Three Mile Island By the Numbers: What Exelon Won’t Tell You

Dear Editor:
Exelon has been targeting the media, elected officials, and the public with doomsday predictions regarding the closure of Three Mile Island Unit-1. Their numbers are misleading, don’t add up, and fail to account for the $1.1 billion rate payers were charged to build Three Mile Island, the $987 million rate payers and taxpayers were billed to defuel TMI-2, and the $5.26 billion in stranded costs Exelon collected from rate payers to bailout their nuclear fleet as a result of deregulation.
When considering more bail out money for Three Mile Island, please remember the following numbers:
 
Zero: The amount of taxes paid by TMI-2 annually.
Two: Number of unguarded entrances to TMI.
  
Five: Number of counties within ten miles of Three Mile Island. The NRC does not require emergency planning for the cites of Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon or York.
   
Seven: Number of  lobbying firms Exelon has hired in Pennsylvania (2016) to convince legislators to support another bailout.  
  
10%: Exelon announced it would eliminate about 1,900 positions -10% of its workforce -by 2006 as part of its restructuring. Exelon cut 1,200 additional positions in 2004 and another 700 in 2006.
 
30 metric tons: Amount of high level radioactive waste generated annually and stored on site.
90: Number of days TMI-2 operated before the meltdown.
 
200+:  Number of  job losses at TMI-1 since Exelon bought TMI in 1999.
520: The "Top 50" list published by the Patriot News on July 2, 2006, reported Exelon's staffing numbers were 520.  
525: Number of jobs at Exelon reported to the NRC in their license renewal application for Three Mile Island.
600 tons: Amount of of additional high-level radioactive garbage TMI-1 will produce from 2014 - 2034.
  
804: Numbers of employees working at TMI in 1998.
 
1999: The Better Business Bureau determined, “The process currently used to produce at least some, if not most, of the uranium enriched fuels that are necessary to power nuclear energy plants emits substantial amounts of environmentally harmful greenhouse gases.” (May 13, 1999.)
2,000: Exelon Vice President and CFO, Robert Shappard, speaking in New York to the Deutsche Bank energy conference on June 22, 2004, boasted that Exelon “can cut 2,000 heads from our head count by the year 2006.”
  
$11,843: The amount of money Exelon spent to provide “gifts, hospitality, transportation and lodging for state officials” in Pennsylvania in 2016. (“The Caucus,” March 21, 2017.)
 
69,468: Number of clean energy jobs in Pennsylvania as of 2016. Lancaster and York combined for 4,684 energy efficiency and renewable energy jobs. (Environmental Entrepreneurs.)
 
$490,207: The amount Exelon spent to lobby candidates in Pennsylvania in 2016.
 
$1,111,840: The amount the Exelon PAC spent to fund candidates in Pennsylvania in 2016.
  
2.3 million gallons: Amount of accident-generated, radioactive water TMI evaporated directly into the atmosphere.
 
$4.6 billion: Rate payers spent $1.1 billion to build Unit-1 and Unit-2.
Tax payers and rate payers were charged almost $1 billion to remove damaged fuel from TMI-2. The cost to decontaminate and decommission both reactors is over $2.5 billion. These costs are not factored in another bailout.
Sincerely,
 
Eric Epstein, Chairman, TMI-Alert, Inc.
Three Mile Island Alert, Inc. is a safe-energy organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and founded in 1977. TMIA monitors Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, and Three Mile Island nuclear generating stations.  
         http://www.tmia.com
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