In 1979, Bill Dornsife was the Commonwealth of the Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Engineer. As a degreed and trained nuclear engineer, Bill was responsible for all coordination between the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Commonwealth of PA. He was also one of the first responders to the accident at Three Mile Island. He later was appointed as the Director of the Bureau of Radiation Protection.
After the accident at TMI, Bill wrote a paper titled: The TMI Accident, What Really Caused the Crisis?
ABSTRACT
Although the Three Mile Island accident was the most serious which has occured in the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry, the real radiological effects were minimal. However, a combination of misinformation and sensationalist media coverage turned this situation into a crisis of major proportions which continued unnecessarily for many days.
This paper summarizes the various aspects of the accident. This includes a discussion of (1) the radiological consequences of the accident, (2) the events which led to the uncovering of the core and subsequent recovery, and (3) the circumstances and misinformation with caused the unnecessary NRC evacuation recommendations and the unnecessary concerns about hydrogen explosion in the reactor vessel.
Most of the discussion, expeccially concerning the misconceived evacuation and hydrogen explosion potential is from the vantage point of someone who was uniquely and intimately involved in most aspects of the offsite response to the accident. It is, therefore, a concise chronology of the accident and the factors which turned it into a crisis.
