TMI 30

A special Facing South investigation by Sue Sturgis

On the 20th and 30th Anniversaries of the Exxon Valdez 

and Three Mile Island Accidents, Respectively, We Do 

 Friday, Mar. 27, 2009

Three Mile Island at 30: Nuclear Power's Pitfalls

By Michael Grunwald

If the Three Mile Island atomic reactor near Harrisburg hadn't melted down 30 years ago this Saturday...well, there probably would have been an accident somewhere else. The entire U.S. nuclear industry was melting down in the 1970s, irradiated by spectacular cost overruns, interminable delays and public outrage. Forbes later called its collapse "the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale."

Thirty years ago today, Temple resident Robert M. Dreibelbis Sr., a Met-Ed executive, was plunged into uncharted territory by the worst nuclear accident the U.S. had ever known.

By Jason Brudereck

Reading Eagle

Nearly four hours into the accident, Bob Dreibelbis was getting ready to leave his Temple home for work like any other day.

Then the phone rang.

Robert M. Dreibelbis Sr., purchasing manager for the electric utility Met-Ed, answered and found himself speaking to a Met-Ed engineering supervisor whose responsibilities included Three Mile Island.

It was 7:45 a.m. March 28, 1979, when the engineering supervisor called to tell Dreibelbis he had to quickly procure a helicopter to fly two men from the nuclear plant on an island three miles down river from Harrisburg because they had been exposed to radiation.

Accident Dose Assessments 

Nuclear engineer and long-time industry executive, Arnie Gundersen gives a talk on his calculations of the amount of radiation released during the accident at Three Mile Island.  Mr. Gundersen's calculations differ from those of the NRC's and official industry estimates.

By Ad Crable, Lancater New Era 

The irony is that 30 years after the most infamous U.S. accident since the splitting of the atom, there is talk of a nuclear-power revival, driven by greenhouse-gas concerns.

A separate reality is that three decades after the iconic partial-meltdown at Three Mile Island, the nuclear plant's surviving Unit 1 reactor is almost assured of soon receiving government permission to continue operating through 2034.

Is that a good thing?

By Marlene Lang 

Mary Osborn Ouassiai still calls it home. Her house behind the WITF television station building in Swatara Township, Dauphin County, Pa., overlooks a valley that slopes down several miles toward the Susquehanna River. 

She can see the cooling  towers on Three Mile Island from her driveway; the same driveway she walked across on March 28, 1979 to put her 9-year-old daughter on the school bus. She looks out the same windows she looked out of that day, and the days following, holding her son, 2, and wondering if her family and neighbors were being told the truth about the danger to which they had been exposed. 

Testimony of Peter A. Bradford 

Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 

Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety 

March 24, 2009 

I’d like to begin with a review of the status of nuclear power and nuclear regulation the day before the 

accident at Three Mile Island.  As of that time, the NRC’s licensing process, maligned though it often was, 

had issued more licenses than the next five nations combined, though half of the construction permit 

recipients did not complete their power plants.