ElneClare wrote:
A friend and I were heading into Baltimore listening to 98ROCK, when they reported that police cars had gone there. I had just gone to see "China Syndrome" recently too and kept thinking how similar the news stories seem to the movie. I still have to wonder how much we were told, was just to keep us from panicking.
Actually, pretty much every documentary on the TMI incident agrees that what people were told actually increased panic, rather then the other way around. The perception of danger was far greater then the actual danger.
The biggest failure of TMI was a lack of communication. First in training proceedures to the employees. Then to and from the experts who could have assessed the problem quickly but weren't able to due to jammed phone lines (or line as the case may be, there was only one phone line into the control room). Then from the company to the public (they tried to downplay the problem, but did so by being vague both to the governor's office and the press, which only fueled speculation that the disaster was worse then it really was). It wasn't until the one government expert arrived (Harold Denton) who took the time to figure out *exactly* what was happening and was able to relay that to the governor, the press, and the public in clear English that the panic started to subside.
While not everyone knew it at the time (again due to communications and training problems), the only actual danger period was the hours between when controllers shut off the water flow to the reactor thinking it was full and when the experts finally got through on the phone and told them to turn it back on. Once that was done, despite lots of speculation about various other possible catostrophic possibilities, every analysis of the actual physics involved has concluded that there was zero chance of a meltdown or containment breach.
The only actual failure of the system was a single valve that was stuck in the on position.