Pigford was appointed to a commission in 1979 to study the Three Mile Island accident in Harrisburg , Pennsylvania . The commission reported that certain operators lacked proper training which led them to turning off certain safety systems . With these safety systems off , a simple malfunction turned into a larger problem that destroyed the nuclear core . Pigford was very critical of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for their technical errors and the alarmist response . " Every technology imposes a finite degree of risk upon society , both in its routine operation and in the occurrence of accidents . The essential question is the trade-off between the risks and the benefits . The commission neither received any evidence nor reached any conclusions that the risks of nuclear power outweigh its benefits . " Seven years after the Three Mile Island incident , a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl , Ukraine exploded and spewed a cloud of radioactive material across Europe . Pigford was appointed by the secretary of energy to a committee for evaluating the safety implementations of a similar reactor in Hanford , Washington . Pigford concluded that the plant , which was being used to make plutonium for nuclear bombs , was less safe than the American commercial nuclear reactors . He rejected safety measures proposed by the department , claiming that they would be no help at all . Immediately after this revelation , the department closed the reactor
Three Mile Island accident
Three Mile Island accident
Thomas H. Pigford