Three Mile Island Case Study

There have been more critical junctures recently, in terms of nuclear disasters, in which nuclear energy became stagnant in John Kingdon’s policy cycle. The cycle consists of policy formulation, legitimation, implementation, evaluation, and change. When the policy cycle stalls out because of natural disasters, it stagnates at the implementation phase. This is because the policy already went through the formulation stage, wherein it was simply a concept, and it was legitimized by being signed into law. Finally, at the implementation phase, once the disaster has happened, the cycle stops. There are two factors contributing to the sluggishness. The first contributing factor revolves around the difficulty to evaluate the efficiency or positive
This case study explains that in Middletown, PA in March of 1979, there was a nuclear disaster due to a mechanical failure. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission report that the failure prevented the main feedwater pumps to send water to the nuclear reactors to cool them down (Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident 3). Due to this, the reactors began to overheat and eventually got to a point where there was an core nuclear meltdown. Thankfully for the U.S, the power plant containment walls remained mostly intact and wherein most of the radiation stayed, and the event did not become that relatable to Chernobyl or Fukushima (Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident 3). That said, it is still arguably the third worst nuclear disaster in global history, and the worst in U.S. history, and it cannot be argued that it did not reshaped public opinion on nuclear energy (Hultman 64). The societal outburst that was to be had due to Three Mile Island was definitely a negative one. It brought into concern a major question. “Three Mile Island was a pivotal event that fit into a developing public narrative of questionable nuclear safety” (Hultman 68) So, we now have both factors which would stall the policy cycle in relation to the Three Mile Island case study. Firstly, a nuclear disaster happened from which we can not evaluate and improve on the efficiency or greenness of the policy, and then there was societal
The importance of keeping the population safe is simply inarguable. That said, the causes of all three disasters were either human error or the lack of hindsight. Furthermore, looking at the case studies chronologically, we do make advancement in safety concerns. Originally with the Three Mile Island Case, it was a mechanical error that causes the meltdown. This is a problem with the machines, which we have had almost 40 years to improve upon since then. Many nuclear power advocates have come out in recent times vouching for the safety in the design, manufacturing, and regulatory processes (Hultman 63). As we know, 7 years later the Chernobyl incident occurred. Barbara Goss Levi, journalist with a PhD in particle physics, states that there was a sequence of operator errors at Chernobyl, during a time period when the Chernobyl staff were conducting a test (17). What this means is that the event would not have been as disastrous if the Chernobyl staff had done their job properly. The staff committed numerous violations of operating rules when trying to do damage control, which just agitated the situation even more. Then, when you look at the Fukushima case, you at least don’t see blatant violations in terms of following the rules, but improper planning. The Fukushima event could have been avoided with proper investment into