Three Mile Island : Conflicting Reports Stoked Fear in Nuclear Accident : Confidence in Authorities Evaporated During Crucial 7 Days of Doubt

By the fourth day of the Three Mile Island accident, a stream of conflicting statements was in full torrent.

The power company was saying the crisis was over, but the company had lost its credibility.

Minutes later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned that a hydrogen bubble in the reactor was potentially explosive and blocked efforts to cool the uranium core.

The NRC in Washington said the bubble could reach an inflammable stage within five days.

NRC officials at the scene said that detonation would be impossible for at least nine days.

Disjointed Information

It took seven days to get a clear story from all involved. By the time the NRC confirmed that the hydrogen bubble was gone and gave a plain account of what had happened, everything that had gone before seemed disjointed.

Scores of reporters, carrying radiation detection badges with their pads and pens, rushed the office of Gov. Dick Thornburgh. “They were no longer interested in the story. They feared for their own safety,” Paul Critchlow, then an aide to the governor, recalled.

Reporters by trade are detached observers, but during the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident, they were as personally involved as the people who lived in the shadows of the huge, hourglass-shaped towers.

The vanguard of a press invasion about 400 strong came from the state capital, Harrisburg, 10 miles away, where a new governor was in his 71st day of office and the Legislature was debating the sorry condition of the state’s roads.

Three Mile Island overwhelmed everyone. Reporters found themselves trying to cover a nightmare of confounding technology, contradictions, feverish emotions and limited access to information.

The near-calamity lacked any visual evidence. There were no flames, funnel clouds, floodwaters or wreckage. The most popular photograph was of the huge, concrete cooling towers. Reporters had to learn quickly about the extremely complex workings of a nuclear-powered generator.

At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979--a Wednesday--Three Mile Island was working like a giant tea kettle, producing steam for electricity from its reactor. Then a balky valve caused two pumps to shut off, halting a steam turbine and interrupting the chain reaction within the reactor.

As 100 tons of uranium sizzled in the heat of decay, a pressure-relief valve opened and the emergency cooling system flooded the reactor with water. But the valve stuck and stayed open for two hours, draining vital coolant water and letting radiation escape into the air.

The operators checked a faulty gauge and mistakenly shut off the emergency cooling system. The core was uncovered and the top half of it melted. A bubble of hydrogen formed.

Still, no one had a clue as to what was going on.

There was nothing in the operators’ manuals about a bubble. It was as if they had been given history books to study for an algebra test. A computer used to measure core temperatures spit out only question marks, the machine’s equivalent of scratching its head.

The nuclear power industry, which touted its product as cleaner than coal and cheaper than oil, had bragged that such an accident could never happen. Metropolitan Edison Co., the plant’s operator at the time, downplayed the gravity of the situation.

The first word from Metropolitan Edison came from its headquarters in Reading, 55 miles away. “There have been no recordings of any significant levels of radiation, and none are expected off site,” Blaine Fabian, spokesman for the utility, said.

At 11 a.m., Lt. Gov. William Scranton III told reporters: “Everything is under control.” As he spoke, unknown to him or the reporters, radioactive steam was escaping from the plant.

An angry Scranton returned at 4:30 p.m. to say: “Metropolitan Edison has been giving you and us conflicting information.”

Later, when he was asked why reporters had not been told about the leak, Metropolitan Edison Vice President Jack Herbein said: “They didn’t ask.”

Rosy Statements

The power company wasn’t alone in making rosy statements. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffer said that the accident “wasn’t close to a catastrophe.”

The next day, Metropolitan Edison President Walter Creitz said the plant had been safely shut down. In reality, it was still leaking radioactivity and remained stubbornly hot.

All trust disintegrated with a new burst of radiation Friday, and the public was prompted to flee a nuclear accident for the first time.

Mothers left dishes in the sink and clothes in the washer after Thornburgh advised that pregnant women and young children should not remain within five miles of the plant. In Harrisburg, an unauthorized Civil Defense signal wailed eerily.

“We are operating almost totally in the blind,” NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie said that morning. “It’s like a couple of blind

men staggering around making decisions.”

A reporter on the story could attend a Metropolitan Edison news conference at American Legion Post 594, head down the street to hear the NRC’s report, then drive back to Harrisburg to get the state’s version.

At one of these antsy sessions, with reporters standing on chairs and shouting questions, Herbein said: “I don’t know why we need to tell you each and every thing we do.”

Desperate for information, Gov. Thornburgh turned to President Jimmy Carter and the White House sent in Harold Denton of the NRC. Denton’s Southern drawl and knowledge of reactors helped to soothe nerves. The White House also put a gag order on Metropolitan Edison, so that only one story would come out. On Sunday, President Carter visited the area to reassure a jumpy populace, while technicians worked to eliminate the bubble.

The next day, Metropolitan Edison said the bubble was gone. A company official had to repeat the news over the phone to four reporters before they felt comfortable with the information. On Tuesday, the NRC confirmed that the bubble was gone. Six days later, the agency declared the crisis to be over.

There were interviews with jittery residents who had hung radiation detectors on their back yard shrubbery.

In a quiet rural area where Amish farmers still use horses to pull plows, Middletown Mayor Robert Reid ordered the police to shoot looters.

A church service in the Susquehanna River town of Goldsboro drew just four worshipers, along with a reporter and two photographers.

Then came the salt and pepper shakers shaped liked the cooling towers, signs in stores of “We don’t sell Pennsylvania milk,” and weather jokes about it being partly cloudy with a 40% chance of survival.

The swarm of out-of-town media found this note from the locals in the newsroom of the state Capitol:

“If you must go out on the streets of Harrisburg and see they are dark and empty, this is not--repeat, not--because of the accident at Three Mile Island. That’s the way they always are.”