Three Mile Island

The meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 was a terrible blow to America's confidence in nuclear energy as the power source of the future. The web article Three Mile Island: 29 Years Later: Nuclear Safety Problems Still Unresolved highlights some of the impacts of this disaster.

What is most disappointing about the issue is that it does not appear to have changed emergency protocol at nuclear plants even 30 years later. Scientists know what went wrong but somehow that has not translated into more efficient emergency plans. In fact, it has yielded a system that only functions up to the point where an emergency is most likely occur.

Perhaps the only respectable measure taken during the accident was the halting of production on 74 more new plants. However, that is very limited in its merit. The chain of events that have resulted is not sustainable. Ideally, this scenario should have yielded useful information about where more attention is needed in the nuclear power producing process and resulted in greater measures to ensure that every mechanism is working properly. But that's not quite the case. We know a lot more about what needs to happen to keep a plant working properly but the network of entities that could put that into action have not been connected.

It is all so unfortunate. We have been able to implement changes to various other systems as a result of disasters, but this one seems to be stagnant and shrouded in fear.