Today Marks 25th Anniversary Of Three Mile Island Accident
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR, CNN LIVE SUNDAY: Today marks the 25th anniversary of a frightening day for America. A day when the nation collectively held its breath as crews scrambled to stop a meltdown at Three Mile Island. It was the nation's worst nuclear power plant accident. If you who don't think America relies much on nuclear power anymore, take a look at this. Dozens of nuclear plants still operate across the U.S., providing about a fifth of the nation's electrical power. Our Maria Hinojosa tracks down some of the families who lived near Three Mile Island.</s>MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Catherine Mayberry (ph) lived a stone's throw away from Three Mile Island 25 years ago, after the partial nuclear reactor melt down, she was evacuated.</s>CATHERINE MAYBERRY, THREE MILE ISLAND EVACUEE: My friend had small children, and she said if you take your child out; make sure you cover them with something, a blanket or something.</s>HINOJOSA: And the thought that this could protect a baby from that.</s>MAYBERRY: That. Well, I don't know. I didn't understand what I was protecting her from.</s>HINOJOSA: The photo of her and her little girl captured America's moment of fear. A scared and trepidatious mother escaping the unknown.</s>MAYBERRY: It was surreal because you're leaving your home, being evacuated and no one could really give you any answers.</s>HINOJOSA: Others who were there still question how they were affected on that frightening day. Debrah Baker is looking for answers on her own. Using radiation detectors and air filters, maps, an extensive computer tracking system. Baker doesn't know if her son was born with Down's syndrome because he was exposed then.</s>DEBRA BAKER, THREE MILE ISLAND MONITORING NET: Every time there's a cancer or a birth defect -- their at death (ph) to wonder, could it happen.</s>HINOJOSA: The chair of the nuclear regulatory commission says the worrying should stop.</s>NILS DIAZ, NRC CHAIRMAN: Three Mile Island was not really a disaster in radiological terms. There was no significant amount of radiation released, nobody was hurt. However, there was anxiety.</s>HINOJOSA: The anxiety has subsided for Catherine whose daughter how has a healthy newborn.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You do breathe a sigh of relief that everything is OK, and that he's OK, and hope you just hope that it continues that way.</s>HINOJOSA: For as long as it can. Maria Hinjosa, CNN. Middletown, Pennsylvania.</s>LIN: In the post-9/11 world, look around and wonder what are the easiest targets for terrorists? Buses, buildings? Nuclear power plants? Just look at the list of plants that actually produce nuclear weapons, and then consider that the energy department's own internal watchdog concludes that the government cannot guarantee its guards can actually defend against a terrorist attack. Jim Walsh is an expert on security and terrorism. He's a regular on our program. And he is with the Belford Center at Harvard University in Boston. Jim, thank you very much for being with us today.</s>JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: It's good to see you, Carol.</s>LIN: You consider this report and what was said. How likely is it that any of these facilities would actually be attacked?</s>WALSH: Well, it's a good question. It's hard to know. I think there are two types of dangers that people worry about. One would be a group of terrorists who would go on site and actually try to get the highly enriched uranium or the plutonium, or the nuclear weapons, and then get off site and use them someplace else. That would be pretty difficult I think. The other scenario is that terrorists would attack these facilities with the purpose of sabotage to blow them up. I think that is more of a danger, and is certainly something we should protect ourselves against.</s>LIN: When you consider the locations of these, they're vulnerable by air, they are vulnerable by land. I mean, shoulder rocket could probably do some damage to a building. I mean, what are the possible likeliest scenarios, realistically?</s>WALSH: I think the scenario that most people worry about, and remember, when thinking about security, the question that you ask is the most important, what are we defending against? In the nuclear world we call that the design basis threat. What do we think the terrorists might do? In the old days, we tested against a couple of guys with guns. Today we have to worry about a team of 20 or even 40 people with trucks, with truck bombs that might come in and attack a facility. I think that's the most likely scenario as opposed to the use of an airplane. But it's a scenario that we are not quite ready for according to this new report by the Inspector General Office at the Department of Energy.</s>LIN: The focus in this report had to do with security guard training, that many of these guards either did not get training, or the training that they had was on the scale of ridiculous. For example, not actually doing any physical training on site like rappelling down buildings or target practice with weapons, that they instead would watch videos or when they did do a physical reenactment, it was with wooden props.</s>WALSH: That's right. There were a number of complaints. That was one of them. I hope we can move beyond the wooden prop stage in terms of our preparation. But I think there are a couple of issues that the report identifies. One is do we have enough security, do we have enough resources, personnel? Right now they seem to be using a lot of overtime. After 9/11, all government institutions used overtime to meet their short- term security needs, but you can't use that short-term fix in the long-term. At some point, you have to generally upgrade your security. Secondly, it's a matter of training, and the report says they're not getting enough training and they are not following the guidelines that they had developed for training. But I think in general, there's even another problem, if I may go on for just a minute more, Carol. And that is there was a second report recently issued by the same group saying that when we tested these facilities to see if they could past mock drills and attacks, some of them were cheating. They had gotten the answers in advance and cheated on the test. I think there's a number of issues we need to address here.</s>LIN: All right. It doesn't look like there are any near solutions in sight. So the bottom line, we're vulnerable?</s>WASLSH: I think the bottom line is we have work to do. It's not as if they are totally vulnerable. There are guards there, but they are not meeting the standards we need to meet. We need more resources and more realistic testing.</s>LIN: All right. Thank you very much, Jim Walsh.</s>WALSH: Thank you Carol.</s>LIN: Talk radio has been -- has been for years been dominated by political conservatives, but there's about to be a new liberal kid on the block. That story straight ahead.