Learn from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl

The most infamous US nuclear accident took place just two weeks before the release of anti-nuclear film, The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon. When the film was released, it was immediately attacked by the nuclear industry for depicting an impossible situation. Yet on March 28, 1979, an equipment malfunction at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, turned into a drama that mirrored many of the scenes of The China Syndrome.

As Time magazine commented at the time: "Reassuring statements spewed from the plant's press spokesmen, sounding as if they were taken right out of the script of The China Syndrome." As the accident progressed, it became clear that no one had any idea what to do. The Kennedy Commission, set up by then President Jimmy Carter to investigate the accident, later found that complacency had so much pervaded the industry that "we are convinced that an accident like Three Mile Island was eventually inevitable." It judged that a meltdown had been avoided through sheer luck.

Similarly, Soviet scientists and engineers -- like their counterparts in the West -- were confident that there was no danger in the use of nuclear energy. In 1985, a year before the accident, the staff at Chernobyl nuclear plant were interviewed for an article in Soviet Life (an English-language magazine for distribution in the United States) aimed at readers who had grown sceptical after near meltdown at Three Mile Island. Nikolai Fomin, Chernobyl's chief engineer, assured the world that his plant was "completely safe" for both people and the environment.

The article in Soviet Life kept returning to the question of safety. Vitally Skiyerov, the Ukrainian energy minister, told the visiting journalists: "The environment is securely protected. Hermetically sealed buildings, close cycles for technological processes with radioactive agents and systems for purification and harmless waste disposal preclude any [accidental] discharge into external environment." Vladimir Volosko, the mayor of Pripyat, where the reactor is located, even sounded an environmental note while talking about car parking: "We don't want the cars to squeeze out the people. We believe the town of Pripyat should be as safe and clean as the power plant." The rest belongs to history.

During the night shift of May 9, 1986 at Chernobyl, there were what those who survived initially described as "muffled sounds." There was a hiss of escaping steam. And at 1.23 a.m., a fireball appeared in the night sky over the roof of the turbine hall. The nuclear reactor at Chernobyl had just exploded.

When he was in Moscow in 1979, just after Three Mile Island, the governor of Pennsylvania, Dick Thornburgh, made, it seems, an astute analogy between members of the Soviet nuclear establishment and enthusiasts of nuclear power in the West. He was right to wonder whether the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island would make a difference in the Soviet Union. Would the unbridled enthusiasm for nuclear power of the Soviet specialists be moved by questions of safety raised by a serious accident -- particularly if it happened on their own doorstep? That question remains germane in Iran today.

Iran also sits on an earthquake zone and it has faced several devastating earthquakes recently. A major earthquake around its nuclear power plant would be catastrophic for its people and people in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan.