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PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS

The topic of public interest groups raises some awkward, but essential, questions not only for nuclear development and regulation but for democratic governance in technological society as a whole. What public concerns were aroused by the accident at Three Mile Island (TMI)? What is the legitimacy of such concerns? How can they be usefully addressed and expressed? The awkwardness comes in trying to identify the “public interest” and in structuring “meaningful” public involvement in relation to public concerns. Yet these issues can scarcely be avoided so long as we strive to maintain responsible and responsive public institutions. While these questions are not unique to the situation at hand, the accident at TMI does pose them in especially acute form. The topic also underscores the polarization and politicization of the nuclear debate, and the partisan stance of the parties at interest. The terms of the debate often have been polemical; the tone, shrill: the outcome, indefinite. These factors weigh against the value of public discussion and decision as viewed by those in institutional control. Yet the ordeal of TMI suggests that the institutions, as much as the technology, were not in effective control.’ As the event unfolded, institutional adequacy-both of safe nuclear operations and of emergency preparedness and response-became increasingly tenuous. Formation of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (Kemeny commission) is symbolic of the seriousness of the accident and of the evident deficiencies in its management. In the fallout from TMI, new opportunities were opened for involvement of the public in general and of public interest groups in particular.