Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective
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| Author | J. Samuel Walker |
|---|---|
| Subject | Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant (Pa.) Nuclear power plants—Accidents. |
| Publisher | University of California Press |
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Publication date
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2004 |
| Pages | 303 |
| ISBN | |
| 363.17 | |
| LC Class | TK1345.H37 W35 2004 |
Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective is a scholarly history of the Three Mile Island accident, written by J. Samuel Walker and published in 2004. Walker is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's historian and his book is the first detailed historical analysis since the accident.
The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station in Pennsylvania was "the single most important event in the fifty-year history of nuclear power regulation in the United States", according to Walker. Many commentators have seen the event as a turning point for the nuclear power industry in the United States.
Three Mile Island is J. Samuel Walker's fourth book as the official historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In the book's preface, Walker tells readers that he had complete independence in its authorship—that the NRC placed no restrictions on what could be said. However, Walker provides an historical account and does not assess the performance of the NRC.
The Three Mile Island power station is near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the United States. The accident described in Three Mile Island began on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, and ultimately resulted in a partial core meltdown in Unit 2 of the nuclear power plant. Unit 2's pressurized water reactor was of 900 MWe capacity. The scope and complexity of this reactor accident became clear over the course of five days, as a number of agencies at the local, state and federal levels tried to solve the problem and decide whether the ongoing accident required an emergency evacuation, and to what extent.
Walker's objective in Three Mile Island was to write a comprehensive and authoritative history that would serve as an authoritative record for both the interested public and the NRC. The book provides a detailed account of the causes of the accident and the response to it by the NRC, the state of Pennsylvania, and the White House.
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