TMI 35 years later
"I was born and raised in Chambersburg, PA. I got a degree in education with a secondary in science. I graduated in 1974, and started teaching fifth-grade in the Gettysburg area. Though I loved teaching, the money wasn’t very good. After the end of my second year in 1976, I met somebody who worked at Three Mile Island. They were completing construction of Three Mile Island Unit 2 at the time, and they were looking to hire local people into their operations and maintenance groups. My mother was very disappointed that I left teaching; she was a teacher. But, in my second year at Three Mile Island, I made as much money as my mother, who’d been teaching for 20 years."
"You do all the training, start to finish, at the site. You go through about eight weeks of classroom training programs, and then you go into the plant and you start doing on-the-job training. You’re working with fully qualified operators, learning how to operate the equipment. It’s a continual training program. Then you go from a C-level operator to a B-level. Once you achieve that, you going to the A-level training. I was near the end of my second year of training. About three months after the plant started – I was just about to become a fully qualified auxiliary operator when the accident happened."
"It’s a key lesson I learned. When you have serious incidents, you have to get the facts out there quickly and be open and honest about it. What I thought was fascinating was: that evening, the crisis in the plant was over. We knew that pressure temperature was coming down in the reactor. We had cooling water flow to the reactor. Everything was trending in the right direction from an operational standpoint. The physical crisis was over, but the public crisis really didn’t take for a few more days because of all the misinformation and misunderstanding of what was going on."
"I stood there for a while until a reactor operator saw me. I said ‘What’s going on? What do you need?’ He said ‘We’ve had a reactor shutdown. It looks like a potential loss of coolant and overheating in the reactor. We could use you to go down and assist health physics.’When I went down to health physics, I was given dosimetry that I could read at all times. I got information that the reactor had shut down due to a problem on the steam side of the plant. Apparently, there had been a loss of pressure controls and potential damage in [the] reactor. We were going to monitor what was going on."
“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.”
"People still needed to go into the auxiliary building where a lot of the equipment was located. We set up checkpoint alpha, which was the door between the intermediate building and the health physics and the auxiliary building. We would make sure that people went in had the proper dosimetry. After about an hour, when the radiation levels at checkpoint alpha got about to 100 millirems an hour, we dropped back to checkpoint beta, which was midway through the intermediate building. Set up checkpoint beta. After about an hour, that got to 100 millirems an hour. We dropped back to checkpoint Charlie, which was between the intermediate building and the control building. When that reached about 100 millirems an hour, we then went up to the control room."
“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.”
"It was noon— all nonessential personnel were asked to leave the plant. I was one of those personnel. There were control room operators, managers, controls people – some of them stayed to oversee operation with the plant because everything was happening from the control room at that point. The rest of us left the island. We were monitored as we left. Then we gathered over at the training center in the visitor’s center. I was actually in the visitor center until probably 5:00."
“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.”
"That afternoon they had the first press briefing on the lawn in front of the visitor’s center. I was up on the viewing deck looking right down on these phalanxes of reporters and the gentleman who was speaking on behalf of the plant. Some people did talk to reporters. I know NRC talked to reporters. They knew that there was fuel damage at that point; it was a serious accident. The company was trying to play down the severity. I think they were doing that as not to alarm people, but it created a conflict with the media. You could just feel tensions rising."
“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.”
"In the plant, it wasn’t a scare. We knew that that hydrogen bubble was pure hydrogen. Pure hydrogen can’t explode. It has to be mixed with air so you get down to a 14% concentration of hydrogen— only then could it ignite. It was a misunderstanding by the NRC at the time that became a PR problem. It was the NRC that came out and said that the bubble was potentially explosive when, in the plant, we knew it wasn’t. They actually had to have special meetings to get that thing settled, but by the time they got it settled the public relations damage was done."
“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.”
"When you have poor information, when you have inconsistent information, that just leads to speculation. I think there was overreaction.There were scare tactics used by opponents to nuclear energy. That started fairly early. I recall getting calls for weeks from members of the media, night and day. They were calling in the middle of the night. ‘Would you talk?’ I just unplugged the phone."
"Everything changed. It was like a hard kick in the groin. It woke the industry up to the fact that safety has to be its number one concern. It was probably one of the most-studied accident[s] in the history of this country. They interviewed all of us, and they investigated this thing in great depths. They determined the root causes of the accident. It wasn’t just poor communication. It was a series of human errors. The pressure valve was stuck open. That same type [of] valve had stuck open at another plant once before, but other users of valves were not informed. That’s changed now. If there’s a problem with a component in any plants, plants with similar components get that information very quickly. That’s part of our standard practice now."
"They started a whole new culture of safety and continuous improvement. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was strengthened and beefed up substantially, as well as the regulatory controls. What the industry did was we formed the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators. That’s our watchdog group that oversees the industry. Also, the NRC was strengthened. They have resident inspectors at every site that have 24/7 access to the plant, so when things degrade or there’s a problem, those are brought to light and you get a reaction. You no longer have it set where things can degrade to the point where it has."
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.
"The communications team went from one part-time person to, I think, an excess of 40 people. They wanted to have an energy educator who would go out and work with schools and educators and help educate them about nuclear energy. I said – “Okay, I have experience teaching, and I have experience in inner nuclear operations.” I shifted over to that, and then worked my way up through the ranks in communications. I went from there to senior media and community relations representative. Then I went up to communications manager. I was in that position when I left TMI in 2000 after 23 years. I shifted from there over to the Nuclear Energy Institute. I’m the only communications professional on the planet was an operator in Unit 2 at the time of the accident."
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.
"There are five new nuclear power plants being built right now. There are two brand-new Westinghouse AP-1000s being built in Georgia, two new Westinghouse AP-1000 being built in South Carolina, and there’s a current generation nuclear plant being finished in Tennessee. The potential for any new ones being started anytime soon is pretty slim because of market conditions. Because of the ongoing recession, the growth and demand for electricity has slowed down. You have an abundance of inexpensive natural gas. So that cheap natural gas is going to inhibit new expensive plants, like nuclear plants, being built."
"I think it will survive. I think the reason is because of the EPA proposed carbon rules. These nuclear plants are very important sources. Right now, nuclear energy provides about 19% of the nation’s electricity. It provides 63% of the carbon-free electricity in the country. It is the number one source of carbon-free electricity in the nation. If you shut down a large nuclear power plant in a state, you’re going to have an impact on the carbon emissions. As a matter of fact, the head of the EPA was saying that the nation can’t reach its carbon dioxide reduction goals without nuclear energy."
"The nuclear energy industry was established by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The federal government took full responsibility for the disposal of the used fuel from all of the nuclear energy plants. So, when the industry came in and designed and built nuclear power plants, like Three Mile Island Unit 1 and Unit 2, they were designed where the fuel would be used in the reactors. After several cycles’ use, would go into the storage pools, they [would be] stored there for five or 10 years, and then would be shipped off for disposal or reprocessing. That was the design. But that has not developed."
"In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. That imposed a user fee on consumers of electricity that nuclear power contributed to. It collected money to develop a disposal regime, and it also required the Department of Energy to begin taking used fuel from nuclear facilities in 1998. 32 years later, billions of consumer dollars have been collected, billions have been spent, but not one used fuel assembly has been removed from any nuclear power plants as required by law. Then in 2002, Congress and the president passed a law designating Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation’s used fuel repository. 12 years later the federal license review has been mired in politics."
"[It] was and still is the federal government’s responsibility to dispose of the fuel. The operators of the facilities – because their fuel pools have reached capacity and in some cases are getting close to it— they’ve built dry storage facilities on site. Virtually every company that has built a dry storage facility has sued the federal government for the additional costs, and in every case federal courts have found in favor of the companies because they agreed the federal government is not fulfilling its legal obligation to remove fuel. Taxpayers are paying the extra costs for that dry storage."
"I showed up for work that day, early as usual, for my 7:00 shift. That day I knew the plant wasn’t at full power. I could tell because you could see the plumes of vapor coming out. As I was processing through security, the site emergency alarm was sounded. I asked the one security guard what was going on, and he said ‘They’re having problems down there in Unit 2.’ Pretty much one of the biggest understatements that I’ve experienced."
Story of a Plant Worker:
Tom Kauffman
"On the other hand, as I walked through Unit 1 and Unit 2, down the connecting hallway and up the stairs to the control building, everything looked normal. Through the entire event, I never felt fear. It’s not because I’m naïve. It’s that we always had excellent information about what was going on around us. When I walked into the control room, I could tell things were not normal. There were alarm signals flashing on the control panels. There were more people than normal in the control. They were busy. There wasn’t any panic or anything like that that, but you could tell, but there were some abnormal conditions happening."
"It’s not the industry’s fault. Keep in mind that the total amount of used fuel that we have right now can cover one football field about 21 feet deep. It’s a minuscule volume of used fuel, but we need to establish a congressionally chartered federal corporation that’s dedicated to this whole process, implementing and overseeing the used fuel disposal program. I think that the federal government needs to abide by the law, and I know there’s some legislation being considered in Congress. It’s not a technical issue. We have the technology to safely store, safely transport the used fuel. It’s more of a political issue. We need a permanent solution, and that is going to take a government initiative to solve."
"The key thing that we learned after Three Mile Island: you can always be safer. You can always improve. Over time, you’re continually incorporating new technologies into the plants. Just from 1990 to 2013, the industry has invested $101 billion in capital expenditures to improve and upgrade their plants.They’re now looking at fuel [tins]. The rods that hold the fuel pellets. They are accident-resistant. In other words, they will be made of material that can’t incinerate. It won’t create hydrogen when they get to a certain temperature. Also, if you look at the Westinghouse AP-1000, the new plants being built down south, they are designed so that if you lose all power, just by gravity it will have cooling for at least three days. All you have to do to extend that cooling is pump water into a big tank."
"[I feel] satisfaction that I opened my mouth and I didn’t sit still, and sadness that there isn’t a real answer to it yet. I have no regret. Absolutely none. "
"The federal courts suspended that fee on consumers earlier this year. That was a pretty heavy statement that the federal government and the DOE need to get moving. Then [Obama] came up with the key recommendation that had industry support, that has bipartisan support in Congress. That is to develop one or more interim storage facilities that can take these dry containers of used fuel, and store it there in an interim fashion until a permanent disposal regime is developed."
"It pays to be safe. When you focus on safety and you keep the plants and excellent condition, they operate better. They’re more reliable. They’re more productive. It literally pays to be safe. When you invest and continually improve, you end up with better performing, highly performing plants. There is no source of energy that has our reliability – not one in this country. Our plants operate, on average, 90% of the time. Nothing else comes close. It’s not just about money, though. We are members of the public, too. I live not far from Three Mile Island. I know the stress that it causes people. We saw what happened at Fukushima, the impact it had on people. There’s no way that we want that to happen here. That’s why we continually focus on driving the industry forward and making it safer."
"The second evening, I got home, I was watching the news and I thought ‘Holy mackerel, I was just in there.’ I called the control room, and I said ‘They’re saying this is happening at the plant.’ I talked to the control room operator, and he said things were just the same as when I left. Things were so out of control in the media. The communications were so bad that what people thought was happening in the plant really wasn’t what was happening."
