The NY Times provides the useful reminder that on March 28, 1979 we had an "incident" at the Three Mile Island nuclear generating station. Here is the news article by the NY Times for what happened: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0328.html#article
For a little more background on the incident, see the Wikipedia entry (SDA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_mile_island To provide some context for why the Three Mile Island incident raised such attention and concerns, one has to remember that movie "The China Syndrome", which starred Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Lemmon and depicted a nuclear power plant that was going to melt down through the earth to China (actually, in realistic geographic terms, it would have been the Indian ocean) was released 12 days earlier on March 16, 1979, so that when the news first broke, people could construct interpretive frameworks on the basis of the availability and simulation heuristics. For more on the moive The China Syndrome, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome At the time of the Three Mile Island incident I was in graduate school and sharing a house with other gradaute students on Long Island, NY. The event occurred on Wednesday and by Friday the house members had started to focus on the news and whether there might be widespread radioactive release which would most likely spread northeastward from the southeast Pennsylvannia location of the plant. Such a spread could cover New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere. If that happened, we were likely to be in the path or, if it kept to the west, perhaps cut off from the mainland. Where could we go and what could we do? We decided that all we could do was just sit and wait and take what may. Fortunately, Three Mile Island did not have a China Syndrome and the amount of radiation released was limited and we went back to worrying about our graduate studies. Later, on April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster occurred and we obtained a better idea of what Three Mile Island could have been. For into on Chernobyl, see the Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Other things to remember was the public outcry about the nuclear power plants which was first started by the movie "The China Syndrome" (though an anti-nulcear movement had been in place prior to this time), followed by the "No Nukes" concert (Sept 1979) which was released on records in November 1979 and in film form in May 1980; see the Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Nukes:_The_Muse_Concerts_for_a_Non-Nuclear_Future And then there was the 1983 movie "Silkwood" about whistleblower Karen Silkwood, played by Meryl Streep, which raised questions about whether anyone involved in the nuclear power industry, that is, the power companies, the unions representing the workers, and governmental regulators and overseers, could be trusted to look after the interests of nuclear power plant workers and the general public. The movie seems to provide a definitive answer to that. For info on the movie, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkwood For info on Karen Silkwood, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood And now there is talk of having an agressive new investment in nuclear power plants. Who knows how that will turn out? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1585 or send a blank email to leave-1585-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
