TMI 35 years later
"I was born in England; I lived near Liverpool. Living in England those days was very difficult. As a kid, we all had a ration book. I went to bed hungry a lot. I was from a very large family. We lived in a rundown house. My sister married a G.I. who was stationed close by during World War II. She came to Lancaster PA because that’s where he was from. After that, there are 10 kids in my family; I’m the last of 10. Every one of them came over at some point from 1945 when my sister came over and married. Everybody ended up in the US. The main reason was my mother always believed that this country provided much greater opportunities."
"Then I went to high school. Went to Penn State on a track scholarship, full ride. I was the first to go to college. I was a good student, but I wasn’t a great student. I would have never gotten the level of money I got with[out] running. I was blessed to be able to run, quite frankly. After two years in general engineering, you had to pick which engineering you’re going to going to, and I didn’t know. I sat with the dean of the college and we flipped a coin. We ended up with civil. It’s a stupid way to do it, but that’s the only way I could do it."
"When Carter or Denton came to the island, I think there was some comfort, but not as much as you’d think. Ronald Reagan said: ‘Trust [but] verify.’ And I couldn’t verify a lot of things because it was one-of-a-kind. I just think government didn’t necessarily know what they were talking about because it seemed like they weren’t sure."
"I started out in the basement of City Hall and ended up on the second floor. I worked my way up, and my strength was I knew the city like the back of my hand because I was the city engineer. I’m a Republican and an engineer, but I am so moderate that people don’t believe I’m a Republican. I have a great deal of concern for lower income people. I lived that life. I’m a big believer in things like minimum wage. I think those things were substantially affected by my first 14 years in England. My opinion was [nuclear] needed to be part of the energy future at the time. I’m not an anti-nuclear guy. I was never a big proponent of it, but I wouldn’t have said ‘Don’t do it.’ I just thought it was a necessary part of the balance of energy, given the fact that we were so dependent on foreign oil. I’m somewhat of a nationalist. I believe in my country. I believe, to a degree, in energy independence."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"[Before being elected] I had been public works director, and also appointed as the emergency management person. Any kind of emergency that may happen within the city, particularly one that might include evacuation. We had only just begun to even look at that issue. Suddenly TMI hit. We had to start saying ‘What are we going to do if the thing blows?’ We had this big bubble in there that was possibly going to explode, and we were all panicking. It was really stressful. I went to the mayor and said ‘I think you should make an announcement for the elderly people that have families to go live with them so that, if we put an order out to evacuate, they can be evacuated by their family members, rather than trying to get buses there.’"
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"He wouldn’t do it. He didn’t want to create concern. It was never needed, and he was a wise guy. He just thought it would create more panic than anything. I thought the opposite. We evacuated; my wife, my mother, my sister, and her husband, and our dog went down south. I think it was the Virginia area that they went to. I stayed here, and the plan was, if the bubble burst, I, as the emergency management person, was going to go into the concrete basement of the court house which was designed for that kind of command center. I was prepared to do it, but it never happened."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"I didn’t feel, personally, a lot of fear. It had more to do with the responsibility and not knowing exactly what to do because we really didn’t have a plan. I do much better when I know how to solve a problem. I was worried about trying to make the right decisions to do the right thing and advise the mayor. That caused me a lot of stress."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"Our mission was to have an opportunity for the public to come and listen to how the cleanup was going forward, what the issues were. Once it was presented, the public [had] an opportunity to speak out. It was trying to manage our public involvement with the cleanup effort. When I came in they knew me as a Republican. I think there was some kicking of the tires. People wanted time, and we were meeting for four hours. For the most part [activists] were pretty honorable. It wasn’t that they were agreeing with everything, but they were respectful. They worked really hard to keep GPU honest."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"They brought up good points. We were trying to figure out what to do with [the contaminated] water. We supported the evaporation rather than dumping it in the river. There were some of the people that didn’t agree with that at all. They said ‘It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be…’ The numbers were so low that we felt it was the best alternative to do that. We might not have seen eye-to-eye on everything. We found a way to work together. We didn’t necessarily all agree with everything we did, but the animosity kind of disappeared to a great degree. The meeting was used for its purpose. That’s good public input, dialogue back and forth, allowing the panel to make a decision, and give the public a real honest chance to have input into the process. I think TMI Alert and the other groups that helped us got to that point. I think the panel helped a lot."
" My role was to take a position when I heard both sides, but I tried to be just as fair to the people [as with] the operator. It wasn’t always easy. I can’t say I’m always that way with every single issue, but with the TMI matter I thought I was in a position that I could be fairly evenhanded so that I could piss off as many people on the panel as I was pissing off people from TMI."
"I think it’s probably my highest and best use in life. Once you get people to realize that you are trying to be as evenhanded as you can be, and people believe that and they trust you, they don’t have to be so angry all the time or questioning and defensive. You become much more constructive. I never saw my role as Chairman of the Panel to take sides."
"Our staff person [on] the NRC – Mike. He would give his input, and sometimes he would be very supportive of what the operator was asking for. He might be pushing for something. It was up to the panel and people like me to say, ‘Mike, you’ve given your opinion. You just try to settle down now.’ They influenced us. I wouldn’t say put pressure, but I think generally we did a reasonably good job of listening to all parties, including the NRC, in trying to decide what was right. We had a very diverse panel – some elected officials, some scientists."
So Denton had a press conference at about 10 o’clock on a Friday night. They used to have an old media center— really small room up on top floor of the capitol. And I can remember waiting for that. The click of the cameras… in the old days, the cameras would make a clicking noise and it was almost intense the way he walked out there; no one had seen him [before]. He was able to start relaying information in a more folksy style. A calming style from the start. Denton was a real change in terms of just trying to understand it. I had no reason to doubt him.
The UPI, the United Press, was talking about a meltdown fear. It was later, I think, later on you were getting the [hydrogen] bubble story. [It] was developing later that day maybe even. So that might have been what Denton was addressing when he first got here, into that Saturday and Sunday.
"They were getting to the point where they were mothballing. It probably would’ve been okay to continue [the Panel], but the meat of the discussion, much of the meat of the cleanup had taken place. We didn’t think they were putting enough money into it. We told them that. Still, today, I feel it’s the biggest Achilles’ heel: when they get to a point where they have to dismantle [TMI] and get rid of it, the money isn’t there for it. It’s like saying ‘Yeah, we have $20,000 in the budget to tear this building down.’ I said ‘It’s going to cost $100,000.’ ‘Well, we’ve got $20,000 to tear down.’ ‘You’re going to knock it down, but you’re not going to haul everything off. You’re just going to leave it there.’ ‘Whatever.’"
So Denton had a press conference at about 10 o’clock on a Friday night. They used to have an old media center— really small room up on top floor of the capitol. And I can remember waiting for that. The click of the cameras… in the old days, the cameras would make a clicking noise and it was almost intense the way he walked out there; no one had seen him [before]. He was able to start relaying information in a more folksy style. A calming style from the start. Denton was a real change in terms of just trying to understand it. I had no reason to doubt him.
The UPI, the United Press, was talking about a meltdown fear. It was later, I think, later on you were getting the [hydrogen] bubble story. [It] was developing later that day maybe even. So that might have been what Denton was addressing when he first got here, into that Saturday and Sunday.
"When deregulation of energy occurred in 1997, there was [sic] a lot of settlements that took place on what the utilities were going to get, what the public was going to get. During those big negotiations people said ‘We want this set up – the Sustainable Energy Fund.’ It was to help create [a] more sustainable energy future by getting the local utility companies and require them to put money in to fund the Sustainable Energy Fund. I always believed in renewables, energy conservation, when I was mayor and public works director. It kind of tickled my fancy. I got on board with that. I served [on SEF] with Gary Lamont for five or six years."
"I still believe it’s reasonably safe if the right safeguards are built into it like they’re supposed to be. I’m not as trusting of utilities and not quite as trusting of the NRC as I would have been before. I think they are biased; they’re not objective in what they say to the public. My view of nuclear energy is still that it’s part of the mix, but it’s got to be closely watched. If any nuclear energy plan is going to be built, I would think anybody from the public that’s going to be close should get actively involved and find out as much as they can about it. If they don’t like what they hear, speak out against it. That’s how it’s changed."
"There [could] have been time I might not have gone to a meeting. Now if something’s being built close, I would. I’d be much more concerned. I don’t quite trust the leaders the way maybe I used to. I don’t want to paint them as bad people, but they’re not perfect. I wouldn’t march against nuclear power. I wouldn’t battle it. I would just battle to get the best design, the safest plan, get experts to come in and objectively certify it."
"It would be great if a nuclear power plant was going to be composed [sic] in Pennsylvania, if the state would provide funding to hire independent experts in the field. So the person giving testimony isn’t NRC employed, isn’t a utility employee, and isn’t a Three Mile Island Alert employee. Somebody that’s going to come in, and they’re really good at doing this, and they can’t be bought. That’s all hard things to get. I would much rather have as independent a viewer as you can get […] an honest second opinion. I’ve been in it long enough to know that I think TMI Alert is just as biased as the utility companies in the opposite way. I happen to like those people better – the TMI Alert people, but it isn’t to say that they’re not biased."
"I graduated in engineering, worked for the state for a couple of years in flood control design. Then went to work for the city of Lancaster and became city engineer and public works director. The public works director is responsible not only for engineering, but for maintaining water and sewer plans, streets, parks, motor vehicles – everything."
Story of a Mayor:
Art Morris
"Then I worked for the mayor that promoted me for five years, and he decided to move on and become the adjutant general at the National Guard, so they needed a special election for mayor."
"I had never been in politics. I didn’t want to be in politics, but he talked me into running. I ran, and I was successful. I used to be acting mayor when he was out of town. I guess because he felt okay with me handling things and keeping in touch with him if there were issues. I would never have become the mayor if I didn’t have that experience. I became mayor in 1980. When I was sworn in, I was 34."
"We have all this natural gas now. It’s not all going to be used here. It’s going to be distributed. We have oil. We are the biggest oil producer in the world as a nation. Whether people want oil used or not, it will continue to be part of our future – as will renewable energy. I don’t think it’s realistic to eliminate nuclear energy. I think it has to remain part of our energy future – at least for the next 40 or 50 years. Whether that means new plants, that’s what people argue about. Things are changing a lot in the energy arena."
"Accidents, I hate to say, do happen. That’s a terrible thing to have happened with the nuclear power plant. I’m more negative about the lack of funding for the future cleanup than I am anything else. I don’t think they’ve been held accountable publicly. I think people have tried to hold them accountable, but they keep refusing to acknowledge that it’s not enough money. It causes me to say: ‘What else are they doing for long-range planning?’ My distrust comes more from that [than] from the cleanup effort that took place while I was involved as chairman. It has more to do with a lack of willingness to take into account – how do you make the island whole and clean for the people that live there now and into the future? I think, on that, they took the easy way out."
"I was asked to join the [NRC Advisory] Panel. They invited mayors from Middletown, York, Lancaster because we were in an area within the sphere. I think the fact that I was an engineer helped me in becoming chairman of it. The mission of the board was basically to have the operator come before us once a month. We used to meet from 7 to 11 once a month. Very long, tedious meetings with tremendous attendance initially – 100 to 200 people in the room. Sitting in open meeting, having the operator of GPU come up to and say ‘What do you have planned? Are there issues that you need to get the NRC’s approval on? If you do, you need to come to us on those issues. We’re going to be sending a recommendation to the NRC, or we’re going to request to meet with them.’ We were the only body that met with them in the public domain."