Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Consumer Law Blogs -> ThePopTort

Consumer Law

: ThePopTort

Huff Post Repost: From Three Mile Island to BP- The Corporate Culture of Catastrophes and Cover-ups

By Joe Consumer

When I was a young attorney barely out of law school, I took over the case to stop the restart of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor on behalf of the local community group, Three Mile Island Alert. (To refresh everyone's memory - and for anyone not born then - on March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island Unit 2 experienced a partial-meltdown in what is still the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history.)

We challenged the competence and character of the company seeking to restart the plant - General Public Utilities (GPU). We had a pretty good case. Company officials created the conditions that led to the accident, then withheld the information about its seriousness from the public, state and federal officials for two days. This was even though the plant was minutes from melting down, which would have spewed lethal radioactivity far and wide. After the accident, company officials lied to the government regarding its causes and covered up facts, which eventually led to the criminal conviction of the company that ran the reactor, GPU subsidiary Metropolitan Edison Co. Rather than fire anyone, GPU rewarded and promoted those who were responsible and who had lied. GPU engaged in an ongoing post-accident cover-up of the accident's seriousness. There's more, but that gives you some idea.

Unfortunately, nothing was going to stop the federal government from restarting that plant, and so it did. I'll never forget what happened at TMI, and this is why I have become horribly uncomfortable as news trickles out about the BP calamity.

There are many freaky coincidences between these two events, which ironically involve two new energy priorities for this Administration: nuclear power and offshore oil drilling. Here are just a few:

Keep reading.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on May 10, 2010 (boomark / email).