International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters

Evacuation behavior associated with the accident at Three Mile Island is described based upon data from field surveys. The question addressed is whether this evacuation was unique or whether it conformed to the pattern normally found in natural disasters, Demographic and social aspects of the evacuation are compared with those in the disaster literature. The conclusion is that the voluntary evacuation at Three Mile Island did not differ significantly from those taking place in natural disasters. Therefore, no special plans, policies, or procedures seem needed over and above those in place for other kinds of disaster evacuations. But in emergencies that are unusual and infrequent, where public officials must rely exclusively on experts who themselves disagree, and where the incident is part of an existing public controversy, forced evacuation may be a difficult action to take. This should not prevent officials from taking steps to make voluntary evacuation available to all citizens who choose to take such protective actions.

Interviews with 1505 persons living within 55 miles of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant three months after the crisis were analyzed to test whether the protective action decision model could predict evacuation behavior during the crisis period. Results indicate that severity, susceptibility, barrier and cost variables were, as suggested by the model, related to evacuation behavior. In addition, several modifications to the model were suggested by the findings including a need to account for why conflicting information may increase evacuation in nuclear disasters while decreasing evacuation in nonnuclear disastsers.

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is analyzed from the perspective of rationality theory. Contrary to the popular view that operator errors are inexplicable, the concept of practical rationality reveals the subjective meaning of the operators’ actions. It is argued that rat-tonality is a valuable notion for the practical management of emergencies and man-made disasters, and that rationality is an essential element in the development of a sociology of disasters.

The safe operation of nuclear power plants represents an important class of problems in the implementation of regulatory policy. These problems are characterized by a low tolerance for terror, high organizational and technical complexity, and highly visible, costly outcomes. The key to designing policies that address these problems is not to predict and regulate every possible source of error, but to design incentives such that organizations create their own error-detecting and solving systems. The current policy toward nuclear plant safety stresses technical and regulatory solutions at the expense of financial incentives that would induce utilities and plant personnel to engage in safe operation.

This work sought to specify stress levels induced in the local population around Three Mile Island from the accident in 1979. Unobstrusive behavioral indicators of stress for the population as a whole were compared before, during and after the accident. The conclusions reached were that: (1) the Three Mile Island incident-did produce stress in people, (2) the stresses detected through the indicators used in this study were shortlived, not severe enough to manifest themselves in dramatic indicators like psychiatric admissions or suicide, (3) stress was obviously reflected in indicators of mild stress like alcohol consumption, and (4) stress detected was well within the limits of stress that occur annually in that local population from stress inducing events like the occurrence of a major holiday. The conclusions of this study are best interpreted in concert with findings from studies using obstrusive indicators of stress, and with studies on special local sub-populations.

Nightly network news coverage of the accident at Three Mile Island raised questions about the nature of TV news as well as the capacity of the three major networks to inform viewers during disasters. A key emphasis in TV news is story-telling, especially the weaving of fables. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the content of netework news coverage of TMI reveals differences between networks in techniques of newsgathering and reporting, but even more so in stories told: CBS narrated a tale of responsible political and technological elites, ABC a nightmare of common folk victimized by elites, and NBC a story of resignation and demystification. Coverage of TMI, when compared to network coverage of other crises, suggests that in reporting disasters CBS, ABC, and NBC respectively and consistently construct rhetorical visions of reassurance, threat, and primal assurance.

Comparing two examples of local protest—one a failure and the other a success–this paper shows the importance of the interaction between local groups and national social movements in predicting the outcomes of struggles pitting communitites against established industries. A critical difference between the unsuccessful attempt of Santa Barbara activists to prevent the resumption of oil drilling after the 1969 spill, on the one hand, and the successful efforts of TMI residents to block the restart of the reactor adjacent to the one damaged in the 1979 nuclear accident, on the other, is the maturity of the national environmental movement. Focusing primarily on the relatively successful TMI protest, the paper emphasizes the importance of the national antinuclear movement's resources in forcing resourseful actors (individual and organizational) into adversarial positions vis-à-vis the offending utility.

The history of nuclear development in Sweden is chronicled. The position of various political parties is noted. Although the accident at Three Mile. Island was an important factor in the holding of a referendum of the future of nuclear power, the event did not appear to greatly alter long-standing attitudes about the issue. Results of the referendum are analyzed. Political party loyalties were major factors that determined votes on the referendum. However, other factors, such as gender and age, and occupational position, were also important determinants.

Great uncertainty currently prevails in the matter of off-site emergency response planning around U.S. civilian nuclear power plants. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency share in review and approval of off-site emergency plans prepared by state and local governments in the emergency planning zone of nuclear power plants. This study examines why off-site nuclear accident planning has been a low federal priority, why the problem is intergovernmentally complex, and why this sub-policy issue remains controversial.