The role of the United States Department of Energy in recovering form the three mile island accident

Even though it resulted in minimal radioactive releases to the environment, the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) was an even with many profound impacts upon the US nuclear power programme. The ten year involvement of the Department of Energy and its contractors in the TMI-2 cleanup and research programme has yielded many lessons of value for nuclear power programmes around the world. Some of the key lessons learned were: (1) Success at TMI-2 was generally a result of innovative engineering applied to existing technology, rather than due to the development of entirely new approaches. (2) The importance of data acquisition cannot be overstated. Through the course of the recovery, we were often tempted to bypass tedious data acquisition tasks in favour of seemingly more important 'production line' work. Time and again, successful data acquisition findings proved to be the turning points which led to key programme successes. (3) TMI-2 revealed that the nuclear industry needed new and improved means of collecting, concentrating, transporting and disposing of radioactive wastes generated by accidents. These improved technologies are now available for use of the nuclear community worldwide. (4) Concern for worker protection during decontamination resulted in a variety of innovations, including new surface cleaning techniques; new radiation survey equipment to quantify contamination levels; improvements in protective clothing; techniques for reducing worker heat stress; and improvements in beta dosimetry. (5) Finally, documentation mechanisms must be established and maintained so that the unique technology developed in cleanup from major nuclear accidents becomes part of the collective body of reactor safety knowledge. The lessons learned from the TMI-2 accident should help ensure that nuclear reactors are designed and operated to minimize the possibility of radioactivity releases to the environment, thus assuring the health and safety of the public and operating personnel. (author)