While anti-nuclear action had yielded some local successes, the wider public remained acquiescent. What changed this was the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) in March 1979, which moved the focus of concern from nuclear proliferation to the possibility of damage to health and the environment from radioactive fallout and discharges. Without doubt, public concern was heightened by the movie The China Syndrome which, remarkably, was released earlier the same month. The accident itself played out over 10 days in the newspapers and on the television news and was followed by condemnatory speeches from national politicians and movie stars at a rally of 100,000 people in Washington DC on May 6. In the words of the NRC,12 the TMI event:

was the most serious in U. S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history,

even though it led to no deaths or injuries

TMI is a good example of an ‘availability cascade’,13 in which a relatively minor incident (remembering that no-one was killed or even injured) becomes the centre of a media fever leading to widespread panic and large-scale official action. In this case the result was a significant tightening of the regulatory regime and:12

sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator

training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas

of nuclear power plant operations.

The consequences of TMI for US nuclear plant construction were profound — all the new reactors that were then being planned were cancelled, others under construction were delayed and another 30 years would pass before the US NRC was asked to approve a new NPP licence application.16 Given the significance of the US contribution to the global nuclear industry, it is not surprising to see that the number of new constructions starts declined (Fig. 1.1). On the other hand it is evident that, even before the TMI accident, the number of construction starts had fallen from its peak of 1976. More surprising perhaps is the lack of any obvious response to the second oil crisis of 1979-1980, which followed the Iranian Revolution. This may be primarily attributed to low public acceptability for nuclear following TMI, higher than expected costs and (especially outside the USA) the early 80s’ recession. By 1985, however, it seemed that nuclear may be making a comeback. Then came Chernobyl.