Three Mile Island and the Information Explosion on Nuclear Energy

Following the nuclear reactor accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) in Pennsylvania last March, the public was inundated by newspaper, magazine, and broadcast reports on nuclear energy. At first, most of these reports attempted to explain the reactor malfunctions that caused the accident. With time, reporters began to analyze events at the site and turned toward other issues related to nuclear energy. Highly complex issues that scientists, economists, and politicians had been debating for years came to light in the proliferation of articles following the accident. The media blitz that followed the TMI accident can be described as a classic case of an information overload—too much information contributing to the public’s confusion. The advantages afforded by access to a great deal of information were offset by the sheer mass and complexity of the often coni%cting information. And, as with the debate over recombinant DNA, 1 forming an opinion on the merits of nuclear energy was complicated by these conflicting viewpoints. While the media have played a positive role in dkseminating information to the public during such public health crises as the swine flu debacle, 2 there is good reason to question—as did the Kemeny Commission-their role in thk crisis. According to the Public’s Right to Information Task Force,s a staff group of the Kemeny Commission (also called the President’s Commission on the Accide-nt at Three Mde Island) ,’1a great deal of misinformation was published during the accident due to the lack of scienttilc and engineering expertise of reporters and confusion and misinformation emanating from official news sources. Metropolitan Edison (the company that operates TMI) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) made scientific errors and, on occasion, exaggerated or minimized the significance of events. d According to nuclear consultant Ralph Lapp, two days after the accident began, the NRC “blew the accident up into a full-fledged and protracted crisis based on ignorance of reactor technology, i.e., misint erpretation of the hydrogen explosiveness. It was the NRC that urged evacuation based on improper assessment of the fisk.”S As I mentioned be forez —and as the media coverage of TMI clearly illustrates—it is time the media began focusing more attention on educated coverage of scienttilc news. Reporters must become more famihar with scientific concepts and language if they are to interpret the meaning of events for the public. The Kemeny Commission, in its report to the President, addresses this problem.4 The Commissioners recommend that the major media outlets, and news media near nuclear power plants, train or hue specialists familiar with reactors and the language of radiation. They further suggest that scientific information be presented in a manner that helps readers make their own judgments. In order to gain an understanding of the issues involved in the nuclear energy controversy, I asked my staff to review the literature published after the TMI