Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island

Basic outline of the accident [from the point of view of an environmental economist].

News clippings

Last entry dated 24 Feb 1997.

Search my news archives for "Three Mile Island" articles

A potted glimpse query to search Aussie News articles and the news morgue for items that may be relevant to "Three Mile Island". (You might also try the potted search of my public web pages).

Three Mile Island by Matt Kuta

The health effects of the accident were very small and hardly detectable against normal radiation that humans receive each year from naturally occurring radiation in soil, rocks, air, food, and water. Although, the psychological stress on the public, especially those who live near the nuclear power plant , was in some instances severe. The plant was shut down on March 28, 1979 with Unit 2 still being inoperable.

Three Mile Island: Tragedy or Warning?

The March, 1979 incident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant prompted public fear and concern over the safety of nuclear power. Nuclear power is desirable because it does not contribute to greenhouse gases or to acid rain. Moreover, a few pounds of uranium daily produce the energy equivalent of burning 10,000 tons of coal, or 1,840,000 gallons of oil (1).
[from Indiana U of Penn, Physics Dept]

NUCLEAR ENERGY: The Three Mile Island Accident

Movies have been made and much has been written about this first major accident at a commercial nuclear power plant. No one was killed as a consequence of the accident. Many lessons were learned by both the nuclear industry and the public. The nuclear industry was reminded of Murphy's Law: many things went wrong at the same time on that day.
[from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, PennState]

What have we learned from Three Mile Island 17 years later; Implications for future Chernobyl(s).

The Chernobyl tragedy should have never happened if we took the Three Mile Island incident, which occurred 17 years prior to the Chernobyl one, seriously. Nobody knew where Chernobyl was before the accident took place. As the result of the massive explosion on April 26, 1986, Chernobyl suddenly became the world's foremost symbol of technological disaster together with the Three Mile Island.

The Three Mile Island Incident by Tony Jurgovan

The most serious U.S. commercial reactor failure occurred on Mar. 28, 1979, at the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor near Harrisburg, Pa. The TMI accident started when a valve stuck open, allowing coolant to escape from the vessel. The emergency core cooling system (ECCS) operated as designed and provided water for the core. Unfortunately, the operators misinterpreted the given information in the control room and shut off the ECCS for several hours. The decay heat from the core boiled off the available water in the vessel, and without adequate cooling, the cladding and fuel started to melt. The health effects of the accident were found to be quite small, and virtually undetectable against the normal background radiation.

THREE MILE ISLAND REVISITED

THREE MILE ISLAND REVISITED directly challenges the claim of the nuclear industry and goverment that "no one died" from the core meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979, America's worst nuclear disaster. Through the testimony of area residents and scientific experts, the documentary presents compelling evidence that cancer deaths and birth defects increased in the area surrounding the Pennsylvania plant.
[blurb of $29.95 video]

THE NIRS TOOLBOX

Various products from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, some dealing with TMI.

SALP Report for the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station [dated Sep 16, 1996]

Three Mile Island Unit 1 has received performance ratings of "superior" in operations and maintenance and "good" in engineering and plant support in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's latest systematic assessment of licensee performance (SALP) of the facility.
[From the US NRC]

Bureaucracy in Crisis: Three Mile Island, the Shuttle Challenger, and Risk Assessment. by Maureen Hogan Casamayou

Delving into the organizational events before and after two serious incidents -- the 1979 Three Mile Island partial melt-down and the Challenger Shuttle disaster, Maureen Hogan Casamayou demonstrates that the most persuasive explanation for both accidents is not the more usual political one but rather an endemic organizational failure in assessment. This book explores three reasonable hypotheses in its search for an explanation.
[review]

Three Mile Island Alert Newsletter - May 1995

Funding restored for TMI health study; Congress considers radioactive waste policy; Congress set to wage war on environment; Pull the plug on energy waste; Opposition mounts to PP&L rate hike.

The Three Mile Island Unit 2

The part of the plant that suffered the "incident". Details originally from http://nuke.handheld.com/Plants/RIP/Removed_Plants_Info.html.

The Three Mile Island power station

The part of the plant still on-line. Details originally from http://nuke.handheld.com/Plants/RIP/Removed_Plants_Info.html.

People Died at Three Mile Island

How Pennsylvania allegedly denied infant deaths after the TMI accident. Chapter 14 of Killing Our Own by Wasserman et al. Includes some tables printed in some health reports to back up the allegation.
(Local link here).

Animals Died at Three Mile Island

How the deaths of animals was attributed to "unknown causes" after the TMI accident. Chapter 13 of Killing Our Own by Wasserman et al. Includes clippings from the New York Times and others.
(Local link here).

Cancer legacy of nuclear accident by Peter Montague

A study published in January 1990 in Environmental Health Perspectives concludes that people who lived near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 are more likely to get lung cancer, leukaemia and all cancers combined, compared to people living further from the plant. The nuclear reactor released radioactivity into the surrounding air in March 1979 during a loss-of-coolant accident that crippled the plant.

Index to Plants Removed from Service

(http://nuke.handheld.com/Plants/RIP/Removed_Plants_Info.html)

Index to Operating Plant Information

(http://nuke.handheld.com/Plants/Operating/Operating_Plants_Info.html)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT NUCLEAR ENERGY

Says radiation from TMI was contained.
(http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html)

Overview of the FRC (Field Robotics Centre) at CMU

The Robotics Institute's FRC is distinguished for its ability and record of integrating component technologies into complete systems that prove themselves in both research and real world contexts. FRC developed the remote work systems that explored and remediated the basement of the crippled Three Mile Island reactor containment basement. ...
(http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/FRC/overview.html)

David R. Kerwood

A United States Navy veteran, Mr. Kerwood began his career in the nuclear power industry as a Quality Control Inspector. He performed these duties at commercial generating stations around the country from 1978 through 1981, and participated in the recovery effort after the accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station. ...
(http://www.ids.net/~kerwood/kerwood.htm)

INTERACTIVE VIDEO ENHANCES NUCLEAR SAFETY TRAINING

An article from IBM NORTH AMERICA CLIENT/SERVER NEWS. A digital video interactive (DVI) computer-based training system, designed and developed by IBM Ultimedia* developer Digital Media International, is helping train employees in safe equipment use at two nuclear plants. ...
(http://www.austin.ibm.com/developer/library/csnews/csnews_feb95.html)

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