Category: Content Type (Page 7 of 36)

Newspaper: Dickinsonian
Date: April 12,1979
Article: In crisis – doing what you do well
Author: Jeffrey W. Blinn

Playing the guitar, running, writing articles, manning the radio station, conducting anthropological studies, taking radiation readings…..

These were just some of the activities people engaged in at the College last week in a time of potential disaster. According to President Sam A. Banks, a psychologist by training, people in time of potential disaster prefer to do what they do well. Banks said this is because satisfaction needs become stronger as security, the other basic need, diminishes.

For those who remained at the College last week, relationships came to play a larger role, said Banks at the Friday, April 6, afternoon seminar. For example, faculty and administrators dined with students, something Leonard Goldberg, dean of Educational Services had been encouraging.

Goldberg articulated the general consensus if the students, faculty and administrators at the seminar, saying he sensed a “warmth between people.”

The College president noted that even those students who left the campus were going toward older relationships.

On t-shirts, those who remained on campus were silk-screening quips such as “I survived Three Mile Island.” This, said Banks, was an example of illusion of centrality which is a common occurrence during a time of crisis. For example, at Nagasaki, those people not directly under the A-Bomb still reported that they were directly under the bomb, explained Banks.

Another example of illusion of centrality was related by a student. Upon speaking to a parent, relative, or concerned friend, the people to relieve the concern would talk of the great distance of 24 miles that the College is from Three Mile Island. But, as soon as the concern was alleviated, the person would quickly retort, “But I’m only 20 miles away.”

Banks concluded that “panic doesn’t occur in disasters as much as people think; what really occurs is shock, and then euphoria when people hear that danger has passed.”

This seminar was just one of several that were held in place of cancelled classes the week of April 2.

Newspaper: Dickinsonian
Date: April 12 1979
Article: Annoyance triggers deadly chain
Authors: Jeffrey W. Blinn and Sarah L. Snyder
(Ed. Note: The following article was printed by the York Daily Records, the Shamokin News-Item, the West Shore Times, and the Hamilton Journal News.)

“Bypass the automatic safety system and keep the reactor going.” This, according to Unit 1 control room shift supervisor Dale Pilsitz, is normal operating procedure in the event of a turbine trip.

Pilsitz was working in the Unit 1 control room at the Three Mile Island installation the morning of the initial mishap in Unit 2 last Wednesday.

A turbine trip, usually perceived by control room personnel as a minor annoyance, started a chain of malfunctions in the early morning hours of March 28 that could have ended in the ultimate nuclear disaster, a core meltdown.

Pilsitz noted that “turbine trips are not earthshaking.” Generally when a turbine trip occurs, the control room operators try to keep the unit on line, he added.

At the TMI installation, there are two main safety systems. Pilsitz said that after a turbine trip, control room personnel have time to try and correct the problem. He explained, however, that if the turbine trip could not be repaired and the situation worsened, the secondary safety systems automatically engage, forcing a reactor shutdown.

According to Pilsitz, depending on the severity of the situation perceived by the operators, they try to manually bypass the automatic safety system and keep the reactor going. “It’s better to keep the reactor going at a lower level of power,” Pilsitz noted. “I guess they didn’t have that luxury in Unit 2.” He indicated that TMI personnel feel responsible to continue generating energy if it is possible.

Met Ed workers in the stock room of Unit 2 said “There it goes again” when the turbine tripped in Unit 2 last Wednesday morning.

According to Stockroom employee Mike Donelan, workers became aware of the malfunction when the safety system vented steam through the pipes. “When those things blow, you can really hear it,” he said.
Donelan was working the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift when the initial malfunction at 4 a.m. and subsequent radiation leak at 6:55 a.m. occurred.

Donelan, who noted that both Unit 1 and Unit 2 have experienced several turbine trips, hypothesized that a lack of experience among Unit 2 control room personnel may have been a significant contributing factor to the mishap.

Pilsitz, who has been working for Met Ed at TMI for eight years, agreed that Unit 2 is staffed with new personnel. He added that nevertheless experienced supervisory personnel from Unit 1 had been transferred to work at Unit 2.

He continued, however, that Unit 1 and Unit 2 are of essentially different design. The firm Babcock and Wilcox of Lynchburg, VA constructed Unit 2.

Pilsitz declined to comment on Nuclear Regulatory Commission charges of human error in the mishap. “I’m not sure about the element of human error, but I’m sure the investigation will bear out any findings concerning that possibility,” he said.

Supervisor Pilsitz explained that all turbine trips have to be reported to the Department of Environmental Resources and the NRC according to Radiation Emergency Plan guidelines. However, Pilsitz said that notification need not occur immediately following a t

Notification, he said, is dependent upon the severity of the malfunction. Met Ed has 24 hours, 48 hours or even one week in which to notify the authorities of a less severe malfunction, Pilsitz explained.

In the case of a radiation leak which was initially detected at approximately 6:55 a.m. Wednesday Pilsitz said that radiation teams are sent off the island to take readings. The results are called in immediately to the plant, at which time the decision when and how to notify the authorities and the public is made, he said.

Pilsitz added that from what he knows, the authorities and the public were properly notified of the situation at the correct time.

Donelan admitted that he does not know if any of the control room operators erred during Wednesday morning’s accident. However, he contended that worker carelessness is at times evident among support personnel at the installation. He himself confessed to being less than conscientious on the job at times. “There are those days when I think, ‘the hell with it – I want to do it my way.'”

The China Syndrome a current film which addresses the possible problems associated with nuclear power plants, “really makes you think,” said Donelan. After seeing the film he said he thought more about human error and shortcuts that can be taken with serious consequences.

Both Pilsitz and Donelan are undaunted by the accident at TMI. Pilsitz pointed out that “the nuclear power industry is safe … Look at the records of Unit 1. It has been on line for five years without any major accidents.”

Newspaper: Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: TMI defects spelled out
Author: Lisa A. Pawelski

Special to The Dickinsonian

For the past two weeks, the publics understanding of the Three Mile Island reactor malfunction has been clouded by an explosion of media misinformation. The sensationalist character of some media coverage has only aggravated the confusion surrounding events at the nuclear plant. Only a full-scale federal investigation will enable us to understand what has actually happened on the Island since March 28. Meanwhile, we can only state the few scientific details that are apparent.

In a fission-type reactor, the water which bathes the nuclear fuel elements is heated by the energy-producing reactions which occur in the fuel core. This so-called “primary water” normally transfers its heat to a separate secondary water loop. It is the secondary water which drives the steam turbines which produce electricity.

Early on the morning of March 28, the secondary water at Three Mile Island stopped flowing. The primary water could no longer transfer its heat effectively to the secondary system; as a result, the reactor core and its surrounding primary water began to heat up. At least one back up cooling system failed. “Emergency core cooling” was automatically brought into effect, but it is alleged that a worker at the reactor turned the emergency system off after it had been automatically activated. An overflow of hot water and steam was released from the cement-enclosed reactor vessel to the floor of the reactor building.

There are several possible radioactive species which might appear in the overflowed primary water. Fission reactions involve the splitting of a heavy atom into two or more light atoms. The process releases neutrons, which can bombard the primary water and transform it into “tritiated” water. This means that some of the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules collect extra neutrons. Tritiated water is a low-energy radioactive emitter.

Secondly, trace amounts of metal ions can slough off the insides of the water pipes. Neutron bombardment of these ions produces some “activated ions” which can be radioactive.

Thirdly, if any of the fuel elements are damaged, actual fission products might be released into the primary water system, and hence, into the atmosphere.

Radiation which could result from the about three species – tritiated water, activated ions, and fission products – is being monitored near the plant. Gases such as xenon and krypton have been found; however, both of these species are short-lived and have minimal biological impact. Iodine, which readily accumulates in man’s thyroid gland, has been observed in milk from several Harrisburg-area dairies, but the amount of radioactive iodine present does not present a health hazard.

The precaution of advising pregnant women and small children to leave the immediate vicinity of the reactor was offered because rapidly dividing cells – such as those present in fetuses and growing children – are more susceptible to radiation damage.

Cleanup procedures at TMI have been complicated by a bubble of gas which appeared in the reactor vessel on Saturday, March 31. If that bubble had expanded such that fuel elements were not covered with water, the temperature of the core would have risen appreciably. In addition, electrolysis of water – the splitting of water molecules into their elemental components – had produced concentrations of potentially explosive gases within the reactor building. However, neither of these problems now exists.
Decontamination will require temporary storage of the primary water which leaked to the floor of the reactor building. The fuel assembly of the reactor may have to be replaced, but it appears that the reactor vessel itself had not been damaged.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: Physics department aids Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Author: Lisa A. Pawelski

Special to The Dickinsonian

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has requested the Physics department’s assistance in monitoring radiation levels near the Three Mile Island reactor. A group of physics professors and majors, assisted by more than 40 student volunteers, has been working since Thursday, March 29 to obtain accurate scientific information about the radioactivity which has been released from the TMI reactor during the past two weeks.

Small amounts of radioactive substances are released from the plant during normal operations. It is possible to predict what additional radioactive species might be present as the result of a mishap by consulting the reactor’s environmental impact statement and other literature.

Qualitative identification of the radioactive substances present near the reactor has been done at the College. Physics department chairman John Luetzelschwab, who lived less than two miles from the reactor, and volunteer students collected soil samples from several sites within a few miles of TMI. The soil samples are then placed over a detection crystal for six hours or more. Via a complex series of amplifiers and sorters, it is possible to detect photons (which are the result of one type of radioactive decay) and determine with what energy they are being emitted from the soil, one can ascertain which radioactive elements are present in the sample.

This type of analysis has been done not only on soil samples, but on rainwater and well water taken from the vicinity of the reactor, and air samples from Carlisle. So far, a small amount of xenon has been found in the samples taken near the reactor. Xenon has a short half-life; consequently, its biological effects are minimal.

In addition, the soil samples are scrutinized for the presence of iodine. So far, amounts of iodine detected near the plant have been so small that they may be attributed to statistical fluctuation of the data. Overall, even the highest radiation levels detected at the plant boundary have been far below those detected during the Chinese atmospheric testing of 1976.

During the height of the TMI incident, the physics department used a Geiger counter to obtain crude readings of atmospheric radiation levels in Carlisle and reported their findings hourly to local radio stations. This was done as a public service, at the suggestion of the College’s senior officers. All readings were normal, with the exception of a brief period of slightly elevated levels on the morning of April 2. At the same time of the elevated reading, Carlisle was directly downwind from the plant, and rain was falling. One should note that background radiation normally increases three- to five-fold during rain-showers, as naturally-present radioactive radon gas dissolves in rainwater and is carried to earth.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: praise for students
Author: Unknown

April Fools this year passed unnoticed as customary playful pranks gave way to fear that transformed Dickinson into a ghost college. While the exodus of the overwhelming majority of the student population was completed by Sunday evening, in Tome a group of students continued to test air, water and soil samples for possible contamination because of the crippled Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

These students, working under the direction of the Physics department, with senior Lisa Pawelski as the foreperson, monitored levels of radiation in the environment since Wednesday, March 28 when the accident at Unit 2 occurred. Their readings were used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Environmental Resources and the Carlisle authorities. In a time of regional emergency these Dickinsonians worked diligently to provide vital information to College and local officials so that they may intelligently assess the seriousness of the situation on a daily basis.

Certainly, because of the valuable contributions these students made to the College and the county, they must, rightfully so, feel a sense of personal satisfaction. Nevertheless, these students, too numerous to name in this space, should be formally recognized by the College and receive a commendation from the Student Senate for their outstanding performance during a time of crisis.

For now, The Dickinsonian takes pride in honoring those students who preformed a service that hopefully will never have to be repeated or equaled in the future.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: say no to nukes
Author: Unknown

As a result of the Three Mile Island accident, a plethora of investigations into nuclear energy will be instituted and a national debate will ensue. While this debate is in progress, prudent action dictates a national moratorium on the licensing and building of nuclear power plants and, ultimately, the elimination of nuclear power from the energy mix of the nation.

Whether or not the odds of a nuclear accident are minute should not be the deciding factor in determining the future development of nuclear power as an alternative energy source. The all too familiar argument of pro-nuke forces of the limited possibility of disaster as based on safety systems and industry’s track record has only served to distract the public’s eye from the enormous consequences of a long-shot nuclear accident.

Let the public serve notice to energy policy makers that it will not subject itself to unnecessary psychological terror that is callously labeled by nuclear advocates as “an irrational fear that is unknown.” Let pregnant mothers, mothers and future mothers, fathers and future fathers came forth and serve notice to the nuclear power industry that they will not accept even the minutest odds of an accident if the disaster give birth to deformed or still-born children. Let concerned citizens inform promoters of nuclear energy that it will not tolerate unnecessary contamination of the air, water, land, milk and meat. Human life is infinitely more precious than nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy, in the final analysis, is not necessary. If the government spent as much tax revenue on financing alternative methods of energy production such as solar and coal gasification and liquification, nuclear power plants could be purged from the national landscape.

The lesson America can learn from Three Mile Island about nuclear energy is thankfully much less painful than it could have been. To continue to include nuclear energy in the energy mix of the nation would be a lesson unlearned, a lost opportunity to correct a mistake. With a unified, resolute voice say no to nuclear energy – for now, for the future, forever. To say yes would be a crime against ourselves, and our progeny.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: Seriously: It wasn’t funny after a while
Author: Blair Woodstock

It’s difficult for me to formulate my thoughts right now. It takes very little to cause my adrenaline to flow. As I write this, I and everyone around me are potentially in the path of a nuclear disaster. It’s an uncomfortable thought.

It is Saturday afternoon. I believe that I am not now in immediate danger from radiation. I also believe that I will be in danger within the next few days. Why did I decide to come to a school so near Three-Mile Island?

It just started to rain. I wonder how that affects radiation? I have heard rain doesn’t affect it. I have also heard that rain does affect it. I’m sitting here in my room, listening to my Kenny Loggins album and staring at the rain.

I turned off the TV. There are less bulletins on now because the situation is temporarily stabilized. I can’t stand watching the tennis match or the baseball game because of something on an island twenty miles away.

I have never been in a potentially catastrophic situation before. I had always thought I would be able to handle it. I thought I would remain clam. I can’t believe my hand is shaking as I write this.

Half the students at this college have gone home. I think I may do the same. I’m glad I live west of here since the wind is blowing north-east. I’m wearing my t-shirt that says “Pittsburgh . . .Some place special.” If I do go home I’ll have to borrow money from someone because I ran out of checks this week. What luck.

Why do I keep picturing archeologists in the year 2079? I can see them venturing on this campus and sifting thought my belongings when the radioactivity is gone. “I wonder if this stereo still works?” they will say.

“Wow, what strange music they listened to in those days. Look at all those old-fashioned clothes. I can’t believe so many people wore those blue denim trousers. . .”

I’m over-reacting. I know I must be over-reacting. The only problem is I can’t really put a period on that sentence without adding a “but.” This is an unprecedented situation. Who knows what could happen? How do we know that the media are telling us the truth? Or the local law enforcement agencies? There are so many rumors flying around on this campus that I don’t trust anybody. I wish I hadn’t seen “The China Syndrome.”

I called my parents and they said I could come home if I wanted to. I called my professor and he said he is excusing people if they miss the exam. Should I go home? I really shouldn’t miss any more classes this semester. Would I be able to study if I stayed? I wish they would cancel classes for a week. I guess if I were dead from radioactivity I wouldn’t care if I flunked my exam.

It’s funny. Yesterday I was making jokes about the situation. Today I think jokes about our future children are sick.

* * *

Now it is Sunday. April Fools Day. Present Carter is in Harrisburg. I have decided to stay here at least until the president of the College speaks again tonight. Last night he said his biggest fear was panic. I have tried to calm down since then. At four o’clock this morning I went out and ran two miles because I couldn’t sleep.

Right now we are all just waiting. We all feel restless and irritable but there is a kind of togetherness that is not usually present here. People are partying a lot or paying raquet {sic} call and tennis to occupy their minds.

When you are reading this, I hope and pray the situation will be resolved. I don’t think, however, that we’ll ever be able to say we were scared for nothing.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: Film becomes terrifyingly real
Author: Julie Levinson

The use of nuclear energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuel has long been a controversial subject. Dartmouth students have been protesting the construction of a nuclear plant in Seabrook, N.H. for at least four or five years, and No Nukes has become a household phrase. Research in the field of nuclear energy has advanced far, but some of the most vital information, such as adequate cooling systems for reactor rods, has yet to be understood by experts. There is no permanent, safe method of disposal of nuclear wastes which remain in the environment for a much longer period of time then man shall exist on the earth.

It is the duty of the film maker to depict pertinent subject matter in its most sincere form. Michael Douglas, producer of The China Syndrome, obviously felt strongly enough about the problems linked with extended use of nuclear energy to produce this phenomenally accurate film. Surely, Douglas was unaware of the full impact of his film considering the time of release, the content, and the subsequent Three Mile Island incident. Parallels certainly exist, but this film carries much more with it than the similarity to the actual incident.

Douglas portrays an excitable cameraman who stumbles into the world of nuclear energy while filming an energy special with Jane Fonda, a practitioner of “soft news” who aspires to be an investigative reporter over the objections of the station management. While touring the Ventana Nuclear plant in southern California an accident occurs which is termed a routine turbine trip. During the tour, nuclear energy is billed as “the magical transformation of matter into energy.” The diagrams and stage setting are rather authentic looking.

The tour comes to a halt in an observation room overlooking the control area when the accident occurs. Jack Lemmon, who is the man in charge of the plant’s control room first behaves in a blasé manner taking the turbine trip in stride. Soon though, the workers are evacuated to safety area and Lemmon begins to show obvious anxiety.

Douglas, meanwhile, films the whole incident, but cannot show the film on the air because it would be considered irresponsible journalism.

So the dilemma here lies with the fact that Jane Fonda has landed the top story, and she and Douglas along with the efforts of Lemmon must somehow alert the public to the potential danger which accompanies the faulty relay in the generator service and a stuck valve.

The men who represent the owners of the power plant constantly claim there was no accident and that the public was never in any danger. But their main concerns are monetary as they lose $492,000 a day when the plant is shut down.

The television management refuses to allow the film of the accident to be made public and Douglas, who shows vital concern, steals the film and hands it over to a nuclear expert who confirms that the defects in the power plant if left untreated, could “render an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.”

The technical features of the film itself lack perfection. A secretive exchange of x-rays of damaged welds which would serve as crucial evidence is extremely obvious. Yet on the other hand, the car crashes were delightfully realistic, and silence is the background sound which intensified the suspense towards the end of the film. Jack Lemmon unfortunately never looks like the hero he is, and Jane Fonda becomes extremely melodramatic after Lemmon’s death. The film’s authenticity is its major strength, and this critic feels no need to reinforce that fact. The reality of the possibility of The China Syndrome actually occurring is frighteningly relevant.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: Three Mile Island crisis breeds new culture
Author: Sarah L. Synder

It’s rather ironic that what has been termed one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history should turn into such an educational bonanza. Not only has the Physics department been laboring over the compilation of data of soil samples, but other departments have gotten into the act as well.

Professors Julius and Melissa Kassovic, Lonna Malmsheimer and Daniel Bechtel have joined forces with some interested students and are trying to document and analyze individual and group reactions to the Three Mile Island crisis.

According to American Studies Professor Malmscheimer, the group is examining three aspects of culture that are evident when people are faced with a crisis situation. Malmscheimer added that the team is seeing what historical, experiential and cultural elements people draw upon in order to cope with a situation of duress.

Professor of Sociology Julius Kassovic explained that the group wasn’t sure how to start the field work, since the situation at Three Mile Island was not exactly planned. He and the others agreed, though, that they want to do a more comprehensive analysis of the impact of TMI. At present questionnaires are being distributed to students through the resident advisors to collect data.

Although a great deal of the research is being done within the Carlisle and College community, the group had been soliciting reaction, fantasies and folklore from anyone affected by the TMI crisis. Articles and requests for contributions to the study have been published in the local papers, noted Kassovic.

Malmsheimer pointed out that they are also exploring the possibility of obtaining a grant to continue research.

Bechtel emphasized that the thrust of the fieldwork is being conducted on campus, although all the professors’ phones are equipped with recording taps for any phone interviews. Respondents are told about the tap and are asked if their responses can be included in the survey, noted Malmsheimer.

Kassovic said that the written response has been surprisingly good and that people are taking the time to write poetry and limericks about TMI.

Bechtel said that the study was examining the manner in which people bring together riligion, folklore and cultural heritage and discovering what images are part of the collective consciousness of the population. He noted that, for example, the color green has reappeared over and over in reference to radiation poisoning. Information such as this contributes to the study of the undercurrents of the mind and how they are articulated in society, he added.

A part of the second phase of the study, the groups who could not leave during the crisis, such as county prisoners. Kassovic said that the concepts and jokes of groups were valuable sources of information because what is accepted by the group is more likely to become a part of our cultural inventory.

Because the group is interested in obtaining information while it is still relatively fresh, students and others willing to share their dreams, daydreams, experiences, jokes, stories, insights and other reactions should write Reactions to Reactor Project, Box 167, Dickinson College.

Newspaper: The Dickinsonian
Date: April 12, 1979
Article: Nuclear Accident inspires faculty study group.
Author: (Ed. Note: The following article is an excerpt of a study being conducted by the Reactions to the Reactor Project Study Group. The group consists of Professors Julius and Melissa Kassovic, Lonna Malmsheimer, and Dan Bechtel.)

The College is in Carlisle, 23 miles from Three Mile Island, and by the evening of April Fool’s Day it was clear that only a few hundred of us students, faculty, and administratore were left on campus. Regular classes were suspended, but the decision was made to continue as an institution of learning while awaiting the possibility of becoming an evacuation center. Accordingly, some of us organized mini-seminars, or what we used to call “teach-ins,” on various topics, many related to the situation (crisis? disaster?) on Three Mile Island.

While the physics department had teams of students analyzing soil samples, four of us in the social sciences decided to sample individual and group reactions to the drama in Harrisburg.

With more than twenty enthusiastic students from various disciplines who joined us to do fieldwork, we unashamedly began to investigate three areas of interest to the faculty members involved personal fantasies about the nuclear danger, items of folklore related to the crisis, and the nature of religious responses to the situation. Our first session was devoted to a crash course on fieldwork and interviewing techniques; then armed with an open-ended questionnaire, we went out to talk with students, faculty, staff and other members of the college community.

We apologized for the raggedness of such instant social science. We were in much the same position as salvage archeologists, who must frantically dig a site before it disappears under a parking lot, we fervently longed for the end of the crisis, even though out data ebbed along with the anxiety. So we collected feverishly and feel that our data, however flawed, represents a valuable record of what life was like in a small community at the 23-mile radius.

Any sort of in-depth analysis at this time would be premature, but interesting patterns are emerging.
Personal fantasies and mental images, the particular interests of Prof. Lonna Malmsheimer in American Studies, came primarily from two sources, the media and personal experience with other disasters. In addition to the inevitable “China Syndrome,” informants report such images as the black cloud from “The Swarm,” the panic during the burning of Atlanta in “Gone With The Wind,” and Japanese horror films. Others saw scenes from films transposed to Carlisle: “Hiroshima Mon Amour” on High Street, the evacuation of “War of the Worlds.” “Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail Safe” provided images which helped to structure responses. Some people said they saw themselves “in the middle of a bad movie.”

It is widely accepted that all humor is, in a sense, nervous laughter, an attempt to diminish anxiety by viewing the situation as absurd. Anthropologists Julius and Melissa Kassovic were therefore not surprised that a substantial body of jokes and witticisms had been generated by the Three Mile Island incident. There were many areas of anxiety (Should I go or stay? Will the whole thing explode? Whom can I trust? Will I be sterile? Have deformed children? Die of cancer?); an interesting preliminary finding is that the bulk of the jokes among students concerned possible sterility or impotence (the two were often confused) and the risk of deformed offspring.

The study of religious responses, theological, moral and liturgical, is being pursued by means of a supplementary questionnaire. Prof. Daniel R. Bechtel, a Biblical scholar, reports that thus far the majority of the people interviewed did not think that God had chosen to create a crisis to punish, discipline or instruct mankind. They seldom experienced mental images of comparable Biblical events. These results are evidence, perhaps, that we live in an increasingly secularized society which has lost access to Biblical images as a means for understanding current human crisis.

Those informants who did pray, asked not that God actively interfere at Three Mile Island, but that He give the engineers wisdom and the people surrounding area courage; God was clearly seen as involved in the lives of individuals but not in the workings of mechanical, technological things.

The “Radiation Vacation” is over now; those who coped with the anxiety by going away have returned, and all together we face the minor crisis of making up last week’s classes before the May commencement. We are continuing to collect and analyze last week’s data, and intend to compare them with information from a larger sample with a wider range in age and occupation. We hope to make an eventual statement concerning the cultural inventory on which a population draws when facing an unprecedented situation. An old bit of folk wisdom. has it that a mistake can be of value if you recognize it, acknowledge it, learn from it, and forget it. With all due respect to the folk, we trust that the Three Mile Island will not be forgotten soon; we are trying to learn from it a much as we can about individual and group reaction to crisis. Anyone willing to share his or her dreams, daydreams, experience, jokes, stories, religious experiences or insight, or other reactions should write to Reactions to the Reactor Project, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA 17013