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Originally published in the Guardian on 30 March 1979
WASHINGTON
Nuclear power experts are working under heavy security to stop the continuing leakage of radiation from the damaged power station at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. The amounts of radioactivity being emitted into the atmosphere are officially described as "not dangerous." But they have been detected as much as 16 miles away from the plant. The accident is the worst at a nuclear power station in the United States.
Official efforts were concentrated on allaying public alarm. Authorities stressed that the levels of radiation beyond the power station were no more than the equivalent of having a dental X-ray and that they had no plans to evacuate residents of the Harrisburg area. The building housing the damaged reactor is still contaminated with lethal doses of radiation from the 60,000 gallons of water that spilled out of the primary cooling system after the apparent failure of a pump. The cause of the breakdown is not known.
The accident could not have come at a worse time for the Carter Administration, which is agonising about its energy policy declaration, due next week. Now the sensitive issue of nuclear power has been thrust into the centre of the debate. Congressmen yesterday wanted to know how this theoretically impossible failure happened and the anti-nuclear groups have been loud in their condemnation of the safety systems of the plants.
It is difficult to piece together the events at Three Mile Island, not least because the announcement of official inquiries by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and by at least one congressional committee have allowed spokesmen for the industry to decline all comment. Accounts suggest that the accident was triggered by the failure of one of the pumps driving heavy water to the primary cooling system. This failure — at 4 a.m.— brought the emergency core cooling system into play but, for reasons unknown, the emergency system was shut down for a time by one of the 60 workers present in the plant. This cut caused the 36,000 nuclear rods in the reactor core to overheat and some of the rods ruptured, releasing radioactivity.
According to Mr Robert Pollard, a former safety engineer who resigned from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over its safety policies, the accident demonstrated a multiple failure of some of the safety systems which were then compounded by human errors. "Damaging the fuel is the first step to a catastrophe," he said. "We were part way down the road to a major meltdown."
