The accident occurred here at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant a dozen miles south of harrisburg. At about 4 am two water pumps that cooled reactor number two shut down. Officials say 50 to 60,000 gallons of radioactive water escaped into the reactor and that the radioactivity penetrated the walls. Steam escaped into the atmosphere and radiation was detected as far as one mile away. At least 50 workers and perhaps twice that number were at the plant when the accident occurred. A spokesman admitted that someone explode to radioactivity and may been contaminated, but he claimed no one was injured. All workers were given extensive checks with geiger counters. Reporters were not permitted in tight inside the facility, but this is what the control room looked like last september when was still undergoing testing. It went into commercial Service Three months ago. That was cbs News Coverage in 1979 and a live view of three mile island. And joining us here is samuel walker. Thank you for being with us. Walk us through the timeline as the sun folded. On wednesday, march 28, 1979, things were going routinely. It was a midnight shift and suddenly at 4 am in the morning on march 28th, wednesday, there was a cut off of feedwater to what was called the secondary system that raised the pressure, which caused, according to the design, about to open called the pressure operated relief valve. When that opened pressure started to build up and it would relieve the pressure that would build up in the reactor. And that was according to design. So things were going fine at that point. But then after the valve was open for 10 seconds or so, it should closed and it did not and the result of that valve not closing, the valve sticking open is water started to rush out from the reactor, the clean water that is used to maintain the temperature in the reactor started to rush out and it was in a fairly short time that you had all the makings of the worst incident the worst kind of accident you can have in a Nuclear Power plant, a loss of cooling accident. By that time in the control room alarms were going off and 100 lights were blinking, so the operators knew that something was happening that was not good, but they did not know exactly what was. And one of the lessons that was learned from this accident is that there was no instrument on the control panel that showed that the plant was suffering a loss of cooling. There was no instrument like a gas gauge on the car that shows that water was leaving from the cooler and it wasnt clear to the operators that they were facing a loss of cooling accident. According to design the emergency core came on, but the operators were more concerned about what was called a pressure ulcer which is the feature of pressurized water plants and it was called going solid. Too much water in it and that was what they were trained carefully to avoid. They were more concerned about the possibility of it going solid than they were about a loss of cooling and they shut off the emergency core cooling system and one of the pumps was shut completely and the other was closed down enough to stop the flow of cooling water to a trickle. So within a few hours the fuel rods were badly damaged and within a couple of hours after the valve was stuck open, there was a major loss of the cooling accident and we found out much later that there was a meltdown. Tmi 2 on the morning of march 28, 1979, suffered a massive core meltdown. But president carter visited shortly after the accident. He was a Nuclear Physicist and trained at the Naval Academy and trained on an aircraft carrier. Did his visit ease the concern . And we should point out you are from this part of the state and your brother was elected to the house a few years earlier. Yes, i am from the area so i have a lot of empathy about what was going on. And i still do. President carters visit to the island was on sunday and that was five days after the accident occurred. And his visit was extremely important and reassuring the population that things were not in terrible shape. No one knew at that point that the plant actually suffered a meltdown, but it was important to let the people of central pennsylvania know that things were more or less under control and when should not exaggerate the confidence that people felt on that morning, but the fact that he would come there and visit and go into the control room was a major reassurance for people in the area that things if they were not under control would be taken care of or else he would not have shown up. And heres what he said in 1979 a few days after the accident occurred. Spoke the president came to the plant for one simple reason, to assure the people that the president of the United States and the governor of pennsylvania were standing there together right at the site and obviously there was no reason to believe that the whole thing was going to blow up any minute. And obviously that would reassure the population that we are going to have plenty of advance warning if we have to get out of here. The president praised local officials and then without actually using the word god referred to what everyone has been thinking about for days. Evacuation. I would like to say to the people who live around the three mile island plant that if it does become necessary, your governor will ask you and others in the area to take appropriate action to ensure your safety. If he does, i want to urge that the instructions be carried out calmly as they have been in the past few days. That was cbs coverage of the events 40 years ago. Could happen today . It is less likely to happen today. We learned a lot from the accident at three mile island and the major lesson that was learned was not enough attention was paid to Human Factors as a cause of a Nuclear Plant accident, but we learned after three mile island that the operators shouldve been trained better. We also learned that the instrument panels needed to be redesigned so that they could provide useful information and we also learned that we had to pay a lot more of the tension to Emergency Planning and that we have to to concentrate more on management because too many utilities that owned Nuclear Plants at that time sought is another way to boil water and did not pay enough attention to what needed to be done to make certain that they were safe. It doesnt mean that an accident is out of the question , but it does mean that it is much less likely than it was 40 years ago. If you are in central pennsylvania around three mile island, we welcome your participation. For those in the area you can call. Lets go to dave joining us from armstrong creek. Thank you for taking my call. I am wondering if the design of this plan to similar to the one in fukushima . And to my understanding these Nuclear Facilities are basically uninsurable and theyre too expensive to ensure. So the government has to backup if there is an accident, am i correct in those assumptions . The answer to your first question is the design of three mile island was different then the design of fukushima. And a lot of questions have been raised about that, but the problem the basic problem at fukushima was that the siting of the plant was in a poor place and a lot of been questions have been raised about why you would put several plans that close to the ocean that had a history of tsunamis. So in that sense what happened in fukushima is very different than what happened in three mile island. In terms of ensuring, the price anderson act that was passed early in the history of Nuclear Power was passed to make certain that there was enough coverage for people if there was a major accident in a Nuclear Power plant, and it simply turned out that they were not any Insurance Companies that had enough confidence or enough assets to ensure worst case Nuclear Power plant. As early as 1957 there was great concern that if you have a major Nuclear Power accident, if you have a major release of radiation, that the damages and the costs and injuries would be much larger than the ability of any Insurance Company to cover. And so that is why the government offered Liability Insurance for which owners of power plants had to pay him. So the government did step in as a way to reassure people and to help stimulate the growth of the Nuclear Power industry which is an Important National objective. But also to protect people who could be affected by Nuclear Power accident. We got some drone aerial footage to give you a perspective of what it looks like. Jim is joining us from massillon, ohio. But good morning. I was teaching science at the time three mile island happened and i heard your guest talk about the Human Element and the Human Element has not changed a lot in 40 years. I was wondering if you could talk about the need, when you have the ucs person coming up, i believe the stance is neutrality on Nuclear Power plants according to design. And i was wondering if you could talk about what Design Elements i know the plans are very expensive, which is why theyre not being built at the moment. But i believe, is there a french design for smaller Nuclear Plants, which reduce the possibility of a major accident . If you could talk about that and any other changes that we would see other than a warning light for a loss of coolant or Something Like that . There are a lot of ideas for new designs, some of which have been tested experimentally. And some are still in the drawing board. I dont know a lot about them. The original designs, which are implants that are operating now are both based on early designs from the early 1950s. It is very possible that new designs could be put into place that would be safer and would create less radioactive waste and would have major advantages over the current designs. I dont think there will be many more plans other than the 45 they are being built right now if current designs. So if we want Nuclear Power to be part of our energy mix, i think we will have to find new designs and test them and make sure that they work as they should. Your brother had just begun his second term in the house of representatives and was from central pennsylvania. My brothers district was just south of three mile island, so he spent a lot of time in middletown in the area. There were five acute days of crisis. There were five days after the accident occurred when no one knew exactly what was happening and it was great concern and it was understandable and there was anxiety among the people of central pennsylvania but also policymakers and officials in the government and one of those officials was my brother, and he was up there every day trying to find out what was going on and what the risks were and what the chances were that there was good to be a major release of radiation. He tells a story. He lived in east petersburg, which is in the 20 mile radius and he found out later that his neighbors were watching him and his house. They had their cars packed and they were all ready to go and they thought that if he and his wife left suddenly, that they were going as well. And it didnt turn out that way, but at least that was their way of preparing for the accident was to make certain that they were ready to go and if he left, they were going as well. You look a lot like her brother. And we will share this with our audience. Good morning. But good morning. I live in harrisburg area at the time of tmi and whatever call about the incident was my parents came to school and took me from our Elementary School and we packed up and headed for pittsburgh where we from. Most of my siblings had sickle cell anemia and after the event ironically had bone marrow suppression so neither had enough supply of blood to last them more than a week or two. And ive always had the question with regard to the radiation or radiation in the air, what were the effects that we could be discussing and debating 40 years later from the immediate effect . And i look at that through the context of the bombings of japan. But before we get a response, how are your relatives today . Sister is deceased, unfortunately. That happened in 1980. My brother is still in harrisburg. Any connection . But let me speak in general terms. Let me address the general question first and that is the amounts of radiation that were released. And it is true that there were not a lot of monitors on the morning of march 28th and the day of the accident. The utility that operated the plant had 20 radiation monitors. And that was not enough to be sure how much radiation escaped. If large amounts of radiation have escaped, i would have shown up. After the first day of the accident there were helicopters that the doe was operating and there were measurements being done not only by the utility but by the nrc and epa and the fda and the city of pennsylvania. And if radiation in large amounts escaped, i would have shown up in food and water and if there had been large amounts of iodine 131 it wouldve shown up in milk. So you cannot hide radiation. And the epidemiological studies that were done, there was some conflict, but the best of those studies or the study that has the best data, the has the best base for understanding what happened in terms of illness of the population studied a cohort of more than 32,000 residents who lived around the plant within a five mile radius and studied them for a period of 20 years and in those cases, those 32,000 people have been interviewed by the state department of health for previous exposure to radiation and so it is a splendid database and that study has shown no increase in cancer above normal rates. I am sorry that i cannot address your specific question and im sorry for the illness of your family. There is no guarantee, and we never know exactly what causes those kinds of illnesses. The chance that it came from radiation that escaped from the plant are unlikely. Our guess to samuel walker, a former historian for the u. S. Nuclear regulatory commission. We have a call from pittsburgh. Was the manager of people involved. The other in ohio with a Nuclear Plant, same company. Instead of them doing anything about it, they waited in the last minute. There was not a lot of damage. I believe those heads are 250 million. Guy running the plant didnt stop and get it fixed, he caused more trouble. Thats what i have seen. I would rather work in a Nuclear Plant than a steel mill. Steel mills in the 70s, 80s and 90s were way more dangerous the new. Thank you for the call. For all the lessons that we learned and other incidents, there still are problems eric that is why we need strong regulation. The industry is doing a better and stronger job of regulating itself, initially company management. We also learned that we have to be humble. Nuclear plants are large and complicated. They are hazardous. We have to live with that. There is no guarantee. There was never a guarantee, even in the early 50s when the Nuclear Industry was first beginning. No one was saying or known in a responsible position with saying an accident is impossible. They said it is unlikely. Will do everything we can to make sure it doesnt happen. No one in their right mind would say he would never have an accident. Even in more recent times. Less than 40 years his recent times. Things still go wrong. We welcome our viewers on cspan 3. Good morning. I look forward to reading your book what a coincidence. I was with. We made the movie the china syndrome. Are you familiar with that movie . C yes. I start my book with that movie. What a terrible coincidence. When we released fat, three days later, a Nuclear Physicist was on television saying the chances that we depicted in that movie were one and 100 million or more. Then a total of 10 days, we heard about what was going on there. I was undercover. I checked all Nuclear Power plants all over the world. Now we are trying to deal with all of the waste like here in nevada if you are familiar with what theyre trying to do. Let me jump in quickly, explain your role or involvement in the film the china syndrome. I did the research on all of the Nuclear Power dance. To be honest, i think they should be shut down and go to other kinds of fuel. There is never a catastrophe like in japan, with all of the radiation and water and fish that became sick, to me we have so many other ways to go. I am not one to say. It would be a lot safer. I noticed on the screen, you are showing the china syndrome. I just wanted to say hello and i appreciate the fact that you were on here discussing it with the people. Look at chernobyl. Also horrible. That is all i wanted to say. I appreciate you gentlemen bringing all of the facts to the public. Thank you for adding your voice. Going back to the film it came out about 1. 5 weeks before three mile island. When the accident occurred, it was being shown into theaters in the harrisburg area. They put on extra showings on friday and saturday night. The most anxiety filled days of the days of crisis on those nights, the two theaters in harrisburg on extra showings of the china syndrome. Apparently theaters were packed. Lets go to linda in minneapolis. Good morning, i have a couple of questions. I think theyre quick. The first one in the most important, i wondered if there was any information about how this problem of Nuclear Waste can be safely solved. Is this unsolvable . It seems like it never goes away. The second one which is connected, what is the status of the hanaford plant . In east washington. Those are great questions. I did write a book on radioactive waste, sometime after my book on three mile island. The history of that is there. These are good scientists. They think there is a technical solution. The political equation or political problem, probably is more insoluble than te