Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Editor's note: This story originally appeared in Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies. For links to supporting documents, please see the original story. Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near It was April Fool's Day, 1979-30 years ago this month-when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant's Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.

It will be exactly 30 years tomorrow since the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident occurred on a three-mile (five kilometer) slip of land in the Susquehanna River in the shadow of Harrisburg, Pa. Until that day, few people had ever heard of Three Mile Island-now there are few who haven't. Once a majestic symbol of nuclear power, the plant would become synonymous with its dangers after one of its two reactors-the newer one, known as Unit 2-nearly melted down on March 28, 1979, just months after it was fired up.

covered the Three Mile Island accident for The Inquirer and has written often about nuclear issues. She currently lives in Maine. Thirty years ago, the nation was coming off a crippling energy crisis, rooted in our dependence on foreign oil. At the time, nuclear power held out the promise of limitless, cheap, reliable power supplies. Then, early in the morning of March 28, 1979, a thunderous burst of steam echoed over the Susquehanna River. The nuclear promises went up in smoke, too.

Sharon Pfeiffer remembers March 28, 1979, like it was yesterday. So does her husband, Ron. The couple now lives in Horsham, but on that day, had a home in Palmyra, Pa., near Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, which had the worst nuclear accident in United States history 30 years ago Saturday. The main water pumps in Reactor 2 failed at the plant, along the Susquehanna River. The reactor core melted down, but the containment walls did their job, according to news accounts at the time. "I have very vivid memories of that day. My husband was at work and I had just dropped off our daughter, who was then 6 years old, who had a field trip to, of all places, the airport, which was right next to Three Mile Island," Sharon Pfeiffer said.

"President Obama's move to revive nuclear power, with $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for two reactors in Georgia, has special resonance for those of us who experienced the Three Mile Island nuclear scare. In retrospect, the T-shirts that said "I Survived TMI" were overly dramatic. But at the time it didn't seem that way -- which may be why I'm deeply ambivalent about the second coming of nukes. In March 1979, I was in my 20s, the only woman among five reporters in the cramped Associated Press bureau at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. And I was a newcomer. I had been there just six weeks when the report came in that state troopers had shut down a reactor in Middletown, about 10 miles down the Susquehanna River."

"Thyroid cancer rates in Pennsylvania soared in recent decades and radiation from nuclear power plants may be the cause, a study released Thursday said. Joseph Mangano, who authored the study which appeared in the International Journal of Health Services and is executive director for the Radiation and Public Health Project, called the growth in the number of cases "an epidemic." Pennsylvania's incidence of thyroid cancer in the mid-1980s was 40 percent below the national rate, and now the rate is 44 percent above the national rate, he said. "Something occurred to change Pennsylvania's rate from low to high, and one of these possible factors is radiation from reactors," Mangano said. Some of the highest thyroid cancer rates occur in eastern Pennsylvania, which has the nation's largest concentration of nuclear reactors, including the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Salem Township, he said."

Environmental groups are protesting a proposed $50 billion increase to an existing federal loan guarantee program for "innovative" energy technologies that could expand funding beyond renewable energy to include nuclear power and certain kinds of coal plants. The proposal is part of the Senate's $884 billion version of the government's stimulus package. It is just one example of the number and size of items buried in the proposal and an illustration of the battles that loom as the House and Senate try to reconcile their proposals.