News

April 1, 2009 

By Ben Leach

 

The Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township, Ocean County, is expected to receive a license to operate for another 20 years by next Thursday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 3-1 at a Wednesday hearing to reject arguments from a coalition of citizens groups that the nuclear plant is unsafe to operate beyond 2009.

As far as the NRC is concerned, the hearing process is over and it will move forward with issuing a renewed license, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC.

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Three Mile Island Alert Chairman Eric Epstein faces off with Nuclear Energy Institute vice president of communications Scott Peterson in a video debate on the state of the nuclear industry. 

The discussion between Epstein and Peterson is moderated by Susan McGinnis of CleanSkies TV, and follows a news presentation of what happened at Three Mile Island's Unit 2 reactor on March 28, 1979. 

Epstein emphasizes the unanswered questions haunting the nuclear industry: What to do with the waste, where to find the water to run the plants, and why private investment won't support the industry. Industry advocate Peterson calls the 1979 accident a "controlled release" of radiation and insists the market will support industry growth. 

To view the program, go to: 

 www.cleanskies.tv/#

Find the link button to CleanSkies Sunday and then click on the video program on Three Mile Island. 

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 PARIS – The French government offered for the first time Tuesday to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria and the South Pacific, bowing to decades of pressure by people sickened by radiation — and seeking to soothe France's conscience. "It's time for our country to be at peace with itself, at peace thanks to a system of compensation and reparations," French Defense Minister Herve Morin said in presenting a draft law on the payouts.

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 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."

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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.

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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.

 

TMI & Health Effects

Part 1:

 

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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?

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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. 

 

 

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Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will conduct an informational open house on Tuesday, March 31, regarding the agency’s annual assessment of safety performance for the Beaver Valley nuclear power plant.

 

The open house, which will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Shippingport Community and Municipal Center, 164 State Road 3016 in Shippingport (Beaver County), Pa., will provide members of the public with an opportunity to learn first-hand from NRC staff members about performance at the plant during 2008. Unlike the standard meeting format, the setting will allow citizens to discuss plant-related topics on a one-on-one basis with NRC inspectors assigned to the plant and their NRC Region I supervisor.

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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.   

 

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