And government officials and a breakdown atomic power plant in pennsylvania today is probably the worst Nuclear Reactor accident today. There was no apparent serious contamination of workers. And Nuclear Safety group said that radiation inside the plant is it eight times the deadly level, so strong that after passing through a three put thick concrete wall, it can be measured awhile away. We report from harrisburg the accident occurred here at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant a dozen miles south of harrisburg. At about 4 00 this morning two water pumps that helped cool reactor number two shut down. Officials say some 50 to 60,000 gallons of radioactive water escaped into the reactor building and that the radioactivity penetrated the plants walls. Steam escaped into the atmosphere and radiation was detected as far as a mile away. At least 50 workers and perhaps twice that number were at the plant when the accident occurred. A spokesman admitted that some were exposed to radioactivity and may have been contaminated but he claimed no one was injured. All workers were given extensive checks with geiger counters as they left the plant. Reporters were not permitted inside the facility today but this is what reactor number twos control room looked like last september when it was still undergoing testing. It went into commercial service only three months ago. Cbs News Coverage in march 1979 a live view of three mile island. Joining us here is samuel walker, the author of three mile island a Nuclear Crisis in historical perspective. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Its nice to be here. Walk us through the events. Wednesday march 28, 1979 things were going routinely, it was a midnight shift. The shut aye shift. Suddenly at 4 00 a. M. In the morning on march 28, wednesday, there was a cutoff of feed water to what was called the secondary system, which raised the pressure which caused according to design a valve to open called the pressureoperated relief valve, and when that opened, pressure started to build up where it opened so that it would relieve the pressure that had built up in the reactor, and that was according to design, so things were going fine at that point. But then after the valve had been opened for ten seconds or so, it should have closed and it didnt. And the result of that valve not closing, the valve sticking open, water started to rush out from the reactor, the cooling water that is used to maintain the temperature in the reactor started to rush out and within a fairly short time you had all the makings of the worst incident, worst kind of accident you can have in a Nuclear Power plant, a loss of coolant accident. By that time in the control room alarms were going off, 100 lights on the control panel were blinking. So the operators knew that something was happening that wasnt good but they didnt know exactly what it was and one of the lessons that were learned from the accident is that you didnt have any instrument on a huge control panel that showed that the plant was suffering a loss of coolant accident. There was no instrument like a gas gauge on a car that shows that water was evacuating from the cooler, and so it wasnt clear to the operators that they were facing a loss of coolant accident. According to design the emergency core cooling systems came on but the operators were more concerned about what was called in the pressurizer, which is an important feature of pressurize water plants what is called going solid, too much water in the pressurizer. Thats what they would been trained carefully to avoid and they were more concerned about the possibility of going solid than they were about a loss of coolant accident. So they shut off the emergency core cooling systems. One of the pumps was shut completely, the other was closed down enough to stop the flow of cooling water to a trickle. So within a couple of hours, the fuel rods were badly damaged and within a couple of hours after the valves stuck open you had a major loss cooling accident and we found out much later you had a meltdown. Tmi 2 on the morning of march 28, 1979, suffered a massive core meltdown. President carter visited shortly after the accident. He was a nuclear scientists, a Nuclear Physicist having been trained at the naval academy. Did his visit ease the concerns . We should point out you were from this part of the state and your brother served in the house of representatives elected just a few years before. Yes and yes. Im from the area so i had a great deal of empathy and i still do. President carters visit to the island was on sunday. This was five days after the accident occurred. And his visit was extremely important in reassuring the population that things were no one terrible shape. No one knew at that point that the plant had actually suffered a meltdown. But his visit was important in letting the people of central pennsylvania know that things were more or less under control and one should not exaggerate the confidence that people felt on that morning about things being under control. But the fact that he would come there and visit the plant and go into the control room was a major reassurance for people of the area that things, that if they werent under control would be taken care of or else carter wouldnt have shown up. And here is what president carter said in 1979 just a few days after the accident occurred. The president came to the plant for one very simple reason. To assure the people that if the president of the United States and the governor of pennsylvania were standing there together, right at the plant site, that obviously there was no reason to believe that the whole thing was going to blow up at any minute. Obviously, that would reassure the population that were going to have plenty of advanced warning if we have to get out of here. Back to middletown, the president praised local officials and then without actually using the word referred to what everyone here has been thinking about for days evacuation. I would like to say to people who live around the plant that if it does become necessary your governor will ask you and others in this area to take appropriate action to ensure your safety. If he does, i want to urge that these instructions be carried out calmly and exactly as they have been in the past few days. That from cbs coverage of the events 40 years ago. Could it happen today . Its less likely to happen today. We learned a lot from the accident. The major lesson that was learned was not that enough attention to was paid to what were called Human Factors as a cause of a Nuclear Plant accident. What we with learned after three mile island was that the operators should have been trained better. We also learned that the instrument panels had to be redesigned so that they could provide useful operation which the operators were not getting as the accident proceeded. We also learned that we had to pay a lot more attention to emergency planning. And we also learned that we have to we we being the country. We also learned that we have to concentrate more on plant management. Because too many utilities that owned Nuclear Plants at that time saw it as just another way to boil water and didnt really pay enough attention to what needed to be done to make certain that plants were safe. It doesnt mean that an accident is out of the question. But it does mean that its much less likely than it was 40 years ago. If youre from central pennsylvania around three mile island we welcome your participation. Our phone lines are open. Eastern and central. Mountain and pacific time zones. Lets go to dave in wisconsin. Thanks for taking my call. Im just wondering if the design of this plant is similar to the one in fukushima, japan. Also to my understanding, these Nuclear Facilities are basically uninsurable, theyre too expensive to insure so that basically the government has to really back up if there is an accident. Am i correct in those assumptions . Thank you. Well get a response. The answer to the first question is that the design of three mile island was different than the design of fukushima and a lot of questions have been raised about that. But the basic problem at fukishima, as i understand it, was that the siting of the plant was in a very poor place and a lot of questions have been raised quite properly about why you would site several plants that close to the ocean that had a history of tsunamis. So in that sense what happened at fukishima is quite different than what happened at three mile island. In terms of insuring the price anderson acted which was passed early in the history of Nuclear Power, was passed, one, to make certain that there was enough coverage for people if there was a major accident in a Nuclear Power plant. And it simply turned out that there werent any Insurance Companies that had enough confidence or enough assets to ensure a worstcase Nuclear Power plant as early as 1957 or so there was great concern, if you have a major Nuclear Power accident, if you had a major release of radiation, that the damages and the costs in injuries and lives could be much larger than the ability of any Insurance Company to cover, and so thats why the government offered Liability Insurance for which owners of power plants had to pay in. So thats right, i mean, the government did step in and stepped in both as a way to reassure people and to help to stimulate the growth of the Nuclear Power industry which was viewed as a National Important objective at that time but also to protect people who might be affected by a Nuclear Power accident. We were in the area, able to get drone aerial footage. Jim from ohio, good morning. Good morning, gentleman. I was teaching science at the time three mile island happened and i heard your guest talk about the Human Element of being something. Of course the Human Element hasnt changed a whole lot in 40 years. I was just wondering if he could hold forth a little bit on the need, when you have the ucs person coming up soon, i believe their stance is neutrality on Nuclear Power plants according to design. And i was wondering, if you could talk a little bit about what Design Elements i know the plants are very, very expensive which is why probably theyre not being built at the moment. But i believe theres, is it a french design or a design for smaller Nuclear Plants which reduce the possibility of i suppose a major accident . If he could talk a little bit about that and any other changes that we would see other than obviously a warning light for loss of coolant or Something Like that. Jim, thank you. Yeah, there is lots of ideas for new designs, some of which have been tested experimently, some of which are still on the drawing boards. And i dont know a lot about them. The original designs which are in plants that are operating now are both based on early designs from the early 1950s for submarines. So its very possible that the new designs could be put into place that that would be safer, that would create less radioactive waste and that would have major advantages over the current designs. I dont think there are going to be many more plants other than the four or five that are being built right now of current design. So if we want the Nuclear Power to be a part of our energy mix, i think were going to have to find new designs and test them and make sure that they work as they should. I mentioned this earlier, your Brother Robert walker had just begun his second term in the house of representatives and from central pennsylvania. Yes my brothers district the northeastern boundry of the district was just south of three mile island so he spent a lot of time up in middletown and the area. Those five days, they were five acute days of crisis, five days after the accident occurred when no one knew exactly what was happening, there was great concern, understandable anxiety on the part of the people of central pennsylvania but also policy makers and officials in the government. Both the state and the federal government. And one of those officials was my brother bob, and he was up there every day trying to find out what was going on and what the risks were and what the chances were that there was going to be a major release of radiation. He tells the story, he lived in East Petersburg which is within the 20 mile radius and he found out later that his neighbors were watching him and his house, they had their cars packed and they were all ready to go and they thought if he and his wife suddenly, that they were going, too. It didnt turn out that way but at least that was their way was to preparing was to make certain that they were ready to go, their cars were gased up, they were packed up. And if hed left they were going too. You look a lot like your brother. We have his picture. Well share that with the audience. Aubrey in maryland. I too lived in the harrisburg area at the time of tmi. What i recall about the incident was my parents as well as urgently came to School Removed me from Elementary School and our family then packed up and headed to pittsburgh where we werefrom. But the question i was calling to ask about is both of my siblings had sickle cell anemia. After the event, experienced bone marrow suppression. So neither had enough supply of blood in laymans terms to last them more than a week or two with regard to their condition. Ive always had the question with regard to radiation in the air, if you want to term it that, what were the effects short of cancers that we may be discussing and debating here now 40 years later from the immediate effects . And i look at that through the context of the lens of a scientists but also thinking of some of the other mass casualty events, for example with the bombings in japan, or chernobyl, what is it that weve ever been able to discern with reagrds to some of those immediate effects and specifically with bone marrow suppression or people with sickle cell anemia or anyone for that matter had been a likely sort of effect of what had happened at tmi . Before we get a response, how are they today . My sisters deceased, unfortunately. That happened in 1988. My brother is alive and still living in harrisburg. Thank you for the call. The connection . Well. Let me address the general question first. And that is the amounts of radiation that were released. Its certainly true there werent a lot of monitors on the morning of march 28. The day of the accident the utility that operated the plant metropolitan edison had 20 radiation monitors surrounding the plant out to i think about 12 miles and that wasnt enough to be sure how much radiation escaped, but its also true that if large amounts of radiation had escaped from the plant, that it wouldve shown up. I mean, after the first day of the accident there was that there were helicopters that the department of energy was operating that traced a plume, there were measurements being done not only by the utility but also by the nrc, e. P. A. , the food and drug administration, by the state of pennsylvania. And if radiation in large amounts escaped, it would have shown up in foodstuffs, in the water, if there had been large amounts of iodine131 it should have shown up in milk. So you cant hide radiation. If there were large amounts, they would have shown up and the epidemiological studies that have been done, theres controversy and conflict but the best of those studies or the study that has the best data that has the best base for understanding what happened in terms of illness of the population, studied a cohort of more than 32,000 residents who lived around the plant within a five mile radius and studied them for a period of 20 years. In those cases, those 32,000 people had been interviewed by the state department of health for previous exposure to radiation, where they were during the accident. So its a really spled did data base and that study has shown no increase in cancer above normal rates and im sorry that i cant address your specific question and im sorry for the illness of your family. Theres no guarantee and we never know exactly what causes those kinds of illnesses. The chances that it came from radiation that escaped from the plant are unlikely. Our guest samuel walker, a former historian for the Regulatory Commission also the author of the book three mile island a Nuclear Crisis in historical perspective. Walt is joining us from pittsburgh. Good morning. Yes, i was in ohio in 2002. What i found out its not just the accidents. Its the greed involved. The one plant up there caused a huge blackout. Instead of having brownouts here and there they shut down a large area, and that was the greed of the plant manager and the people involved trying to make themselves look good. The other was in ohio, a Nuclear Plant, the same company where the was going bad. Instead of them doing anything they waited to the last minute. Fortunately there wasnt a lot of damage done but i believe 250 million rather than the guy running the plant getting it fixed he caused more trouble by letting it go to the last minute. Thats what i have seen. I worked in steel mills. I would rather work in a Nuclear Plant than a steel mill. Steel mils back in the 70s through 90s were way more dangerous than Nuclear Plants. Walt, thanks for the call. For all the lessons we learned that there still are problems, and thats why we need strong regulation and the industry is doing a much better job, a much stronger job of regulating itself, especially company management. But we also learn that we have to be humble because the Nuclear Plants are large and complicated, and theyre hazardous. So we have to live with that. And there are no theres no guarantee and there was never any guarantee even back in the 50s when the Power Industry was first beginning, no one was saying at least no one in a responsible position was saying an accident is impossible. They were saying its unlikely, were going to do everything we can to make certain it doesnt happen. But no one in their right mind was saying you can never have an accident. So even in more recent times, less than 40 years im an historian, so anything less than 40 years is recent times for me. Things still go wrong. We welcome our viewers on cspan 3s American History tv. 48 hours of history every weekend on cspan 3. You can check out the full schedule on our website. Lets go to robert in las vegas. Good morning, gentlemen. Mr. Walker, i look forward to reading your book. What a coincidence, because i was with jim nelson and michael douglas, we made the movie the china syndrome. Are you familiar with that movie . Oh, yes. I start my book with that movie. Well, what a terrible coincidence, the movie when we released that three days after it was released, a Nuclear Physicist was on television. He said the chances that we were depicting in that movie was one in 100 million or more. Well, then three mile island, a total of ten days we heard about what was going on there. Now, i was under cover. I checked all Nuclear Power plants all over the world. Now, were trying to deal with all the waste, like here in nevada, if youre familiar with what theyre trying to do about that. Robert, let me jump in quickly. Explain specifically your role or involvement in the film the china syndrome. I did the research on all the Nuclear Power plants. To be honest, i think it should all be shut down and just go to other kinds of fuel, because there is never a catastrophe that one like in japan, with all the radiation and the water and all of the fish that became sick and, you know, it just to me we got so many other ways to go, you know, im not one to say but it would be a lot safer. Now, i noticed on the screen youre showing the china syndrome. So i just wanted to say hello and i appreciate the fact that youre on here discussing it with the people, because if there is a serious well, look at chernobyl. Horrible, too. Thats all i wanted to say, and i appreciate you gentlemen bringing all of these facts to the public. Robert, thanks for adding your voice, again going back to that film that came out about a weekandahalf before tmi. A week and a half before, and when the accident occurred it was being shown, it was still being shown in two theaters in the harrisburg area and they put on extra showings on friday and saturday nights, which were the most tense days, the most anxietyfilled days of the five days of crisis after the accident occurred. On those two nights, the two theaters in harrisburg put on extra showings of the china syndrome and apparently the theaters were packed with those extra showings. Linda in minneapolis. And robert thanks for adding. What a great adition to the program. Linda, go ahead. Good morning. I have a couple of questions. I think theyre pretty quick to answer, maybe. The first one and perhaps the most important is or the more important one is, i wondered if there was any information about how this problem of Nuclear Waste can be safely solved. Is this insolvable . And i mean it seems like it just never goes away. Whats to do with the waste. The second is maybe connected to it is what is the status of the hanford plant in East Washington . Thank you, well get a response. Those are great questions. I did write a book on radioactive waste sometime after my book on three mile island. So the history of that is in there. It was not well handled by the Atomic Energy commission, the nrcs predecessor agencies. And these are good scientists, think theres a technical solution. Its reasonable. Youre never going to get a solution that satisfies everybody. But the political equation or the political problem might be and probably is more insoluble than the technical issues. In terms of handford, handford is still undergoing a large cleanup. The hanford plants, the aec and its successer agencies, at least for a long time, did not handle radiation hazards as carefully as they should have. Its being cleaned up. The government is spending a lot of money to clean it up. I dont know what the status of it is now. Its a lot better than 25 years ago and it still has a long way to go. Good morning. Youre on with sam walker. Hi. Mr. Walker, i want to ask i want to know if a lack of water in the reactor had anything to do with the problem. Thank you. If the water if the lack of water had anything to do with with the reactor itself. The lack of water had a lot anything to do with the reactor itself. Lack of water had a lot to do with the fact that the reactor meltdown. What the water does is keep the plant cool. The normal operating temperature for a Nuclear Power plant is degrees. If you lose the coolant, you have a problem, and is exactly what happened when the valve stuck open. In anything else having to do with the water, i dont think so. There was a loss of feed water and that is what caused a valve to open and then not close. I wouldnt to underscore i want to underscore a point, this plant was brandnew. It has operated a total of three months. The lesson from that is . A lesson from that is build it right. [laughter] there were lots of questions raised and lots of investigations done after the accident occurred both by the n. R. C. , that kennedy commission, why the state of pennsylvania, by congress and others, there were things that werent clear. Those were valid questions because utility, it turned out, was not well equipped to run the plant. But according to all the licensing parameters that governed the licensing of the plant, it met those standards. So the accident came as a huge shock to everyone as it did meet standards, yet you had a major, major accident. The book is titled three mile island, a Nuclear Crisis in historical to your core our guest is samuel walker. Thank you for being part of the program. And the best to your brother. Thank you. Our prime concern has been, is, and remains a concern for the safety of the residents of the area, and of those workers who must carry out the responsibility of decontaminating the unit to facility. The most pressing question is which of the alternatives is the safest . If im satisfied that there is an alternative which meets that description, that i certainly