Vice Admiral Eytchison recounts his experience working on the Kemeny Commission. Eytchison provides a background on the reasons why certain individuals were selected for the Commission, the Commission's aims and goals, the Commission's vested powers, and its impact.

Fackler, Martin. "Six Years after Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel." New York Times, November 19, 2017. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/science/japan-fukushima-nuclear-meltdownfuel.html.

Yen 41 The New York Times published this piece in 2017 as a follow-up on the latest efforts in the cleanup of the 2011 Fukushima Disaster. The article includes statistics on the projected completion time and cost of the cleanup.

Federal Research Division Library of Congress. Media Interactions with the Public in Emergency Situations: Four Case Studies. By LaVerle Berry, Amanda Jones, and Terence Powers. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1999. Accessed March 20, 2018. https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/Media_Interaction.pdf.

The Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress published this report to examine the press's interactions with the public in four different emergencies, one of which is the Three Mile Island accident. The authors identify the circumstances that created difficulties in communication between the press, Metropolitan Edison, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, how reporters approached the story, and how much airtime was devoted to coverage of the accident. Because the authors are writing on the accident 20 years later, they can examine the essential question of whether coverage was sensationalist in a more impartial manner.

Flynn, C. B., comp. Three Mile Island Telephone Survey. Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1979.

Mountain West Research, Inc. was contracted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in October 1978 to study the socioeconomic effects of operating nuclear power plants. The Three Mile Island accident disrupted the course of their survey, and Mountain West revised its study to document the local population's response to the accident. The report includes figures such as evacuation statistics based on distance from the Three Mile Island reactor (radii of 0-5 miles, 5-10, 10-15), ranging from the % of households that evacuated, the reasons for evacuating or not evacuating, and the preferences of news mediums in the local area in tables. The report provides a solid statistical characterization of the attitudes of the population surrounding the TMI reactor after the accident.

Gamson, William A., and Andre Modigliani. "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach." American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 1 (July 1989): 1-37.

Professors of Sociology Gamson and Modigliani examine the media discourse on nuclear power in TV, magazines, editorial cartoons, and opinion columns. The piece notes how media discourse and public opinion are linked and interact with each other. It identifies several "packages", or ways of interpreting events, associated with TMI and characterizes different agents as proponents of given packages. For instance, it identifies specific environmental, consumer protection, and professional groups as "sponsors of antinuclear packages."

International Atomic Energy Agency. "Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log." International Atomic Energy Agency. Last modified April 12, 2011. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/fukushima-nuclear-accident-update-log-15.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rates the Fukushima Disaster on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) in this update log on the

Yen 42 disaster. Fukushima was rated as a 7 on the INES, the highest possible rating. In contrast, the Three Mile Island accident was rated as a 5.

———. "INES: The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale." International Atomic Energy Agency. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/ines.pdf.

The IAEA explains the INES rating system in this pdf and provides examples of accidents at different ratings: Chernobyl is a 7, and Three Mile Island is a 5. The pdf was published before the Fukushima Disaster and does not have a rating for that incident; however, other sites published by the IAEA provide Fukushima's rating as a 7.

———. "International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES)." International Atomic Energy Agency. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.iaea.org/topics/emergencypreparedness-and-response-epr/international-nuclear-radiological-event-scale-ines.

The IAEA explains its International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) on this website, which is a tool to communicate the severity of a given nuclear accident. The INES is logarithmic, meaning that a situation rated 7 is considered at least 100 times worse than a situation rated 5. Together with the other two IAEA sites, these three sites can provide an international metric to support the claim that TMI was not nearly as serious as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Ivins, Molly. "Dam Break Investigated; Radiation of Spill Easing." New York Times, July 28, 1979, 6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

This article was the New York Times' first coverage of the Church Rock spill. The piece seems to downplay the accident: the title implies the situation is already over and the article is hopeful in tone. The New York Times' devoted more words to coverage of Church Rock than other national newspapers, but also covered the story a week after the spill actually occurred.

"Jane Fonda." In St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2013.

Gale Biography in Context (GALE|K2419200409).

Janson, Donald. "Radiation Is Released in Accident at Nuclear Plant in Pennsylvania." New York Times, March 29, 1979. Accessed February 9, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/1979/03/29/archives/radiation-is-released-in-accident-atnuclear-plant-in-pennsylvania.html.

The New York Times published this article on the Three Mile Island accident on the front page on March 29, 1979. As this article is their first on the accident, it set the tone for how they would cover the accident over the next week. The article calls the accident "the worst ever at an American nuclear generating plant," demonstrating that TMI was immediately recognized as an event of prominence for the history of nuclear energy in America.

Kemeny, John G., and President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1979.

Yen 43 President Jimmy Carter created the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (also known as the Kemeny Commission) to investigate the accident.

The Kemeny Commission completed this report on October 30, 1979. In the report, the Commission advises several reforms to the nuclear industry and provides a thorough chronology of the events of the accident. Due to President Carter's deliberation in selecting members of the commission who were not affiliated with the nuclear industry and did not have strong prior opinions about nuclear energy, the source is highly authoritative and minimally biased.

———. Staff Report to the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: Report of the Public's Right to Information Task Force. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1979.

The Kemeny Commission published several additional "Staff Reports" detailing specific facets of the Three Mile Island accident. This Staff Report focuses on the media's coverage of the accident, how Metropolitan Edison and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission handled public relations and gave information to the press, and how the public received information about the accident.

Kneier, Andrew, Helen Gittings, Jack Conway, and Common Cause. Serving Two Masters: A Common Cause Study of Conflicts of Interest in the Executive Branch. Washington, D.C.: Common Cause, 1976.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan, nonprofit Washington, D.C. based watchdog group, compiled this report in 1976 to highlight instances of conflict of interest in various sectors of the executive branch, such as the General Accounting Office, various energyrelated branches, and the Department of the Interior. Common Cause has published, and continues to publish, reports such as this to act as a watchdog group. The report has a section on conflicts of interest in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), where it provides concrete data on the percentage of the NRC in 1976 that had ties to the industry, and the amount of the NRC that was retained after the split of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In short, the report provides data that demonstrates how many NRC officials had conflicts of interest due to ties with the industry, substantiating the Kemeny Commission's claim that the NRC had not fully shed its former AEC role as an energy advocacy group, and supporting the claim that the NRC did not sufficiently regulate the nuclear industry.

Lanouette, William. "Three Mile Island + 10: Will Press Coverage Be Better Next Time?" Paper presented at A Colloquium at the Media Studies Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, March 28, 1989.

Lanouette, a journalist and author on topics in nuclear energy who has written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, presented this paper to a colloquium on media studies at the Smithsonian. Lanouette discusses the contemporary press coverage of the Three Mile Island accident and compares it with coverage of nuclear accidents since—including Chernobyl in 1986. Lanouette claims that journalists' knowledge of science and nuclear energy has improved but that the hastiness to cover accidents has remained the same.

Yen 44 This document also contains comments from three other journalists who are involved in covering energy.

Los Angeles Times. "Cost of Oil Production Delay Estimated." July 23, 1979, Energy and Environment, B2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

The Los Angeles Times published this series of briefs on developments in energy and the environment, including a paragraph on the Church Rock uranium mill spill. No author is listed for these paragraphs, as is common with briefs. This article appears to be the first mention of the accident in a national newspaper, one week after the accident. The minimal scope of coverage of the Church Rock spill suggests that national editors regarded it as less significant than the Three Mile Island accident. The Los Angeles Times would write several briefs and a single piece on Church Rock.

Los Angeles Times. "Nuclear Reactor Accident Leaks Radioactive Steam." March 28, 1979, A2.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

This is the first article that the Los Angeles Times ran on the Three Mile Island accident, published the same day as the accident. No author is listed as it came from the Times' wire service. The timeliness and length of the article demonstrate that national newspapers immediately identified the TMI accident as significant and devoted coverage to the accident.

Lyons, Richard D. "Children Evacuated." New York Times, March 31, 1979. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

The New York Times published this article on March 31 reporting Governor Thornburgh's evacuation order for women and children in a 5-mile radius of the plant, which had been issued on March 30. The article also reports the decision to release radioactive steam at the plant to relieve pressure. This article details the concerns of industry officials at that time—the fear of meltdown—as well as Governor Thornburgh's frustration with the lack of clear information about the events of the accident.

Ness, Immanuel. "Antinuclear Movement." In Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, 1293-97. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central.

No Nukes. Produced by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, John Hall, Bonnie Raitt, and Stanley Johnson. Asylum Records, 1979, LP. Recorded September 19, 1979.

This is a compilation of songs from a group of anti-nuclear artists that performed together after the Three Mile Island accident in the "Muse Concerts for a Non-nuclear Future" at Madison Square Garden. As a popular expression of anti-nuclear sentiment, the album is emblematic of the cultural impact of TMI. Omang, Joanne. "ACLU's Campaign Delineates Threat to Civil Liberties from Nuclear Power."

Washington Post, September 6, 1979. Accessed February 8, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/09/06/aclus-campaign-delineatesthreat-to-civil-liberties-from-nuclear-power/5c3375ed-cf3b-4293-b7ca1140afe1daf5/?utm_term=.62037b4815a3.

Yen 45 The Washington Post describes a letter that the American Civil Liberties Union circulated in August 1979 contending that nuclear energy is a threat to constitutional rights. The ACLU's argument is unusual and unique, creating a connection between the Three Mile Island accident and Watergate.

Sandman, Peter M. "Tell It like It Is: 7 Lessons from TMI." IAEA Bulletin 47, no. 2 (March 2006): 9-13. PDF. Dr. Sandman, a risk communications expert who worked on the Kemeny Commission, identifies seven tenets for optimally handling crisis communications and explains how Metropolitan Edison (Met-Ed), the company that operated the Three Mile Island reactor, did not follow these seven tenets in its interactions with the press. For each of his tenets, Dr. Sandman provides specific examples of how Met-Ed failed to follow the principle and worsened blowback to the accident.

Shaw, Tony. "Rotten to the Core: Exposing America's Energy-Media Complex in The China Syndrome." Cinema Journal 52, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 93-113. JSTOR. Historian Tony Shaw of the University of Hertfordshire, who specializes in propaganda and film, contextualizes the release of The China Syndrome a few weeks before the Three Mile Island accident as one of many pieces released by a cadre of progressive filmmakers. Shaw pays particular attention to individual actors' and producers' motivations in producing the film and explains the attention to realism the film was produced with: for instance, the former director of the film, Mike Gray, consulted three ex-engineering executives from General Electric for realism.

Swift, Art. "Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low." Gallup News. Last modified September 14, 2016. Accessed February 4, 2018. http://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx.

Gallup News' Chief of Content and Public Relations, Art Swift, reviews the American public's trust in mass media institutions based off of Gallup poll data, stating that the level of trust is at a historic low in 2016 and that it was highest when polled in 1976. The article also links to a PDF report with the full list of poll data from 1972-2016. The article provides data to support the claim that the American public's trust in journalism has fallen since the 1970s.

Tabuchi, Hiroko. "Uranium Miners Pushed Hard for a Comeback. They Got Their Wish." New York Times, January 13, 2018. Accessed February 10, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/climate/trump-uranium-bears-ears.html.

The New York Times published this piece in 2018 describing modern developments in uranium mining on Navajo lands and repeals to environmental protections. The piece references the Church Rock spill in a single paragraph but does not dwell on the allusion.

Union of Concerned Scientists. "A Brief History of Nuclear Accidents Worldwide." Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclearpower/nuclear-power-accidents/history-nuclear-accidents#bf-toc-3.

This page, the Union of Concerned Scientists' "Brief History of Nuclear Accidents Worldwide," represents what they believe to be the most significant nuclear accidents of

Yen 46 all time. The page includes the conventional accidents—Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—as well as the more esoteric Enrico Fermi, SL-1, Sodium Reactor, and Windscale accidents. The Union of Concerned Scientists was an active organization at the time of TMI and is still today a significant scientific watchdog group.

———. "Safety Issues with Pressurized Water Reactors." Union of Concerned Scientists.

Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-powertechnology/pressurized-water-reactors-safety-issues.

This Union of Concerned Scientists webpage describes some safety vulnerabilities in modern pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and links to a presentation that provides a detailed but accessible explanation of how a PWR works.

United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. "The Chernobyl Accident." United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Last modified July 16, 2012. Accessed February 9, 2018. http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation gives statistics on the Chernobyl accident's human impacts: the health effects, the death toll, and the evacuations. These data points concretely demonstrate the difference in severity between the Three Mile Island accident and Chernobyl.

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident." United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Last modified December 12, 2014. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/factsheets/3mile-isle.html.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission published this webpage as a brief, accessible background on the Three Mile Island accident. The NRC identifies the TMI accident as "the most serious in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history."

Organizations of completely different capacities and positions make variants of this claim about the TMI accident.

———. "Fermi, Unit 1." United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Accessed February 9, 2018. https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/power-reactor/enrico-fermiatomic-power-plant-unit-1.html.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission maintains this webpage describing the decommissioning of the Enrico Fermi Unit 1 reactor, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1966. Even though the Enrico Fermi accident is similar to the Three Mile Island accident, the Enrico Fermi accident remains obscure, and little work exists on it.

Walker, J. Samuel. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

J. Samuel Walker is the historian of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and he has published several books on nuclear energy. In this book, Walker provides an expansive history of the entire Three Mile Island accident, characterizing the nuclear industry and the various arguments for and against nuclear energy from before the accident,

Yen 47 chronologically examining each of the five canonical days of the accident, and detailing the accident's immediate and long-term effects.

"Walter Cronkite." In St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2013. Gale Biography in Context (GALE|K2419200269).

"We Almost Lost Detroit." Performed by Gil Scott-Heron. Recorded September 19, 1979. On No Nukes. Produced by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, John Hall, Bonnie Raitt, and Stanley Johnson. Asylum Records, 1979, LP. This song was published as part of an album of anti-nuclear songs released after the Three Mile Island accident. Singer Gil Scott-Heron laments how "We Almost Lost Detroit" to the Enrico Fermi accident, but few people are aware of this accident. The song is a popular response to the Enrico Fermi accident and demonstrates that even contemporaries of the accident were aware that it was obscure.

Wilkes University. "Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Election Returns 1978." The Wilkes University Election Statistics Project. Accessed February 10, 2018. http://staffweb.wilkes.edu/harold.cox/gov/PaGov1978.html.

This set of data on the Pennsylvanian Gubernatorial election of 1978 provides further evidence that Dauphin County was politically conservative at the time of the Three Mile Island accident. Support for certain national liberal movements, such as the anti-nuclear movement, would have been muted in the area around the TMI reactor.

Wills, John. "Celluloid Chain Reactions: The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island." European Journal of American Culture 25, no. 2 (2006): 109-22. EBSCO host (22404043).

Scholar of American Studies John Wills of the University of Kent contextualizes the heightened ability of filmic depictions of nuclear energy to shape public perception given the secrecy of the industry. Wills traces several films that dealt with nuclear energy disasters released before The China Syndrome that failed to achieve box-office success and points out that The China Syndrome gained critical acclaim in part due to its timeliness in coinciding with the Three Mile Island accident. The article characterizes The China Syndrome as uniquely equipped to critique the nuclear industry because the film was well-researched and presented like a documentary.

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