Remembering Three Mile Island

Kennedy Maize

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Old Dog, New Tricks

What lessons can we learn, 30 years after TMI? I’m not sure, but I would propose some ideas. Not recommendations, just ideas. (See the accompanying commentary in this issue from crisis communications expert Peter Sandman, with excellent observations on lessons to be learned.)

Utility managements should dedicate themselves to the absolute truth, which means not claiming that they understand things they don’t understand, and honestly facing up to conditions that impact their businesses. As the TMI incident was developing, the folks at General Public Utilities (and subsidiary Met Ed) really didn’t know what was happening. They would have been far better off acknowledging that to the public. The NRC’s Harold Denton, who calmed the nation with his management of the mess, did just that.
Regulators should express public humility when faced with events they don’t understand and evidence of poor performance by the entities they regulate. Transcripts of NRC meetings during the TMI meltdown demonstrate that regulators were at a loss for explanations. That’s fine. We can have more confidence in our regulators when we understand that they are human and have little more understanding of complex situations than we do, particularly when their technical staff don’t have much of a clue about what is happening.
Reporters, legislators, and political policy-makers should focus more on systemic, root causes of regulatory failure and less on high-profile posturing, blame-gaming, and personal attacks. The NRC failed in its response to the TMI accident. There’s no question about that. But the failure was not because of flaws in the makeup of the commission or the character of the commissioners. All of the NRC commissioners at the time were honest, hard-working, dedicated professionals. Smart folks. Their failure was due to lack of an institutional and industry focus on transparent identification and communication of problems. The regulators were befuddled. Given the ambiguity of the empirical evidence, they were sometimes blinded by their ideological beliefs in the atom, and unable to see the scene clearly.

Enter a New Era

So how’s that for a pessimistic retrospective on the 30th anniversary of the TMI accident? Any optimism out there?

Okay, I’ll provide some. The nuclear industry has done a great job since the mid-1980s of cleaning up its act. Nuclear plants are more efficient, safer (particularly for plant workers), and more profitable. That’s good. Let’s hope it gets even better. If that’s a lesson from TMI, then it is a lesson well learned.

—Kennedy Maize is executive editor of MANAGING POWER.

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