TMI 35 years later
Three Mile Island, also known as TMI, is a nuclear power plant located on an island in the Susquehanna river near Middletown, PA.
For context, Middletown is 8.5 miles from Hershey Park, 10 miles from Harrisburg, the state capitol, 27 miles from Lancaster, home of the Amish, and about 48 miles from Gettysburg.
Gettysburg
Lancaster
Hershey Park
TMI Unit 1 was up and online in September 1974 at a cost of about $400 million. Unit 2 came online in December 1978. It was over-budget and behind schedule, which led to legal action taken by Three Mile Island Alert (TMIA), a local nuclear watchdog group, and the Environmental Coalition of Nuclear Power (ECNP).
On March 28, 1979, just 90 days after TMI Unit 2 came online (1/120 of its expected operating life), it experienced a partial meltdown. The accident began at around 4 AM: an unidentified mechanical failure prevented feed water pumps from providing crucial water flow to cool down the steam generators which, in turn, cool down the reactor core. This malfunction caused the reactor to shut down.
“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.”
Pressure began to increase in the primary system after the shutdown. To alleviate pressure, a relief valve was opened— but it jammed and remained agape without the plant operators’ knowledge. As a result, precious cooling water escaped. Due to multiple miscommunications, plant operators cut off more coolant to the core in an effort to stabilize the reactor, not knowing they were making things worse.
“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.”
Due to a lack of coolant, the core reactor over-heated. Half of the fuel pellets and their metal containers were melted, resulting in what would later be diagnosed as a partial meltdown.
Officials were not sure how to move forward. Conflicting accounts were disseminated from TMI officials and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as industry and local officials scrambled to keep things under control.
“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.”
PA governor Thornburgh eventually called for the precautionary evacuation of pregnant women and small children within a 5-mile radius of the plant.
*Women and children are at a higher risk of radiation-caused mutation and cancers because their cells divide at a high rate, making it easier for mutated cells to propagate within the body.*
“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.”
About 144,000 people fled the surrounding areas within 50 miles of the reactor. Lack of organization and emergency evacuation planning became apparent. To calm the public, president Jimmy Carter dispatched Harold Denton, the head of the Division of Nuclear Reactor Regulation for the NRC, to inform the people what was going on in the plant.
“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.”
Denton broke down the technical information from the NRC into understandable terms. He helped calm fears about a potential explosion in the plant caused by a hydrogen bubble. *The hydrogen bubble formed as a byproduct of a chemical reaction between the melting fuel and water. It eventually combusted in a manageable amount.
Jimmy Carter even flew in for an appearance at TMI to let everyone know it was safe to return.
De-fueling began in August 1979. The process included about 1,000 workers and cost about $973 million. During which time, residents became vocal about demanding accountability from the plant, and began conducting health surveys in surrounding towns.
Amidst the turmoil, the NRC declared their intent to re-start Unit -1, which had been shut down indefinitely since July 1979 until plant safety could be ascertained. Resident activists fought the initiative.
The NRC countered by claiming that the Unit 2 accident and fallout was under control and that no health defects on the public could be definitively proven.
An activist group called PANE (People Against Nuclear Energy) claimed that the NRC did not factor in psychological distress, and should include psychological well-being into their decision-making.They sued the NRC and brought the case before the Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of the NRC.
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.
Unit 1 came back online in October 1985, despite a decisive public vote against doing so in a referendum in May 1982. De-fueling officially ended in December 1993.
Metropolitan Edison (Met Ed), the utilities company under which TMI was contracted, settled a plea bargain with the Department of Justice for falsification of leak rates for Unit 2 in February 1984, in addition to pleading no contest to an 11-count inditement. As a result, Met Ed paid a $45,000 fine and established a $1 million account to be used by the PA Emergency Management Agency. The legal settlement also stipulated that the local rate payers would not have to cover Met Ed’s legal bills.
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.
In September 1995, the PA Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision, and allowed GPU (Met Ed under a new name) to charge rate payers for the TMI-2 accident. The decision ignored the fact that TMI-2 was built at a cost to rate payers of $700 million. One billion dollars have been spent to de-fuel the plant, which now lays in idle shutdown, or ‘monitored storage.’
Several high profile health studies have been conducted on TMI with varying results. Despite activist work and years of litigation, TMI Unit 1 still runs to this day. Its license was extended by the NRC in 2009; it will continue to run until 2034. The accident forced people to take a hard look at the pros and cons of nuclear power, and has spawned a new age of technical and safety advancements in the nuclear industry. Whether those advancements are enough, or whether the NRC has been held fully accountable for what transpired at TMI, is still contested.
Most of these locales rely on the ecologically rich Susquehanna River for sustenance. The Susquehanna River Basin also happens to be one of the most flood-prone watersheds in the United States. TMI is based in the Susquehanna on an island formerly known as Brinser Island.
Three Mile Island:
A Brief History
Construction of TMI, Unit 1 began in May 1968. Construction for a second reactor, Unit 2, began in July 1969. At the time, nuclear energy was considered to be an energy source that was “too cheap to meter,” and represented the future of the energy industry. The government was eager to use this new technology for many purposes.