April 12, 1979

Chicken Little Loved It!

Chicken Little loved it!

The sky was falling on Three Mile Island.

Three decades of disaster predictions at last were on their way to fulfillment.

A nuclear power reactor in Pennsylvania had gotten away from its masters.  It threatened to melt down through the earth all the way to China, while spewing fatal gases on a helpless population.

The "worst possible" nuclear accident had occurred.  Only, nothing much happened.

Nothing melted.

Nothing exploded.

No one was killed or injured.

No one was sprayed with dangerous radiation.

Two weeks later the sky was found to be still securely anchored overhead.

This is not to say that breakdown of the Three Mile Island plant was inconsequential.  It was - and remains -a matter of grave concern.  Atomic power is cosmic power, and we know too little about it.

Yet, after all, we successfully protected ourselves from the failures of both human judgment and mechanical equipment.  A super-strong "containment chamber" - designed for exactly that purpose - held in the mess resulting from a bizarre combination of errors.

We have learned valuable lessons from the experience.  We can be sure that the circumstances which brought on the accident will be engineered out of the other 71 U.S. nuclear power plants now in operation.

We also can assume that other, different accidents will occur.  No amount of research can eliminate all the possible problems of a new, complicated technology.  Safety and confidence comes only after trial and error.

It is heartening to realize we have put a major error behind us with much excitement but little personal damage.

Opponents of nuclear power rushed to reporters and television cameramen to shout, "We told you so."  A delighted Jane Fonda plugged her anti-nuclear movie "China Syndrome," and Ralph Nader high-tailed it to Washington to lobby for new regulations.

The demagogues had a field day.  Senator Teddy Kennedy launched an investigation, and Governor Jerry Brown demanded that the Rancho Seco nuclear reactor in California be shut down.

Strangely, the people closest to the crippled plant didn't respond as the doom-sayers expected.  Middletown residents were ticked off that their jobs were interrupted, that pregnant women and pre-school children had to move in with relatives for a few days.

There was less disruption, however, than Americans routinely suffer from a flood in Illinois, a hurricane in Louisiana, or a train derailment in Florida.

There was a lot of scare talk about the potential hazards of radioactive fallout.  Next to pregnant women, cows are the most sacred barometer of public emotion.  To counteract the effects of radioactive iodine in milk the Nuclear Regulatory Commission bought a quarter-million antidote pills.  The pharmaceutical supplier worked two days around the clock to have them ready should an emergency require it.

Fortunately no debilitating gases escaped.  Those living within five miles down wind of the plant during the entire five-day dumping absorbed the equivalent of two chest X-rays - about 80 "millirems."  Federal safety regulations permit 5,000 millirems per year for industrial workers, though nuclear critics think this should be lowered to 500 millirems.

A person absorbs an average of 200 millirems per year of radiation from natural sources such as cosmic rays, granite rocks and uranium particles in coal smoke.  Under these conditions Middletown locals might want to stay out of granite buildings for the rest of the year.

The Hershey Bar people are monitoring Pennsylvania milk to forestall consumer apprehension.  "Trivial" traces of iodine - less than in ordinary table salt was detected in one batch of milk so the cows came through OK.

The greatest risk came from formation of a "bubble" of hydrogen gas that collected in the top of the reactor vessel.  No one knows what would have happened had it exploded.  It surprised the scientists as "completely unexpected."

As I remember my high school physics, hydrogen is released when electrical current is injected into water.  Where did the reactor cooling water encounter electricity?  Does a splitting atom release a direct current as well as heat?  If so, there may be an heretofore undiscovered source of useful energy.

The Three Mile Island accident may be another example of what scientists call "serendipity" - the faculty of happening upon fortunate discoveries when not in search of them.

We know more today than we did two weeks ago about how to live in peace with the atom.  It seems we will gain important additional knowledge as the causes and effects of Three Mile Island are sorted out in the weeks to come.

Nuclear energy carries substantial risk - as do airplanes, automobiles and gas furnaces.  Yet, our need for energy is so great that risk must be accepted.  Austin, Texas voters evaluated the benefits and risks shortly after the Three Mile Island fiasco and opted for energy.  Chicken Little may yet turn out to be a prophet.

But not this time.

Author: Lindsey Williams