Three Mile Island : A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective

Rating:
Summary: Valuable and Important
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It creates context for the industry and its regulators as the TMI accident occurs, and then it reports the fascinating details that pushed the accident to the brink of affecting public health and safety and then pulled it back again. I think this book should be required reading for all public officials, federal, state, and local, who are in positions of responsibility to respond to a nuclear emergency. This book would help them stay humble and focused. Discussion on public health got close to sounding too sure that everything was and is fine in the TMI area -- not sure we know enough yet to say for sure.

Rating:
Summary: Will become a valuable resource for future scholars
Review: It is hard to believe but it has been some 25 years since America's worst nuclear accident took place. In "Three Mile Island" author J. Samuel Walker takes a look back at the tragic events that upset us all so much back in March of 1979. Eminently qualified to undertake this project, Walker succeeds in presenting all sides of this extremely complicated and highly controversial subject matter. Was equipment failure the chief culprit here or was human error more to blame? Aside from attempting to explain exactly what happened on that fateful day, Walker spends a considerable amount of time evaulating why the various players in this saga reacted they way they did. This book is meticulously researched and fairly well written but I must admit that at times I got lost with all of the scientific jargon that was necessarily included. In the long run I feel that this book will prove to be a terrific research volume. If you are like me and not well versed in the sciences it can be a somewhat difficult read.

Rating:
Summary: Will become a valuable resource for future scholars
Review: It is hard to believe but it has been some 25 years since America's worst nuclear accident took place. In "Three Mile Island" author J. Samuel Walker takes a look back at the tragic events that upset us all so much back in March of 1979. Eminently qualified to undertake this project, Walker succeeds in presenting all sides of this extremely complicated and highly controversial subject matter. Was equipment failure the chief culprit here or was human error more to blame? Aside from attempting to explain exactly what happened on that fateful day, Walker spends a considerable amount of time evaulating why the various players in this saga reacted they way they did. This book is meticulously researched and fairly well written but I must admit that at times I got lost with all of the scientific jargon that was necessarily included. In the long run I feel that this book will prove to be a terrific research volume. If you are like me and not well versed in the sciences it can be a somewhat difficult read.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of words, little content
Review: This book was highly unsatisfactory. One cannot deal with specific deficiencies and keep to length limits: this will be general.

Walker implies he has no pro-nuclear bias. That is difficult to believe considering his employer, word choice and his criticizing nuclear opponents and excusing those in the nuclear industry.

What this book is actually about? It seems to be about bureaucratic gyrations in reaction to the accident, NOT attempts to assess what was happening or actions to deal with the reactor itself or the actual condition of the reactor. Illustration of priorities: chapters 4-8 bear the title of days of the accident, but (p. 158) we learn what the company had done the previous day to ameliorate the hydrogen bubble to clarify the announcements made the day that chapter deals with. Walker mentions that the hydrogen bubble resulted from damage to the fuel rods, but does not specify that it was the zirconium fuel rod cladding dissolving that released the hydrogen.

Walker's omissions frustrate. Despite long discussion of the preparation of the NRC's first accident press release, the press release text is omitted! The book would be more comprehensible if it included a map of the area, relevant organizational charts of the NRC, state and federal governments and a schematic of the TMI reactor corresponding to the parts Walker named. There is no mention of the Rasmussen Report (WASH-1400), frequently used by nuclear proponents before and after the accident to assure people of nuclear safety.

While omitting relevant information, Walker includes irrelevancies: D. R. Neely did not go with two other NRC people to meet with the governor's executive assistant. That is the only mention of this man, so the mention is perplexing.

If you are looking for a comprehensive, unbiased account of what happened at TMI, look elsewhere.