After the Fallout

THE MIRACULOUS chain of events which focused world attention on Three Mile Island may eventually prove a blessing. With public interest in the atomic energy issue aroused by the newly released movie, The China Syndrome, the latest in a long series of nuclear-related miscues received an inordinate share of media attention. Three Mile Island was the symbol of all that was wrong (or could go wrong) with a nuclear reactor: the anti-nuclear activists couldn't have staged a better dramatization of their fears.

The recent events are meaningful because of the increased public interest they have generated. In the long run, though, Three Mile Island will be truly effective only if it brings about the earnest investigations and reevaluations the public has been promised. Everyone from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to President Carter has pledged "a full accounting" of the Middletown accident and a subsequent reexamination of the nation's commitment to nuclear power. But as President Carter so aptly commented this week, "I think it does not contribute to safety to have a bureaucratic nightmare or maze of red tape." The studies, presidential commissions and congressional hearings inspired by the Three Mile Island incident threaten to degenerate into pro forma inspections of surface material. If no salient conclusions are drawn and no gutsy probing of the flabby and overweight NRC takes place. Three Mile Island will fade as one of the many nuclear mishaps shoved into obscurity behind the powerful dollars of the nation's energy industry.

What proves most alarming in the aftermath of the entire Pennsylvania affair is the incompetence, misinformation, misdirection and unpreparedness of the so-called experts who were attempting to handle the Three Mile Island accident. Despite early promises that the reactor shutdown was "routine" and a matter of "little concern" to the public, the situation turned out to be one of the most serious accidents in the annals of atomic power.

While Metropolitan Edison--one of the owners of Three Mile Island--worked with NRC technicians and nuclear engineers trying to stabilize the haywire reactor, local residents were left uninformed. Hazardous Xenon 131 gas seeped into the atmosphere, and high-level bursts of radiation escaped to the containment building as plant officials released steam from the overheating equipment. Such steam releases were made, initially, without notifying local civil defense officials, who later expressed outrage at the situation's handling. These releases may have left their cancerous mark on thousands.

True enough, no one died, meltdown and explosion were avoided and the immediate consequences of the accident were relatively small. Still, we will not be sure exactly how severe all this radioactive release was until twenty or thirty years from now, when any potential cancers have had time to develop in the people who were exposed to the Three Mile Island expulsions.

MORE IMMEDIATELY, though, we must be concerned with how to proceed in the effort to meet this nation's ever-expanding appetite for fuel. The President seems committed to the further development of nuclear power. He said this week we cannot "abandon the nuclear supply of energy in our country, in the for seeable future." His assessment is not astonishing, when cities like Chicago get almost half their electricity from nuclear plants and the nation as a whole gets 12 to 13 per cent of its electricity from reactors.

But, given the present state of nuclear power, necessity cannot be an excuse for complacency. There were too many unanswered questions dramatized by the Three Mile Island accident. The NRC would like to ignore the possibility of structural and design defects in the current plants. Wednesday, the NRC said human errors rather than mechanical failures were chiefly responsible for the Middletown problems. The statement is just the latest in a series of ever-changing assessments which have identified from one to three human and mechanical mishaps as causes for the accident. And each report cites a different combination of problems.

Originally, the NRC said it suspected all Babcock & Wilcox reactors (the type of reactor in use at Middletown) had design defects that could promote problems similar to those encountered in Pennsylvania. Early this week, that claim was refuted, and B & W reactors got a clean bill of health.

At the same time, The New York Times reported that a government inspection file outlined problems in the Three Mile Island plant long before the March 28 accident. The report singled out the same valves and cooling system apparatus that failed during the accident. The NRC inspection even cited "personnel error" as a problem, but no action was taken. Instead, Metropolitan Edison pressed for the scheduled December 30, 1978, date for full-power operation of its reactor--to gather precious federal tax depreciation gains.

Three Mile Island's notoriety may dredge up much of the buried grime in nuclear power. Dartmouth president John G. Kemeney will head the Presidential Commission set to examine nuclear power, and he has promised a complete and careful inspection of the state of the industry. He will be under the careful watch of the public and the many outraged elected officials who have capitalized on the recent threat to national welfare as a vote-getting band-wagon ripe for boarding.

But the NRC's history of conflicting studies, incomplete reports and unclear statements has to provoke some skepticism about the possible effectiveness of inquiries into nuclear power. With the nation demanding such huge quantities of energy, the big-money companies advocating the use of reactors, and the President hoisting the nuclear banner, the private individual must feel neglected in the scheme of concerns.

MANY SCIENTISTS contend that nuclear power never can be made acceptably safe. Other experts assert that reactors are already safe enough, or at least reasonably close to such a level. But even if reactors are safe, the admittedly ever-present risk of human error may prove reason enough for serious objection to and possibly abstention from use of nuclear power.

The distressing conclusion is that we are just severely uninformed. No one is really sure of the true character of the nuclear power source. The bottom line, though, is an issue everyone has skirted--probably because it is so painful. Nuclear fuel, like all power sources, poses some danger to the public. When we get a clearer picture of the true hazards of the atomic industry, we will be better equipped to evaluate the potential consequences. Nuclear power will have become a cost-benefit proposition, which will require us to question the relative importance of our cars, our appliances and our health. It will be a time of tremendous national introspection. Such self-inspection may mean a redefinition of national goals--an admittedly difficult task. But as The Washington Post wrote in its April 1 editorial on Three Mile Island, such a reckoning of the "ethics of risk" must be the ultimate destination of the energy journey. If we are lucky. Three Mile Island will have set the process in motion.