The Communications Failures Lessons of Three Mile Island

Dr. Peter M. Sandman

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Pay Attention to Outrage

Reporters are a pretty thick-skinned group when it comes to danger—the sort of people who automatically drive toward the scene of any disaster. But they were frightened at TMI. It’s one of the few times I have ever witnessed a roomful of reporters rush a press secretary and demand to be moved further from the story.

Local citizens, obviously, were even likelier to have found the accident terrifying (though it is worth noting that, as usual, there was no panic). 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. (The sense that they didn’t know everything they should came later. Officials could have reduced post-crisis recriminations by acknowledging their uncertainty and all the things they wished they knew but didn’t.) As it usually does in crisis situations, the mistrust fed the fear. But there were plenty of other outrage components in play at TMI, including knowability, control, dread, and memorability.

Knowability. Expert disagreement is an aspect of knowability that generates even more outrage and fear than garden-variety uncertainty—and expert disagreement is rampant over the health effects of low levels of radiation. Some experts claim even very small exposures can lead to cancer; others argue that small exposures actually provide health benefits (the so-called hormesis hypothesis).

Another aspect of radiation’s knowability problem is its undetectability. Many reporters at TMI wore radiation monitors, a privilege few ordinary citizens had. Even so, the reporters were nervous. One told me he’d be a lot more comfortable if radiation were purple instead of invisible. Another, a veteran war correspondent, noted: “In a war you worry that you might get hit. The hellish thing here is worrying that you already got hit.”

Control. One of the most important—and difficult—ways to help people cope with a crisis is to offer them things to do. Reporters were busy at TMI, which kept their fears at bay. Local residents, on the other hand, had little to do but follow the media and stew. That feeling of complete powerlessness generated a lot of extra fear. One possibility that was considered and rejected was to distribute potassium iodide (KI). It floods the thyroid with iodine and if there had been much radioactive iodine emitted at TMI (as it turns out there wasn’t), the KI could have prevented some thyroid cancers. But the real issue was one of communication. Would distributing KI scare people by implying there might be serious radiation releases, or would it reassure people by giving them something to do to protect themselves? The former argument won the day, and the KI stayed in the warehouse.

Dread. Cancer is an especially dreaded way to die. And among carcinogens, radiation is an especially dreaded source. Experts have calculated that particulates and other pollutants normally released into the air around TMI 25 years ago were deadlier than the amount of radiation actually released during the accident. By shutting down some factories temporarily, therefore, the accident may even have improved local public health. Despite these data, I still get two or three phone calls and e-mails a year from people who live near TMI, or are thinking of moving to the area, asking my advice on whether it’s safe. And many are still convinced it isn’t.

Memorability. Nuclear disaster has been a feature of science fiction since the early 1950s. Almost everyone who lived through the TMI accident had already seen countless nuclear reactors run amok—in movies, in novels, and in comic books. So it was easy to believe a meltdown was around the corner. It didn’t help that The China Syndrome, a movie about a nuclear power plant disaster, had just opened. Harold Denton, the senior manager the NRC sent to the site, took an evening off to go see the movie in Harrisburg, Pa.; a few hundred reporters (including me) went with him.