Re: pstd

["R. William Field" <bill-field@uiowa.edu>]

Mike,



I had an up close and personal view of the TMI accident having lived 4 miles

away at the time of the accident and spending significant time less than 0.5

mile away from the plant sampling a few days after the accident.  I don't

think we can put the blame on Greenpeace and others.  It was truly an

unexpected event and there was very little information provided to the local

public from credible sources.  I remember talking to an Amish farmer, a mile

away from TMI, 3 days after the initial event and that was the first time he

had heard about it.  At the time, it appeared even credible sources were

scrambling to figure out what was going on.  There were no local sources in

place in the community for counseling or information.  With all the

uncertainty, people really had no idea what to do which significantly

increased the stress to those in the area.  I recall the phone lines being

so tied up 24 hours after the initial event that you could not make a phone

call.  There were long lines at banks and gas stations as people fled the

area.  Some alarmed people were even carrying concealed weapons.  The

National Guard was called in to prevent looting, etc.  I vividly remember

one morning two days after the accident.  Civil defense sirens were going

off and fire trucks were going up and down the streets of Elizabethtown, PA

telling people to keep their doors and windows shut because of elevated

Iodine-131 concentrations in the city.  Even the Governor was making the

suggestion that pregnant mothers evacuate the area.  Can you really imagine

how people felt leaving the area and wondering if they could ever come back

to their homes?  Put your self in that time, it was a conceivable scenario

to people living around the plant.  This was the reality of how they felt.

The local news channels had very limited information.  Most of the

information we received came from the National News outlets.  In fact, that

is where I first heard about the concern about a possible hydrogen bubble.



Several days after the accident, Hershey was like a ghost town.  Some people

like my wife had to stay since she had patients too ill to move unless

absolutely necessary.  I remember, each evening a few of the medical

residents and their families would eat at the Copper Kettle across the

street from the Medical Center to hear from each other what insights they

heard.  Ken Miler was one of the few people we had any belief in and his

monitoring of the background radiation levels at the Medical Center was

probably one of the more reassuring activities we heard about.  I spent much

of my time waiting with my wife to evacuate patients from Hershey Medical

Center to a MASH type unit near State College.   We were told from what I

thought were credible sources that we would have at least 3 hours notice

before the core melted to evacuate the patients.  We now know it indeed did

start to melt.  It is easy for some to look back now and put the blame on

the media or the anti nukes, but it is likely far more constructive to take

the lessons we have learned from TMI so that we are prepared for the next

unforeseen event when it occurs, be it another TMI type incident or a

terrorist act.



Perceived risk is VERY different that actual risk.  People need to feel that

they have some control of a situation.  As Paul Slovic has pointed out, with

nuclear power there are many factors that increase the risk perception.   It

is important to let the affected parties play a role in contingency planning

and educational efforts.  From my perspective, this never happened at TMI.



SEE:



J Hazard Mater 2001 Sep 14;86(1-3):17-24



The risk game.



Slovic P.



Decision Research, 1201 Oak Street, Eugene, OR 97401, USA.

pslovic@oregon.uoregon.edu



In the context of health, safety, and environmental decisions, the concept

of risk involves value judgments that reflect much more than just the

probability and consequences of the occurrence of an event. This article

conceptualizes the act of defining and assessing risk as a game in which the

rules must be socially negotiated within the context of a specific problem.

This contextualist view of risk provides insight into why technical

approaches to risk management often fail with problems such as those

involving radiation and chemicals, where scientific experts and the public

disagree on the nature of the risks. It also highlights the need for

allowing the interested and affected parties to define and play the game,

thus emphasizing the importance of institutional, procedural, and societal

processes in risk management decisions.



Also:  Health Phys 1981 Oct;41(4):589-98

Informing the public about the risks from ionizing radiation.

Slovic P, Fischhoff B, Lichtenstein S.



Regards, Bill Field

Community of Science: http://myprofile.cos.com/Fieldrw