30 Years After Partial Meltdown, Three Mile Island Resonates With Vigilant Industry and a Wary Public, Says Noted Pitt Nuclear Engineer
Larry Foulke, 40-year nuclear engineer and past president of the American Nuclear Society, available to comment on March 28 anniversary of incident at Pennsylvania plant
The attitude of the
American nuclear power industry and the public perception of nuclear power
remain the longest-lasting effects of the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s
Three Mile Island nuclear power facility March 28, 1979, a University of
Pittsburgh expert says. Larry Foulke, director of the nuclear engineering program in Pitt’s
Swanson School of Engineering and a noted 40-year veteran of the nuclear
industry, is available to discuss the legacy of Three Mile Island 30 years
later: The nuclear industry continues to incorporate the lessons of that
day—better training and communication—and the public, while slowly regaining
interest in nuclear power, remains wary.
Three Mile Island’s greatest impact was its self-regulatory effect on the
nuclear industry, Foulke says. “It was a humbling experience that changed the
mentality of the industry from smugness to vigilance—we have to maintain that
vigilance,” he says. Operators are now better trained and nuclear reactors are
equipped with passive safety features that are less susceptible to human error
or reliant on mechanization. More organized control rooms feature computers
that prioritize problems in an emergency. “The human operators at Three Mile
Island were overwhelmed and unnerved by what I call an ‘alarm avalanche,’”
Foulke said. “There was so much chaos in the control room that it took them
hours to discover that there was a loss of cooling water, which was the
problem.”
The incident did not result in death or injuries, but the public perception of
nuclear power as too risky halted plant construction in the United States. The
last American plant to go on-line was the Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee
in 1996; the plant’s construction started in 1973. “Three Mile Island caused
severe mental distress,” Foulke said. “We cannot return to the industry
complacency before Three Mile Island, but we also need to have a realistic
attitude about nuclear power.”
Among the first generation of nuclear engineers, Foulke was president of the
American Nuclear Society (ANS) from 2003 to 2004 and, while serving as chair of
the ANS Public Policy Committee from 2005 to 2008, met regularly with members
of Congress about matters pertaining to nuclear science and energy. In his
career, Foulke managed reactor safety, training, and simulation programs for
Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Company—one of the world’s largest
vendors of nuclear reactor technology—and the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program
research laboratory in West Mifflin, Pa., a joint Navy and U.S. Department of
Energy lab owned by Bechtel Bettis Inc.
Foulke joined Pitt’s faculty in 2006 after the Swanson School created the
nuclear engineering program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and
Materials Science to meet a growing demand for nuclear engineers. The program
provides the only nuclear engineering track in Western Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh
and Western Pennsylvania host one of the world’s highest concentrations of
nuclear engineering experts from such companies as Bechtel Bettis, Westinghouse
Electric Company, and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company, which operates the
Beaver Valley Power Station nuclear power plant in Shippingport, Pa. Foulke can be reached through Morgan Kelly: 412-624-4356
(office); 412-897-1400 (cell); mekelly@pitt.edu
For a list of Pitt faculty experts, visit www.umc.pitt.edu/m/experts.html
There is always newsworthy research and events happening in the Swanson School of Engineering.
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