Tmi 25 Years Later: The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Accident And Its Impact

Book Description

Three Mile Island burst into the nation's headlines twenty-five years ago, forever changing our view of nuclear power. The dramatic accident held the world's attention for an unsettling week in March 1979 as engineers struggled to understand what had happened and to bring the damaged reactor to a safe condition. Much has been written since then about TMI, but it is not easy to find up-to-date information that is both reliable and accessible to the non-scientific reader. TMI offers a much needed "one-stop" resource for a new generation of citizens, students, and policy makers.

The legacy of Three Mile Island has been far reaching. The worst nuclear accident in U.S. history marked a turning point in our policies, our perceptions, and our national identity. Those involved in the nuclear industry today study the scenario carefully and review the decontamination and recovery process. Risk management and the ability to rationally and understandably convey risks to the general population are an integral part of implementation of new technologies. Political, environmental, and energy decisions have been made with TMI as a factor, and while studies reveal little environmental damage from the accident, long term studies of health effects continue. TMI presents a balanced and factual account of the accident, the cleanup effort, and the many facets of its legacy twenty-five years later.

The authors bring extensive research and writing experience to this book. After the accident and the cleanup, a significant collection of videotapes, photographs, and reports were donated to the University Libraries at Penn State University. Bonnie Osif and Thomas Conkling are engineering librarians at Penn State who maintain a database of these materials, which they have made available to the general public through an award-winning website. Anthony Baratta is a nuclear engineer who worked with the decontamination and recovery project at TMI and is an expert in nuclear accidents. The book features unique photographs of the cleanup and helpful appendixes that enable readers to further investigate various aspects of the story.

Customer Reviews:

The Best Overview Of The Long-Term Effects Of TMI.......2005-06-13

I have read extensively on the Three Mile Island accident and believe that this book is probably the best introduction to the accident I have yet seen. The book is accurate and is scrupulously unbiased, which is a rarity in any book dealing with nuclear power. The first 32 pages of the book provide the best and most concise general overview of the accident I have read, and anyone wanting to understand the accident should start here.

The book is accessible to non-specialists, but does not make inaccurate generalizations simply for ease of explanation. There is information presented on the basic concepts of nuclear energy, which makes the book extremely valuable to someone just beginning to read on the issue. More knowledgeable readers, industry professionals, and policymakers benefit from this book as well, as it has chapters on the health effects of the accident (including recent data on ongoing longitudinal studies), environmental effects of the accident, policy effects of the accidents, and perhaps most usefully, excellent appendices which include a useful glossary, an accident timeline, and a list of common misconceptions about the TMI accident.

The authors have done an admirable job of writing a book that is useful to both professionals and the general public. It is extremely well documented, non-political, unbiased, and scrupulously accurate. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nuclear power.

Excellent Information In An Easy-To-Read Format.......2005-01-03

"Objective knowledge will help provide guidance for the decisions that will need to be made as we go forward into the next quarter-century." So ends the book TMI 25 Years Later, an objective, inclusive compilation of information regarding the March 28, 1979 Loss-of-Coolant Accident in Reactor 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant near Middletown, PA.
The book, written by three Penn State University staffers, offers a balanced, condensed history of the events of the accident and the years of follow-up that have occurred. Sections cover all aspects of the accident, including rather extensive review and analysis of the role played by the media in the event. Other topics covered include short- and long-term physical and psychological health effects, industry regulatory and financial impacts, and environmental consequences, along with current and future power requirements in the United States and the options for meeting those requirements.
In order to properly understand exactly what caused the accident and what it's effects meant to the local population, a rudimentary understanding of nuclear processes and power generation are needed. Complex nuclear concepts are presented in an illustrated, easy-to-understand manner, and an in-depth minute-by-minute timeline of the accident is presented along with causes, effects, and notes that only the luxury of extensive investigation and hind-sight can provide.
An excellent book for anyone interested in nuclear power generation, the TMI accident or the local populace of the plant, TMI 25 Years Later provides condensed information in an easy-to-read format. The information is not watered down (the book is well cited), but instead provided in a format that allows anyone to understand what happened on that fateful Wednesday morning, and more importantly what it means to our future.

Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective

Average customer rating:

This is why we have no new Nuke power plants built
A Historical And Regulatory Perspective Of Three Mile Island
Lots of words, little content
Valuable and Important
Will become a valuable resource for future scholars

Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective
J. Samuel Walker
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520246837

Book Description

Twenty-five years ago, Hollywood released The China Syndrome, featuring Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas as a TVnews crew who witness what appears to be a serious accident at a nuclear power plant. In a spectacular coincidence, on March 28, 1979, less than two weeks after the movie came out, the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in the United States occurred at Three Mile Island. For five days, the citizens of central Pennsylvania and the entire world, amid growing alarm, followed the efforts of authorities to prevent the crippled plant from spewing dangerous quantities of radiation into the environment. This book is the first comprehensive account of the causes, context, and consequences of the Three Mile Island crisis. In gripping prose, J. Samuel Walker captures the high human drama surrounding the accident, sets it in the context of the heated debate over nuclear power in the seventies, and analyzes the social, technical, and political issues it raised. His superb account of those frightening and confusing days will clear up misconceptions held to this day about Three Mile Island.
The heart of Walker's suspenseful narrative is a moment-by-moment account of the accident itself, in which he brings to life the players who dealt with the emergency: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the state of Pennsylvania, the White House, and a cast of scientists and reporters. He also looks at the aftermath of the accident on the surrounding area, including studies of its long-term health effects on the population, providing a fascinating window onto the politics of nuclear power and an authoritative account of a critical event in recent American history.

Customer Reviews:

This is why we have no new Nuke power plants built.......2007-08-01

Read this for graduate American history course. The book in review, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective, written by Samuel Walker is a subtle but powerful warning regarding the issue of nuclear power. The style of the book is almost of a passive observer who meticulously gathers facts and then attempts to make an educated decision on the matter. And I believe Walker's purpose in writing the book is to do just that. It seems as if Walker does not want the reader to make any emotional appeals either for or against the use of nuclear power. Rather, he strictly wants the reader to make a reasonable decision based purely on facts.

Walker first dissects the debate and the history regarding nuclear power. In 1954, Congress passed the Atomic energy act which allocated nuclear capabilities for civilian use, specifically, its ability to provide an abundance of electricity. During the late fifties and early sixties, the demand for nuclear energy grew, and plant construction increased. Yet, by the late sixties into the mid-seventies, economic recession, massive inflation, and a fuel crisis gripped America, and these factors contributed to decreased construction of new plants. Walker examines this debate at its state in the mid-seventies.

Yet, I believe that Walker's analysis of the arguments go much deeper than a simple retelling of the facts. Rather, at one point in the text, he cited a case of opposition to nuclear power by a religious group on moral, rather than tactical grounds. I believe that this issue confronts the reader through Walker's arguments, but in an unemotional, unobtrusive way. In assessing the opposition to nuclear power, Walker's arguments force the reader to ask whether the use of nuclear power should be halted because of the potential dangers they pose to the public, or if, on a deeper level, the responsibility of this awesome power is beyond the reach of man. In accessing the arguments for nuclear power, I think Walker posits the question of whether nuclear power is a practical solution to the pressing energy needs of the United States, or once again on a deeper level, if man is almost obligated to use nuclear power because to deny it would be to deny his own greatness and responsibility for providing for his fellows.

Attached to the opposition of nuclear power is the potential of public reaction. Walker explores this issue throughout the text. He specifically focuses on the tendency of rumors and misinformation to exacerbate public fears. While hysteria or widespread panic never occurred during the Three Mile Island Crisis, Walker nonetheless examines instances where periods of tension gripped an already stressed public, such as when the engineers decided to "burp" the plant and release small amounts of radioactive clouds of gas into the atmosphere. Also, on a few occasions during the crisis, the prospect of evacuation always threatened and at times, he cites the publics growing agitation due to erroneous news and radio reports which announced events without having all the facts.

The bulk of the text dealt with the specific details of the Three Mile Island disaster which began at 4:00 am, March 28th, 1979. Walker gives an explicit account of how and why the reactor failed, as well as a description of how it functioned. He cites the major malfunction to a backup valve which was left open, allowing precious coolant to escape, thus causing to the core to heat, and eventually "meltdown."

Yet, once again, in an unemotional way, Walker presents the various factors leading to the malfunction, both mechanical and human. However, in this case, I think he is obviously biased toward human error, He explains in depth the various defense mechanisms that the reactors in at Three Mile Island were equipped with. He also illustrates how many scientists, NRC (Nuclear Reformatory Committee) and government officials almost boasted of the extreme unlikelihood of a nuclear malfunction due to their belief in "depths of defense," which was simply the fact that their were multiple defense mechanisms. Yet, toward the end of the text, Walker bluntly states that it was not the defense mechanisms that malfunctioned at Three Mile Island. He states that they would have worked properly if it were not for human error. It was mistakes committed by the engineers at the Three Mile Plant that lead to the accident.

Lastly, Walker concludes the book with a perspective of the accident, indeed, the "historical perspective" of the title. He vindicates both sides of the controversy, both the nuclear opposition and pro-nuclear advocates. He states that the catastrophe at Three Mile Island, while serious, left no one dead and no property damage, except to the site. No massive or harmful amounts of radioactive materials contaminated the environment; there was no increase in cancer, infant mortality or livestock mortality. And despite the many blunderings of the NRC, Met Ed and GPU, the situation was handled in a calm and efficient matter. A potentially costly evacuation was not called for, and life for many citizens, although obviously stressed, was not disturbed. And so, the accident at Three Mile Island was a "success," in the fact that loss of life and property damage had been avoided. He believes that the anti-nuclear opposition grossly overestimated the threat of nuclear meltdown and population deaths.

Yet, despite the "success" of the Three Mile incident, it would have negative consequences on the nuclear industry in the United States. It visibly shook the confidence of Americans. According to survey polls taken after the accident, many who previously did not oppose nuclear power now did, consequently, a nuclear plant in the United States has not been built since. Three Mile Island became an ominous warning of what could have been. The accident exposed the inept, bureaucratic and widely inefficient licensing techniques of the NRC, and the boastful, overconfident and ultimately lax attitude toward nuclear education and training held by many in the nuclear industry. Walker points out that many pro-nuclear advocates had underestimated the power-and threat-of nuclear power.

All in all, I think Walker's contribution to historical scholarship is what his title aims at, it is a historical perspective. Despite his overly cautious and seemingly unbiased tone, I believe that Walker is wary of nuclear power. He never discounts it, or calls for a halt to it. (White coats quote) Rather, I believe his work is a subtle warning. It is a warning of what could happen, of what could have been. The core at Three Mile Island did melt.

Without directly stating it, his book raises the issue of the right of nuclear power. In essence, after reading Walker's book, I asked myself whether humanity has or should have the right to use nuclear power. I asked myself whether the risks are too great. Essentially, his book forces the reader to ask whether humanity it truly prepared to handle this awesome and destructive responsibility. I believe that Walker would answer a reluctant "no" to this question, simply because, if man makes a mistake when dealing with nuclear power, he may not be able to learn from it.

The book in review, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective, written by Samuel Walker is a subtle but powerful warning regarding the issue of nuclear power. The style of the book is almost of a passive observer who meticulously gathers facts and then attempts to make an educated decision on the matter. And I believe Walker's purpose in writing the book is to do just that. It seems as if Walker does not want the reader to make any emotional appeals either for or against the use of nuclear power. Rather, he strictly wants the reader to make a reasonable decision based purely on facts.

Walker first dissects the debate and the history regarding nuclear power. In 1954, Congress passed the Atomic energy act which allocated nuclear capabilities for civilian use, specifically, its ability to provide an abundance of electricity. During the late fifties and early sixties, the demand for nuclear energy grew, and plant construction increased. Yet, by the late sixties into the mid-seventies, economic recession, massive inflation, and a fuel crisis gripped America, and these factors contributed to decreased construction of new plants. Walker examines this debate at its state in the mid-seventies.

Yet, I believe that Walker's analysis of the arguments go much deeper than a simple retelling of the facts. Rather, at one point in the text, he cited a case of opposition to nuclear power by a religious group on moral, rather than tactical grounds. I believe that this issue confronts the reader through Walker's arguments, but in an unemotional, unobtrusive way. In assessing the opposition to nuclear power, Walker's arguments force the reader to ask whether the use of nuclear power should be halted because of the potential dangers they pose to the public, or if, on a deeper level, the responsibility of this awesome power is beyond the reach of man. In accessing the arguments for nuclear power, I think Walker posits the question of whether nuclear power is a practical solution to the pressing energy needs of the United States, or once again on a deeper level, if man is almost obligated to use nuclear power because to deny it would be to deny his own greatness and responsibility for providing for his fellows.

Attached to the opposition of nuclear power is the potential of public reaction. Walker explores this issue throughout the text. He specifically focuses on the tendency of rumors and misinformation to exacerbate public fears. While hysteria or widespread panic never occurred during the Three Mile Island Crisis, Walker nonetheless examines instances where periods of tension gripped an already stressed public, such as when the engineers decided to "burp" the plant and release small amounts of radioactive clouds of gas into the atmosphere. Also, on a few occasions during the crisis, the prospect of evacuation always threatened and at times, he cites the publics growing agitation due to erroneous news and radio reports which announced events without having all the facts. The bulk of the text dealt with the specific details of the Three Mile Island disaster which began at 4:00 am, March 28th, 1979. Walker gives an explicit account of how and why the reactor failed, as well as a description of how it functioned. He cites the major malfunction to a backup valve which was left open, allowing precious coolant to escape, thus causing to the core to heat, and eventually "meltdown."

As a graduate student in philosophy and history, I recommended this book for anyone interested in American history.

A Historical And Regulatory Perspective Of Three Mile Island.......2005-05-29

"Three Mile Island" by J. Samuel Walker is a fine treatise on the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in historical perspective. Walker deals less with the technical and physical aspects of the accident to take a more overarching view of the operations of TMI (and other nuclear plants) from a political, organizational, and managerial standpoint.

Walker is the official historian of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and as such has spent the bulk of his professional life researching and documenting nuclear issues. He is a lucid and interesting writer for anyone interested in the material at hand. I recommend this book unequivocally. I further recommend that this book be read in tandem with "Hostages of Each Other" by Joseph Rees, which is actually my favorite general account of regulatory interactions vis-a-vis TMI.

This is an excellent book to assist in grasping the complex regulatory, political, and corporate organizational influences in nuclear power, particularly relative to the TMI accident.

Lots of words, little content.......2005-01-20

This book was highly unsatisfactory. One cannot deal with specific deficiencies and keep to length limits: this will be general.

Walker implies he has no pro-nuclear bias. That is difficult to believe considering his employer, word choice and his criticizing nuclear opponents and excusing those in the nuclear industry.

What this book is actually about? It seems to be about bureaucratic gyrations in reaction to the accident, NOT attempts to assess what was happening or actions to deal with the reactor itself or the actual condition of the reactor. Illustration of priorities: chapters 4-8 bear the title of days of the accident, but (p. 158) we learn what the company had done the previous day to ameliorate the hydrogen bubble to clarify the announcements made the day that chapter deals with. Walker mentions that the hydrogen bubble resulted from damage to the fuel rods, but does not specify that it was the zirconium fuel rod cladding dissolving that released the hydrogen.

Walker's omissions frustrate. Despite long discussion of the preparation of the NRC's first accident press release, the press release text is omitted! The book would be more comprehensible if it included a map of the area, relevant organizational charts of the NRC, state and federal governments and a schematic of the TMI reactor corresponding to the parts Walker named. There is no mention of the Rasmussen Report (WASH-1400), frequently used by nuclear proponents before and after the accident to assure people of nuclear safety.

While omitting relevant information, Walker includes irrelevancies: D. R. Neely did not go with two other NRC people to meet with the governor's executive assistant. That is the only mention of this man, so the mention is perplexing.

If you are looking for a comprehensive, unbiased account of what happened at TMI, look elsewhere.

Valuable and Important.......2004-10-07

I really enjoyed this book. It creates context for the industry and its regulators as the TMI accident occurs, and then it reports the fascinating details that pushed the accident to the brink of affecting public health and safety and then pulled it back again. I think this book should be required reading for all public officials, federal, state, and local, who are in positions of responsibility to respond to a nuclear emergency. This book would help them stay humble and focused. Discussion on public health got close to sounding too sure that everything was and is fine in the TMI area -- not sure we know enough yet to say for sure.

Will become a valuable resource for future scholars.......2004-06-02

It is hard to believe but it has been some 25 years since America's worst nuclear accident took place. In "Three Mile Island" author J. Samuel Walker takes a look back at the tragic events that upset us all so much back in March of 1979. Eminently qualified to undertake this project, Walker succeeds in presenting all sides of this extremely complicated and highly controversial subject matter. Was equipment failure the chief culprit here or was human error more to blame? Aside from attempting to explain exactly what happened on that fateful day, Walker spends a considerable amount of time evaulating why the various players in this saga reacted they way they did. This book is meticulously researched and fairly well written but I must admit that at times I got lost with all of the scientific jargon that was necessarily included. In the long run I feel that this book will prove to be a terrific research volume. If you are like me and not well versed in the sciences it can be a somewhat difficult read.

Meltdown: A Race Against Nuclear Disaster at Three Mile Island: A Reporter's Story

Average customer rating:

About Being A Reporter, Not About TMI.
Bent on emotion, not facts
A very personal story about reporting
Richie's Picks: MELTDOWN
A Good Sense of What Was Going On At The Time

Meltdown: A Race Against Nuclear Disaster at Three Mile Island: A Reporter's Story
Wilborn Hampton
Manufacturer: Candlewick
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | History & Historical Fiction | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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Soldier X

ASIN: 0763607150
Release Date: 2001-10-01

Book Description

This riveting eyewitness report—including dramatic photos—takes readers right to the scene of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.

March 28, 1979: It was 4 a.m. at the nuclear power plant on an island in
the middle of the Susquehanna River. Suddenly, an alarm shrieked. Something was wrong inside the plant. Within minutes, human error and technical failure triggered the worst nuclear power accident in the United States, and, within hours, the eyes of the world would be on Three Mile Island. Thirty-four years after the bombing of Hiroshima, the crisis at Three Mile Island re-awoke the world to the dangers of nuclear power, and now, in MELTDOWN, Wilborn Hampton tells the hour-by-hour story of covering the accident as a U.P.I. reporter. His riveting eyewitness account will compel readers to consider one of the most serious questions facing humankind: where can we find affordable, sustainable energy, and at what risk?

Customer Reviews:

About Being A Reporter, Not About TMI........2006-05-05

This book was written by a man who, as he himself admits, knew virtually nothing about nuclear power. He provided almost no technical details of what happened or why. He honestly didn't even manage to convey the suspense surrounding the accident.

I would say that this is not a good book about TMI. However, it is a good book about being a reporter covering a major breaking news story. It copied a number of the newspapr stories the author wrote at the time, so it is a good study of how reporters spin events and condense a day's experience into a few column inches.

Bent on emotion, not facts.......2005-07-07

Anytime a book about TMI or even Chernobyl begins with a discussion about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd advise readers to run away. That's like telling the reader up front that oranges and hand grenades belong in the same fruit basket.

Mr. Hampton makes it clear up front that he was not qualified to investigate nor write about TMI and its technical details (he was a foreign news reporter who "flunked physics in college"), but does so anyway in a sensational and biased way. He spends less than a chapter actually writing about the accident, then gets many of the details wrong or discusses them at a level that would make one believe the keystone cops were at work that March 1979 morning. The rest of the book is primarily spent discussing the debates and feelings of a misinformed public and politicians who in many cases were more interested in headlining than information.

For a reader who really wants to understand what happened at TMI on March 28, 1979, I'd strongly suggest reading "The Warning" by Mike Gray and Ira Rosen. That book accurately guides the reader through the facts leading up to the TMI event, the state of a fledgling industry that did not know how to communicate to regulators, engineers, and stakeholders, the actual details of the accident and how it could have easily been avoided, and a level-headed view of the aftermath.

Buy two copies of "Meltdown" and throw them both away. You'll be doing someone a favor.

A very personal story about reporting.......2004-07-05

There is very little information in this book to aid a scientific evaluation of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant accident. In the case of Three Mile Island, what happened might be described as an accident more truly than in the case of Chernobyl, where stupidity became a more obvious factor in the series of events leading up to the accident. It should not be unusual, now, for Americans to have some opinions about mistakes that were made in the design and testing of Chernobyl Unit No. 4, particularly after seeing how much of the building surrounding it was destroyed on April 26, 1986, as shown in the picture on page 80 of this book, at the start of Chapter 11. Blowing the top off the reactor was the first clue the operators had that they needed to call some fire departments to help battle the blaze. Wilborn Hampton does not give a definite temperature for what happened at Chernobyl, or at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (p. 3), or at Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, or at Nagasaki three days later (p. 4), but "It was estimated that the temperature at the point the bomb exploded exceeded 10,000 degrees. Heat engulfed the city." (pp. 4-5).

The efficiencies of producing electrical power from heat and steam seem to improve as temperatures rise above what a plant burning coal would produce, but the danger that human beings will misunderstand what is happening in such situations is one of the most frightening aspects of dangerous situations that people do not know how to control. The first of the problems reported at Three Mile Island were some unusual radiation leaks. Page 18 shows a March 30 story by Richard D. Lyons (Special to the New York Times) that described "large amounts of water containing small amounts of radioactivity" released by "the almost new generating plant." The element of human error involved in the situation might be due to that:

"Because of the radioactive water and gas within the containment building, no one was able to go back inside Unit No. 2 to make an assessment of the damage. All they had to go on was information transmitted from instruments that might have been damaged by the accident. When Miller ordered readings taken on the amount of heat and the level of radiation that were building up inside the reactor, the results were so high--one showed that the temperature in the top of the reactor was over 4,000 degrees--that he thought the equipment was simply malfunctioning and so he discounted them." (p. 25)

It was hot, and a large hydrogen gas bubble at the top of the reactor's core suddenly became the major technical fact that most of the drama from page 30 on makes people start to worry about a meltdown. Conflicting stories in the press about the possibility of a hydrogen explosion kept Harold Denton, Joseph M. Hendrie, Roger Mattson, and Victor Stello arguing until there was a press conference after midnight that announced President Jimmy Carter would visit Three Mile Island the next day. (p. 61). Even Rosalynn was on the old yellow bus that took them to the island. The major scientific revelation is the description of the argument that was going on at the same time:

"The radiolysis was not producing new oxygen that might trigger the hydrogen bubble. Some of the water in the reactor was indeed separating into hydrogen and oxygen molecules, but because there was so much extra hydrogen, the oxygen was constantly combining with it to form back into water. The bubble was, in effect, a built-in self-defense against an explosion." (p. 66).

After the bubble shrank from 1,000 cubic feet to about fifty cubic feet, a radiation level of 30,000 rems an hour inside the containment building was announced, lethal enough to make shutting it down an expensive problem. The UPI article by Wilborn Hampton shown on page 72 reports the comments of George Boyer, the 76-year-old owner of a general store "just across the street from the bridge that leads to Three Mile Island and its crippled nuclear plant. . . . During the years of building the nuclear plant, Boyer's store was a hangout for the hundreds of construction workers. . . . `I remember everything went real smooth on No. 1 -- no problems at all,' he said. `But No. 2 (the reactor that malfunctioned), there were always problems.' "

Sometimes things work, and sometimes there ought to be a way to go back to the beginning and do it right, but that never happens. There are a few reports of human error in this book and problems with valves that didn't seem quite as important as that general sense that when things weren't going right, at least someone was willing to describe the system as stable.

Richie's Picks: MELTDOWN.......2002-10-08

God bless my public library. I'm curled up in front of my computer at 6:30 A.M., marshaling my thoughts about nuclear power--a topic which monopolized my life for several years during the late 1970s--and I'm wondering how I can locate a copy of Amory Lovins' seminal essay on energy in the October 1976 issue of Foreign Affairs. Turns out it takes just five little key-steps from my library's homepage ..., and I am able to view a pdf file of the 32 page article! I utilized that article, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken," back then as the foundation to my own argument--that the electricity from the twin nuclear power plants, then proposed for eastern Long Island, was unnecessary.

If our years of protests and legal intervention hadn't already killed plans for constructing those twin nuclear plants, they were officially pronounced dead after the nation spent a scary few days awaiting the outcome of events in Middletown, Pennsylvania.

MELTDOWN: A RACE AGAINST NUCLEAR DISASTER AT THREE MILE ISLAND, by Wilborn Hampton, is a great introduction for young adults about what it's like to be a journalist. More importantly, it's a chronicle by a journalist on the scene of the events at Three Mile Island in the spring of 1979, where we got lucky--a catastrophe that would far outweigh that of 9-11 was narrowly averted. A full understanding of the extent of that potential disaster can only be grasped when viewed in relation to the 1986 nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl, which is the subject of MELTDOWN's final chapter:

"There is no official death toll for Chernobyl. At the time, the Soviet government reported that 31 people died in the accident. But since the breakup of the Soviet Union, more honest assessments of the extent of the tragedy have come out. The Ukraine, which is now an independent nation, has aid that more than 4,300 people died there. Nearly all the firemen who battled the blaze that first night are now dead, most from cancer or other radiation-related illnesses...Deaths among the soldiers and workers who built the concrete shell around the [damaged and contaminated] reactor are estimated to number at least 6,000...

"The land around the Chernobyl plant is a wasteland. Ukrainian officials say that 160,000 square kilometers [approximately 62,000 square miles] were contaminated with radioactive fallout at a level forty times greater than the level of radiation that Hiroshima or Nagasaki received from the first atomic bombs...Pripyat is now a ghost town...Bulldozers have buried most of the houses, and the old apartment blocks are deserted, the possessions of the former inhabitants too radioactive to reclaim...

"In Gomel, a town about sixty miles north of Chernobyl that received perhaps the heaviest concentration of radioactive fallout, the local orphanage is full of infants and young children as a result of what has become an epidemic of birth defects now being born to women who received large doses of radiation."

A young adult reading such awful facts and considering the root causes of why such potentially catastrophic technology is "necessary" may well be a young adult who, at the very least, decides to turn off their light the next time they leave the room.

Furthermore, MELTDOWN provides a comprehensible introduction to nuclear power for the young adults who are growing up facing the world's aging inventory of nuclear power plants--and the ever-increasing quantities of highly radioactive nuclear waste from those power plants (which has been a hot topic just this past week).

Common sense dictates that many of these plants will need to be abandoned in the not-so-distant future. Face it: it's one thing for me to keep my 1980 Datsun station wagon on the road, but I can afford to have something break down on it. (Actually that thought makes me a bit nervous.) We expect someone to be watching out for us when it comes to such things as geriatric commercial airliners. But who is going to going to make the decisions regarding the antiquated nuclear plants that currently produce such a significant portion of our nation's electric supply? MELTDOWN gives young adults a head start on considering this dilemma.

Its readability and the significance of the subject matter, combined with a fine glossary and a list of recommended resources, make MELTDOWN: A RACE AGAINST NUCLEAR DISASTER AT THREE MILE ISLAND a must-have. It provides today's young adults an opportunity for examining a pivotal episode from our energy past and an incentive for contemplating their energy future...

A Good Sense of What Was Going On At The Time.......2002-06-18

Wilborn Hampton was assigned by UPI to cover the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Hampton has done a fine job at portraying the confusion of the experts, the contradicting conclusions drawn from the same material in Washington DC and at the plant as well as the high anxiety level that all this created in nearby towns and counties.

I lived near the plant at the time of the accident and was one of the children evacuated because of the impending doom. I remember well the confusion surrounding what was going on. No one seemed to know for sure what was going to happen and some experts came right out and admitted so. Mr. Hampton has portrayed these feelings well and while reading the book you can see why. With behind the scene knowledge and of course hindsight the writer has produced an excellent book on the public events that this area went through. This book is not too technical but touches on how close we actually were to a meltdown, something still at debate in many circles.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Job on a Scary Subject.......2002-03-21

This book clearly explains how nuclear reactors work, and even gives background information on the growth of the nuclear power industry. Other nuclear accidents that did not get such media attention are discussed; so are the effects of the TMI near-meltdown on the surrounding area and its residents, as well as on the nation. (Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's visit helped to calm the national paranoia.)

The illustrations are good; especially interesting are the photos of local people dealing with the frightening events. One photo is of a local nurse, Jean De Angelis--the author's mother--who helped set up a fallout shelter for evacuees from Middletown and Harrisburg, PA. Interviews with locals also keep readers riveted.

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