Environmental Policy and Management Management Essay (Essay Sample)

Government’s Role in Developing Environmental Policy
Name
Academic Institution
Environmental Policy and Management
Professor
TIME \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" August 5, 2019
Government’s Role in Developing Environmental Policy
Reference to environmental policy denotes the government’s timely interventions to pre-empt or prevent disasters. Yet, this turns out to not the case. Rather, environmental policies encompass competing interests between profit-driven firms that pollute the environment and intergenerational equitable duties to protect the environment. This essay links environmental disasters with conservation efforts where lax rules and energy programs have adversely affected the environment. Within this context, this paper interrogates the adequacy of government’s policies to the Three Mile Island nuclear incident in Pennsylvania. Due to increasing concerns on the safety of nuclear power plants, there is a need to develop coherent policies and robust regulatory framework on the nuclear industry.
Before the 1979 nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, nuclear energy was touted as a safe alternative to fossil fuels. The meltdown involved Unit 2 reactor (Khubrani, Bagherzadeh, & Meshkati, 2017; Parenti, 2011). It started when equipment in non-nuclear sections malfunctioned. This affected the flow of cooling water into the steam generators causing a shutdown of the turbines (Parenti, 2011). In turn, the pressure in the plant increased (NRC, 1979). The plant had a fail-safe valve which was supposed to close if the pressure systems failed. The instrumentation controls indicated that the valve had closed yet it had not. This caused a flow of steam leading to low coolant water (NRC, 1979). Consequently, the trapped heat and escaping steam melted the nuclear core. As such, radioactive emissions escaped into the air. Nonetheless, the emissions were negligible hence they had little health effects on the city.