Case Study – Three Mile Island Crisis in Communication
In 1979, the Nuclear Reactor at Three Mile Island (PA) encountered a catastrophic failure. However, that wasn’t the biggest story. What followed the incident was a bevy of errors, lies, miscommunication, and deliberately hiding information from the public, especially the residents of the nearby town and the workers at the facility.
Your task is to research the incident from a COMMUNICATION PERSPECTIVE, and then break down, in brief, what happened, what went wrong, and what could have been improved. Remember, the focus of this course is communication and so should your paper.
Here are a few quick articles to get you started:
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.4.20200505a/full/Links to an external site.
https://www.powermag.com/the-communications-failures-lessons-of-three-mile-island/Links to an external site.
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1523/ML15238B627.pdf
If you’re really interested, and you have Netflix, there is a short limited series called, “Meltdown” which gives great insight into exactly what happened and how it was handled from a communication standpoint. Not necessary to watch, but I really enjoyed it.
Provide a brief synopsis of the situation (2-3 paragraphs)
Answer what you think officials of Three Mile Island (government/electric company) did well? Poorly? How leadership would have been portrayed both internally and externally? What advice would you have given them about doing something differently (come up with at least one suggestion)? What could they have done if this happened now, as opposed to 1979? What other options would have been there for them to communicate and how would you advise them to use those channels?
Length: 3-4 pages, double-spaced
Include a bibliography with at least 3 sources other than those listed above
On the first page, put your name, class, assignment, and title of your work (no need for a full title page)
