Sep 29, 2024: The case against restarting Three Mile Island’s Unit-1

PEACH BOTTOM ATOMIC POWER STATION, UNITS 2 AND 3: ACCEPTANCE FOR REVIEW OF RELIEF REQUEST 14R-51 (TAC NOS. ME5392 AND ME5393)

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From the Associated Press:

The partial meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979 routed more than 180,000 people living within 50 miles of the plant, a five-day evacuation nightmare that residents are reliving as the nuclear plant crisis unfolds in Japan.

Then-Gov. Dick Thornburgh advised pregnant women and preschool children within five miles of the Susquehanna River plant to leave after the March 28, 1979, TMI accident. Tens of thousands more responded.

Emergency sirens blared and massive traffic jams snarled area roadways through farmlands near the state Capitol amid fears the Unit 2 reactor could unleash a massive amount of radiation into the river or the atmosphere.

"People just left, and they left not knowing if they would return, or what provisions to take with them," said Eric Epstein, chairman of TMI Alert, a safe energy group that monitors Three Mile Island and two other nuclear plants in Pennsylvania.

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THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR STATION. UNIT 1 - REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REGARDING RELIEF REQUEST RR-10-01. CONTROL ROD DRIVE HOUSING EXAMINATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH THE THIRD INSERVICE INSPECTION INTERVAL (TAC NO. ME4882)

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From the New York Times:

Years of procrastination in deciding on long-term disposal of highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear reactors are now coming back to haunt Japanese authorities as they try to control fires and explosions at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants: Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while China sends them to a desert storage compound in the western province of Gansu. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever-larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the plants.

Figures provided by Tokyo Electric Power on Thursday show that most of the dangerous uranium at the power plant is actually in the spent fuel rods, not the reactor cores themselves.

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COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
Dept. of Environmental Protection

Central Pennsylvania is middle America. We enjoy holiday parades, Friday night football and old fashioned everything. We welcome the change of seasons and pretty much stay put from generation to generation. We’re used to America coming to us to visit Gettysburg, marvel at the Amish, and smell Hershey Chocolate.

My father admired the technology that was Three Mile Island. Driving towards the nuclear power plant he confidently welcomed the billowing steam clouds. Many residents boated, fished or water skied around the Island. School students routinely were paraded through the plant to greet their future. My dad was assured that an accident at Three Mile Island was “not possible.” I believed my dad. We believed the nuclear industry and the government.

The last week of March 1979 was unseasonably warm. Central Pennsylvanians stepped outside for their first, prolonged post-winter break. While Governor Richard Thornburgh was acclimating to Harrisburg, the “new” reactor in Middletown was struggling to stay on line.  On Wednesday, March 28, 1979, TMI became a household name. Two days later, while school was in session, area residents fled the area not knowing if or when they would return. America now knew us for all the wrong reasons.

Evacuation plans in 1979 were little more than an afterthought stashed in a drawer. The problem is that people are not hypothetical planning numbers. Human behavior rarely conforms to scientific predictions. People don’t want to leave their homes. Farmers don’t want to desert their animals. And Coatesville isn't Middletown.

I was away at college. My sister waited for my mom to pick her up at Linglestown Junior High School, my brother was in his first trimester, and the family furniture store, which had survived three floods and a fire, remained open.
 

• Hershey still made chocolate, the Amish continued to plow Lancaster’s  fertile earth, and the Battlefield at Gettysburg still attracted visitors.
• In Middletown, Mayor Robert Reid directed traffic out of town as fleeing residents asked him to protect their homes while they were gone.
• To the north, streams of citizens from Harrisburg flowed down Market Street to line up for busses heading anywhere.
• Across the river, Goldsboro became a ghost town, dairy cows continued to graze in Etters, and the City of York, like Harrisburg and Lancaster, had no nuclear evacuation plan.

The TMI community remains a living case study of how not to evacuate.  Many residents still keep an overnight bag packed, a stash of “TMI money”, and make sure their cars have a full tank of gas. For those of us who live, work and parent in the shadow of Three Mile Island, the Accident continues to exact a toll.

No reactor community should have to endure another nuclear nightmare. At the very least, we should stop pretending that emergency evacuation planning for small children is adequate.   I need to be able to get in my car, drive past Three Mile Island, and tell my daughter that adults are doing everything humanly possible to make sure there is no “next time.”
 

Sincerely,

Eric J.  Epstein,  
epstein@efmr.org
717-541-1101
 

Mr. Epstein is  Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, Inc., tmia.com  a safe-energy organization  based  in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and founded in 1977, and a member of the American Nuclear Society.

From the Beaver County Times:

While new Nuclear Regulatory Commission research puts the Beaver Valley Unit 1 nuclear reactor in Shippingport among the nation's most vulnerable to earthquake damage, First Energy officials say their site has adequate protection.

NRC "seismic hazard estimates" were revised in 2010 and obtained by MSNBC for a report that was made public following the recent catastrophic earthquake that damaged nuclear reactors in Japan.

The Beaver Valley site, according to the NRC numbers, was listed fifth among sites in earthquake damage probability. The report said Beaver Valley Unit 1 has a 1 in 21,739 chance of suffering core damage from an earthquake each year.

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From CBS News:

Indian Point, located in Buchanan, N.Y., has the highest risk of core damage in the event of an earthquake, according to NRC estimates reported by MSNBC. At a 1 in 10,000 chance of core breach, that's right on the verge of what the NRC calls "immediate concern regarding adequate protection."

The East Coast comes off much worse than other parts of the country. The second plant on the list is Pilgrim 1 in Massachusetts. Number three is in Pennsylvania. The only West Coast plant is Diablo Canyon in California at number nine.

What explains it?

The government's list considered how close the plants were to major fault lines and how well they were designed to handle an earthquake. Back in the 1960s and 70s, when most of the plants were built, the government knew about earthquake risks on the West Coast. Those plants were designed to withstand them. But new surveying technology has revealed fault lines in the central and eastern states where plants were not designed for the serious stresses of a large quake.

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From WPTZ.com:

As the world sits glued to the coverage of Japan's nuclear crisis, they will likely see Vermonter Arnie Gundersen among that coverage, speaking as an expert on nuclear energy.

Gundersen has done interviews nonstop since Monday, including 18 Tuesday alone. On Wednesday, a Japanese news crew flew in from New York City to interview Gundersen and hours later, he did a Skype interview with a Russian TV station out of Moscow.

"It's neat to be recognized, but what caused the recognition is the worst industrial accident in the history of the world," Gundersen said.

Gundersen has been outspoken about his belief that the nuclear crisis surpasses that of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, perhaps accounting for the extreme media attention he has gotten.

"I don't think the (Japanese) government is lying. I do think the government is not telling everything it knows," Gundersen said in one interview Wednesday.

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