Delta Force
Banned
There a few theories about how the Three Mile Island incident may have been caused through sabotage, rather than neglect and operator error. Security and personnel checks in the nuclear power industry were not as sophisticated as they are today, and a few possible perpetrators have been theorized. These range from a Mafia conspiracy in retaliation for General Public Utilities building the reactors at Three Mile Island instead of Oyster Creek, someone replicating the events of The China Syndrome (the incident depicted being similar to what occurred), or someone familiar with a similar incident that occurred at Davis-Besse in the September 1978 (which ended in successful recovery). There are also theories about a coal and/or environmentalist conspiracy. Alleged motives range from a workplace dispute or warning for management to an engineer at the plant trying to disprove The China Syndrome. There is more information on these theories here and here.
The sabotage theories were rejected in by the official investigations into the incident due to lack of evidence, although the reason why the emergency feed water valves were shut remains an open issue (quote from here, citing Chapter 11 of the Conclusions and Recommendations section of the Rogovin Report – Three Mile Island: A Report to the Commissioners and the Public):
While there have been many instances of design defects, mechanical, and human error at nuclear reactors, there has never been an incident in which malfeasance is alleged to have caused a major incident. The closest is the incident at SL-1, a United States Army nuclear reactor which suffered a meltdown in 1954 whose cause has never been determined (AEC Report here). That was a very different design under very different circumstances though.
Given this, what would the impact be if the Three Mile Island incident had occurred as it historically did, but with an investigation later determining that the initiating incident was due to sabotage? Would the industry still undergo its major focus on safety that occurred after Three Mile Island, or would the focus on sabotage and security blur some of that? What would the public response be to finding out that the incident was caused by someone on purpose?
The sabotage theories were rejected in by the official investigations into the incident due to lack of evidence, although the reason why the emergency feed water valves were shut remains an open issue (quote from here, citing Chapter 11 of the Conclusions and Recommendations section of the Rogovin Report – Three Mile Island: A Report to the Commissioners and the Public):
Like IE [NRC Office of Inspection and Enforcement] and the President’s Commission, we were unable to determine when or how the emergency feedwater block valves-which prevented emergency feedwater from being automatically supplied to the steam generators during the first 8 minutes of the accident-came to be closed. It has been established that these valves were closed during a routine maintenance procedure 2 days before the accident occurred, but the Met Ed personnel involved gave sworn testimony that they recalled reopening the valves after the maintenance was completed, as required by plant and NRC procedures. A checklist that would have recorded whether that was in fact done was routinely thrown away after the maintenance procedure was finished.
While there have been many instances of design defects, mechanical, and human error at nuclear reactors, there has never been an incident in which malfeasance is alleged to have caused a major incident. The closest is the incident at SL-1, a United States Army nuclear reactor which suffered a meltdown in 1954 whose cause has never been determined (AEC Report here). That was a very different design under very different circumstances though.
Given this, what would the impact be if the Three Mile Island incident had occurred as it historically did, but with an investigation later determining that the initiating incident was due to sabotage? Would the industry still undergo its major focus on safety that occurred after Three Mile Island, or would the focus on sabotage and security blur some of that? What would the public response be to finding out that the incident was caused by someone on purpose?