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Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 4, 1979
Title: Evacuation Chances ‘Slimmer’: County Relaxes Alert
Author: Ron Jury, Staff Writer

Dauphin County has relaxed its alert status on the contingency evacuation plans and told civil defense directors within a five-mile radius of the crippled Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station that they are the only ones who should maintain 24-hour operations.

The announcement came on the heels of meetings Tuesday where local municipal civil defense officials said they were having a problem keeping at a high level of readiness for a possible evacuation as people return to the area and volunteers are being forced to return to their jobs.

In a prepared statement, Commission Chairman John E. Minnich said, “While the situation at Three Mile Island remains of concern, no evacuation appears imminent. In view of this, the county commissioners have directed the Office of Emergency Preparedness to advise all local emergency preparedness personnel to stand down to a ‘standby alert status.’

“The office is requesting only local emergency preparedness directors within the five-mile radius to maintain 24-hour operations.

“County planning operations will continue and there will be no change in its (alert) status.
“Since a potentially dangerous situation continues to exist, all personnel should be capable of activation if needed,” Minnich said.

The county broadcast that message to local officials late Tuesday.

Some 200 local officials met in the courthouse Tuesday and were unanimous in saying that the governor should make a decision on the status of the current crisis and whether the alert should continue.

Minnich and several other officials strongly voiced that concern to the Governor’s Office on Tuesday. Minnich even delivered a letter from the commissioners to the Governor’s office.
However, Gov. Dick Thornburgh did not address that question at his press conference late Tuesday.

Minnich said this means that the four hospitals within the 10-mile radius can resume normal operations and admit non-emergency patients. The county will not attempt to hold the hospitals back, he said.

As part of the county’s plan, the hospitals were limiting admissions to keep patient populations at a minimum in the event of an evacuation.

Schools in that same 10-mile radius previously announced their plans to reopen this morning.
The commissioner said he did not agree with the return to normal, but agreed he is “acquiescing to higher-ups who have information” they are not sharing with the county.

Minnich said the county’s plans will be damaged if there is only several hours’ notice and an evacuation now has to be implemented.

The county plan relies heavily on school buses to provide necessary transportation in the event of an evacuation although the plans also call for using buses from Philadelphia and New York City.

If an evacuation is announced and the schools are in session, several hours will be lost until those buses can be pressed into service, Minnich added.

Local officials voiced strong concern about the status of the alert and one spokesman said “our capability to respond (to an evacuation on the local level) is rapidly diminishing” the longer the alert continues.

Another official said that “as the hours pass, we are losing volunteers.” He said that volunteers cannot afford to remain off their jobs if the situation does not merit it.

“Who is going to pay the lost wages” of these volunteers? a civil defense chief asked.

Many of the non-paid local volunteers have been manning civil defense offices and fire stations on a 24-hour basis in a constant state of readiness, officials said.

Minnich said that under the county’s relaxed alert, those volunteers can return to their jobs and only the civil defense directors need to maintain the operation.

The local officials accused the state of putting pressure on the school districts to reopen, but Lt. Gov. William Scranton III denied any pressure was being applied to the schools.

Scranton, who visited the county office briefly late Tuesday afternoon, said officials should assume the alert will remain until there is a cold shut down of the nuclear reactor, although the chances for an evacuation get “slimmer as time goes on.”

Asked whether the governor was going to downgrade the alert, Scranton said “not at this time,” and added that state officials are relying on status reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

County officials waited for the governor’s press conference and said they would take a cue from him on whether to relax the alert status or not.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 4, 1979
Title: Cold Shutdown Next Objective
Author: Richard Roberts, Staff Writer

A hazardous gas bubble that was considered a main stumbling block in cooling down the Unit 2 reactor vessel at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generation Station has been eliminated “for all practical purpose,” a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said Tuesday.

Harold Denton, director of the NRC’s Office of Reactor Regulation, at a news conference in Middletown Borough Hall also said that the possibility of a hydrogen explosion in the reactor vessel or reactor containment building no longer is considered a “significant problem.”

But he did not rule out a possible evacuation of area residents, depending upon the method selected for cooling the reactor down.

In another development, Gov. Dick Thornburgh announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the State Department of Environmental Resources had discovered small amounts of radioactive iodine in some milk produced within an 18-mile radius of the plant.
The iodine 131 levels are not considered to constitute a health hazard.

“I think the danger point is considerably down from where it was a few days ago because of the concerns about the bubble and hydrogen explosion,” Denton said. “We can fall back on the traditional options for ringing the reactor core to a cold condition.

“The main obstacle to doing so is to pick one which doesn’t do further fuel damage and which doesn’t result in the release of highly radioactive water inside the containment to the environment.”

A potential danger remains that a loss of pressurized coolant in the reactor could cause the core to overheat and release highly radioactive products of fission from the fuel rod assemblies, which were extensively damaged during the initial accident March 28, he said.

“I think that the concern we had with the bubble was it interfered with the normal proven ways of cooling,” he said. “The hydrogen brought with it a chance for complete disruption of the coolant system due to an explosion.

“With those potentials out of the way, I expect there to continue to be frustrating problems, that the equipment may fail. But with each day that goes by, the core gets cooler.”

He attributed the decrease in size of the bubble to “a little bit of luck and a little bit of forethought.”

Denton said he hoped that “from here on out we can move rapidly” towards allowing the return of pregnant women and pre-school children to their homes within a five-mile radius of the plant. Thornburgh on Friday afternoon requested their evacuation and ordered schools with the radius closed.

Denton reiterated his stand that the governor must make any decision concerning an evacuation. He advised the governor Monday night that “routine, low-level” radiation is being released from the plant and that he is “very optimistic” about progress in proceeding toward cold shutdown.

But he said he was “not yet ready to give a prediction” when the reactor would be brought to cold shutdown. “The staff is looking at it,” he said. “But I’m hopeful we can now move forward as we’ve eliminated these (bubble and hydrogen explosion) problems.”

Before cold shutdown can be reached, the coolant that circulates inside the reactor vessel must be depressurized, the temperature must fall below the boiling point and a cooling system known as a residual heat removal system must be tested for leaks, he said.

The residual heat removal system will transport primary coolant outside the main containment building into the auxiliary building.

“Since the RHR brings contaminated water from the containment out and cools it and returns it, it’s very critical that we don’t turn it on until we have all the leaks or potential leaks in that system isolated and be sure the system would perform adequately for the type of conditions we’ve got,” he said.

The reactor is stable, he said. Temperature of the core is 281 degrees and the core pressure is 1,100 pounds per square inch. A few fuel rod assemblies remain above 400 degrees.

Special converters called “recombiners” have been put into operation to remove hydrogen gas from the containment building and combine it with air to form water, he said.

Thornburgh said milk from 22 dairy farms showed iodine 131 levels of from 11 to 46 picocuries per liter in samples were taken Saturday and Sunday.

Iodine 131 is a radioisotope that accumulates on grass, is ingested by cows and contaminates their milk. Radioactive iodine, when ingested by humans, collects in the thyroid gland.

The radioactive content of the milk is less than a proposed federal maximum recommended allowed level of 12,000 picocuries and less than the maximum of 300 picocuries found in locally produced milk in the wake of fallout from a 1976 Chinese nuclear weapons test.

“Based on these figures and advice from appropriate federal, state and medical authorities, I can say there is no present danger to consumers from milk produced in this state,” Thornburgh said.

Denton said the FDA had “refined their numbers,” and that the maximum amount of iodine 131 found in milk was 31 picocuries and averaged 10-20 picocuries per liter.

“If you were to consume milk like that for a month, the radiation level would be approximately the same as would be permitted under our limits for routine operations,” he said. “I don’t consider these radiation levels of 10-20 picocuries per liter any cause for alarm with regard to milk.”

The total amount of iodine released since the initial nuclear accident at Three Mile Island is about one curie, he said.

Radioactive iodine and cobalt have been found in wastewater dumped from Three Mile Island into the Susquehanna River, Denton said. The NRC and DER on Monday night asked Metropolitan Edison Co. of Reading, operator of the plant, to cease dumping the contaminated wastewater, he said.

He said he doubted that any radioactivity has been detected in the water supplies of cities downstream. “The plant has essentially been releasing radioactivity at or near, slightly above or slightly below our normal limits for releases,” he said.

The NRC will make “some further analyses” of the water, and Denton said he anticipated that MetEd eventually will be allowed to resume dumping the radioactive wastewater into the river.

Some radioactive gases have escaped from waste gas storage tanks during attempts to sample the gases, he said. “It’s difficult to take a sample without having a leak somewhere within the sampling point and back to the tank. The total amounts of radioactivity getting out aren’t changing the off-site dosage significantly,” he said.

In the wake of an instrument failure in the containment building, an NRC task force has been assigned to investigate the effects of high-level radiation on instruments, Denton said. A radiation level of 30,000 rems- 30 million millirems-has been measured at the top the inside of the structure.

The average annual radiation dosage for area residents is 100-200 millirems.

“Most of the instrumentation at the plant is redundant, and we have a means to get the information we are seeking,” he said. “But we do have a task force looking ahead and making contingency plans if we don’t lose vital instrumentation.”

A state Commerce Department spokesman said Tuesday that about 100,000 bottles of potassium iodide had been sent to Middletown as a precautionary measure by the FDA and that more is on the way.

Steven Fink, state Department of Commerce press secretary, said potassium iodide is a drug used to counteract overdoses of radiation. “It’s being housed in a storage facility in Middletown but I don’t know where,” he said. “It was not ordered by anyone in the state.”

He said the each bottle has about four dosages.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 4, 1979
Title: TMI Incident May Hamper City Bond Sale
Author: Erwin Endress

Inevitable financial market effects of the accident at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Plant could seriously hamper Harrisburg’s ability to sell $16.4 million in general obligation bonds April 24 to build new municipal facilities in Harristown.

Such was the word to City Council Tuesday night by officials of Financial Management Services, the city’s financial advisers, who recommended a delay of at least several days in the mailing of notices of the sale and a preliminary statement.

The officials, Martin Margolis and John Black, partners in the firm, said disclosure requirements in connection with the preliminary statement now must include a section setting forth existing and potential ramifications for Harrisburg of the nuclear plant accident.

In urging the delay, Margolis asserted, “We don’t want to say that the city at this time might still have to be evacuated. That would have to be very detrimental to any bond sale.”

He stressed a section dealing with the accident at the plant is necessary in the disclosure statement which, he noted, must be “forthright,” because it’s “an event which could potentially have an effect on bondholders.”

A delay of several days, the FMS officials advised, could result in the presentation of a brighter picture in light of more optimistic reports issued over the last two days concerning conditions at the crippled plant.

“The more space we can put between the accident at the nuclear plant and the bond sale, the better,” Black counseled.

He and Margolis said the incident at the power plant could not only affect the potential interest rate but ability to sell the bonds.

Even so, council did not act to set aside its earlier decision designating April 24 for the opening of financing proposals. Nor was a delay ordered in the mailing of bond sale noticed and now-to-be revised preliminary statements.

Margolis and Black subsequently agreed with city Business Administrator John F. Frye Jr. that the mailing of notices would, in effect, constitute a “poll” of underwriters having a history of dealing in bond issues in commonwealth and especially in the midstate.

Margolis said his own preliminary contacts with underwriters already suggests that some and, perhaps, many will, when they receive the notices, suggest that the sale date of April 24 be postponed.

He said four out of five he had contacted had, “to a greater or lesser extent, suggested that the notices of sale be put off.” They and others can be expected, Margolis said, to respond to that effect in writing once the notices of sale have gone out.

But having received such recommendations, Frye reasoned, the administration and council will again be in position to decide whether to proceed or to delay the bond float.

Furthermore, Frye said, even if the sale date should finally remain unchanged, the city and council retain the right of rejecting all proposals if they appear to be unsatisfactory to the city.

“If we become more certain that the April 24 date should be put off, we will tell them (the administration and council),” Black said.

Harrisburg is preparing to float the bonds to finance a new city hall and create a municipal public safety center on Market Square in keeping with a pledge to the downtown renewal project being administered by Harristown Development Corp.

Present in the councilman’s Caucus Room as council deliberated with Frye, Margolis and Black, was William Keisling, HDC executive vice president, but Keisling did not participate in the discussion.

In a related development, Margolis and Black disclosed that as much as $1 million of the $4,225,000 bond issue floated by the city last month through a group of underwriters headed by Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin, still remains to be sold.

The FMS officials said the Three Mile Island accident has undoubtedly affected the ability of the underwriters to sell those bonds, which were floated to build two new fire houses and to meet a $1.3 million local share requirement to the Maclay Street Neighborhood Strategy Project.

Frye and the FMS officials agreed that while a delay of several days in sending out notices for the $16.4 million issue might help, no harm would be done by sending them out Wednesday as planned because final decisions on the bard sale remain ahead in any case.

Frye said, “They (FMS) have done what we have asked them to do. They have advised us. But we have to make the final decision.”

Margolis and Black said the related preliminary statements, containing disclosure of the nuclear power plant incident and the possibility of an evacuation, will be mailed out some days later than the sale notices.

Except in terms of additional printing costs, they said, there would be “no problem” in making additions to the present draft document to include references to the power plant accident. Other last-minute revisions could also be made.

While Margolis and Black said there is no doubt that “uncertainties” related to the plant incident will have to be included, Frye said that even if they were not included, potential bond purchasers who may never before have heard of Harrisburg now associate the city with the incident and the possibility of a mass evacuation.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 4, 1979
Title: Myers Raps Operation by Met Ed
Author: Dick Poland, Staff Writer

CARLISLE-Cumberland County Commissioner Jacob A. Myers Tuesday blasted Metropolitan Edison Co.’s handling of the Three Mile Island crisis and said the company should evacuate the nuclear plant so another firm can operate it.

Myers accused the Reading-based utility, part of a consortium which owns the Three Mile Island nuclear generating facility, of “a very blatant posture (of) putting your corporate benefits and concern for your company far above your concern for public welfare.”

Myers’ statements were contained in a letter sent to Walter Creitz, MetEd president.

“Simply said,” Myers told Creitz, “your company’s actions make me feel, as a public official, that your presence in this area is no longer desired and you should think about evacuating.”

The commissioner, speaking for himself and not necessarily for the board of commissioners, explained that the letter wasn’t condemning nuclear energy in general or the Three Mile Island plant in particular. Rather, he said, it was aimed at MetEd’s management of the facility and what he said was the arrogance it has displayed in its release of information about the nuclear accident.

“As a commissioner who has had the awesome and painful responsibility of trying to insure the health and welfare of the citizens of Cumberland County,” Myers wrote, “the most agonizing aspect of this entire affair has been dealing with the distraught emotions of the citizens.

“Consistently, Metropolitan Edison’s position has been nothing more than to try and preserve its own position-insuring, wrongfully and inaccurately, that there was indeed nothing to be fearful of.”

Copies of Myers’ letter were sent to the chairman of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Gov. Dick Thornburgh.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 4, 1979
Title: Accident Traced to Error
Author: Casey Burko and Bill Neikirk, Chicago Tribune Press Service

The nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating station was triggered because a manual valve in a key backup cooling system was inadvertently left closed after a test several days before the incident, the Chicago Tribune has learned.

As a result, the nuclear reactor was denied critical cooling water for 12 minutes, causing it to overheat dangerously, sources said. Even a 30-second loss of coolant is considered dangerous, they said.

Officials in the industry and in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission attempting to piece together the cause of the accident said the backup cooling system failed to kick in when the main cooling system malfunctioned last Wednesday.

When cooling water from an emergency core cooling system finally was rushed into the reactor 12 minutes later, it crashed against the overheated core of nuclear fuel, causing a thermal shock of intense proportions. More than 25 percent of the fuel was damaged.

When that happened, a dangerous bubble of hydrogen gas apparently was formed, rising to the top of the reactor threatening further efforts to cool down the system.

The disclosures, pieced together from several sources, apparently were among the reasons the NRC ordered on-site federal inspectors sent to the five other nuclear power sites in the country with similar designs.

Industry sources said the test in the cooling system is believed to have taken place two days before the accident. As part of that test, the manual valve in the auxiliary cooling system was closed, rendering the entire backup system inoperative. The valve apparently was never reopened.

Many newer plants are designed so the backup cooling system cannot be manually shut off, sources said.

Although there has been no official word from the NRC on the cause of the accident, Roger Mattson, director of the NRC’s office of technical review, appeared to confirm the reported causes when he said the backup cooling system failed to come on after the primary system malfunctioned last Wednesday morning.

“There were failures of equipment and there were operator actions on the initiation of safety equipment,” Mattson said.

Shortly after the accident, John Herbein, vice president of Metropolitan Edison, operator of the plant, said that “two pumps were lost.”

“We lost these pumps,” he said, without further explanation.

As information on the sequence of events leading to the accident began seeping out, nuclear technicians at the plant continued their efforts to reduce further the size of the hydrogen bubble, which has dissipated dramatically.

But a new concern arose. Radiation inside the huge, silo-like containment building surrounding the troubled reactor reached such levels that officials feared instruments might fail.

The interval radiation buildup totaled 30,000 rems-a lethal dose for living things-and raised speculation that the gigantic power plant that rests on an island in the Susquehanna River may never be used again.

“The contamination inside the containment building is unprecedented in the history of nuclear power,” said Rep. Morris K. Udall, D-Ariz., chairman of the House subcommittee on energy and the environment.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 5, 1979
Title: An Open Letter from Harrisburg: To Our Friends Beyond the Radius, Hi!
Author: Bill Blando, Staff Writer

An Open Letter to Friends and Relatives Outside the Five-, 10- and 20-Mile Radius, and Anyone Else Who May Care:

Yes, we’re still here. And, we glow only with pride, having survived (so far) the radiation scare and the media blitz.

Thanks for the calls. We know you were worried. So were we. Still are. But right now, we’re OK, calm but cautious. To paraphrase the awful Lina Wertmuller film with the almost-accurate title, most of us remain in our usual beds, not yet experiencing the end of the world.

This has been some kind of week, as our favorite sportscasters say. The first couple of days, starting last Wednesday, served as an attention-getting device. The big day was Friday, to start a very long weekend for us and the technicians at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station who bring power to a lot of people mostly outside of the Harrisburg area. In those three days, such terms as “evacuation,” “rems and millirems,” “meltdown,” “hydrogen bubble,” “nuclear explosion” and “to err on the side of caution” fell from the tips of many tongues.

How to describe the events which led to President Jimmy Carter’s visit, with Rosalynn, too? Incredible? Fantastic? Unbelievable? They all fit, sort of. (Of course, a case could be made for the contradictory, concocted and confusing, at least until Harold Denton came on the scene from Washington.) Unreal? That’s not bad.

Do you remember the old Orson Welles radio thriller, “War of the Worlds”? Well, there were lots of similarities to that 40-year old program and the way things started Friday morning.

Not listening to the radio in the early bright, I missed the initial announcement, but Betty, my ever-alert wife, called from her job to tell me that something new and different was happening in the radiation story, adding that perhaps I’d better get cracking, if not packing.

I flipped on the radio switch, and there was the familiar rock sound-nothing unusual yet. But then it came, in familiar Wellesian tones, “We interrupt this program…”

The phrase was to be echoed and re-echoed throughout the day and, like the old Mercury Theatre of the Air dramatization, in decreasingly shorter intervals.

At one point, the station I turned to-a CBS outlet, coincidentally the same network that was destroyed over the air by Mr. Welles-interrupted one of its Spectrum speakers, trying to evaluate the social significance of a movie called “Norma Rae,” three times.

First, it was to hear a civil defense official remind us to be ready to evacuate, “although there was no evacuation yet,” and to plan to bring only basic necessities, such as glasses and prescription medicines.

The second cut-off came when an official from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency urged area residents to stay indoors.

Finally, after the third interruption, the Spectrum speaker was abandoned altogether, this time in favor of a telephone conversation with Gov. Dick Thornburgh, which was given the playback treatment.

One of the speakers, I forget which one, advised us that “there is no reason to panic at this time.” The question which begged to be asked was, “at what time would there be reason?”

But there are important things to be done in an evacuation, obviously. First, it is necessary to re-establish communications with one’s spouse, if only to say goodbye.

Unfortunately, the home phone was dead. That meant seeking a pay phone that might work, which meant going outdoors, thereby violating the advice to remain indoors. There were other chores, too-gassing up the car and tapping the reserves for a little traveling money.

I was not alone in my mission.

I lucked out at the gas station, pulling right into it and put to the pump.

The attendant, who doubles as a mechanic assured me that “this is the slowest it’s been all day. You should have been here earlier,” he added. “All I’ve been doing is pumping gas.”

While talking, his pumps were attacked by cars from three sides.

“Aren’t you afraid,” he asked, “of being outside?” He took my payment and shrugged, and as I drove off, vehicles were backed up on both sides of the pumps with the last car in line straddling the incline between the station and the sidewalk, with its tail hanging out over the street.

At the bank, I wasn’t so lucky, but the long lines moved quickly. Perhaps it was an act of subconscious faith that I didn’t withdraw all of my meager funds.

I asked the girl if the bank people planned on locking themselves in the vault until the whole thing blew away.

“No,” she said without a smile. “It might be safer, but I’m going home and hope it’s all right.”

Meanwhile over the radio, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Edison Co., which operates the stricken nuclear plant, was explaining that it was “not an uncontrolled emission” which touched off the dangers of the day. “It was planned,” he said emphatically, proceeding to charge the governor and everyone else with “overreacting.” There was “no danger,” he said, adding that the evacuation alert was ill-advised.

Commentary about the situation was interspersed by several brief musical interludes apparently to mark time for what was billed as a press conference by the governor. The radio commentators speculated that the governor would lift his stay-indoors recommendation, which he subsequently did.

But he also urged all pregnant women in a five-mile radius of the plant to leave the area and ordered the closing of area schools. That was surprising because until then the advice was to keep school children inside the schools.

Later, I heard stories about overly protective and nervous parents storming schools to yank their kin out. I can only imagine how harrowing such displays might have been for the children left behind.

Chores completed, I reported to work. “You should have been here a little while ago,” I was told upon entering The Patriot newsroom. “It’s been a wild and crazy place. More phone calls than a telethon, and even a lunch hour siren in the Capitol area to trigger a bit of panic in the streets.”

Reporters from all over the country streamed in and out, getting calls, making calls and typing reams of copy on portable machines of different sizes and colors.

A couple of radios were blaring incoherently in different corners of the newsroom along with the squawking of a couple of police radios. There was even a TV set playing, but for the most part ignored.

Despite all the activity, the air hung heavy with skepticism, “You just can’t believe what anyone says,” was a phrase repeated over and over. One of the younger reporters said he had just been ‘speaking with a nuclear expert for two hours and I couldn’t understand anything he said.”

Later, exchanging views with Barker Howland, the genial elder statesmen of our newsroom who holds the title of religion writer, among others, he remarked that he’d bet “church attendance would be up this weekend. It goes back to the old adage about there being no atheists in a fox hole.”

He should know that territory, being an ex-Navy chaplain. “There’s only one thing I can compare this to,” he said referring to the day’s events. “I have the same feeling now that I had when a bunch of us were left at an airstrip in Korea and the CO (commanding officer) told us, ‘Sorry boys, you’re on your own. That was the last plane today.’

“Yes, it was that same feeling, knowing that that was the last plane, watching it fly off and not being on it.”

That’s probably as good a way as any to end this, because Howland, at least, had something to compare it to. And I, quite frankly, didn’t.

But, how was your week?

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 5, 1979
Title: Some Reach for Humor
Author: Roger Doran, Staff Writer

CARLISLE-While the drama unfolding on Three Mile Island pushed a lot of people to the edge of their nerve ends, biting fingernails, screaming at the dog and trying to figure out how to sue MetEd, it didn’t dampen spirits entirely.

Some reached for the funny bone.

At Dickinson College here silk-screening T-shirts with slogans became a release for 200 students left on campus. Classes at the college of 1,600 are informal this week, since college officials called off the regular routine until Monday.

A slogan contest that drew about 150 entries was held Tuesday night, and Wednesday students were huddled around a table getting T-shirts painted.

“It was a way of relieving some tension among the students here,” said Robert Cavenagh, a faculty member overseeing the T-shirt printing.

“Hell No, We Won’t Glow” was being printed on the shirts for a fee.

Elsewhere, there were variations of how to treat that now dissipated mysterious gas bubble ranging from “throw 27 tons of Alka Seltzer on it” to calling the druggist and ordering 2,000 pounds of Di-Gel.

Perhaps much of it is gallows humor, something like Gary Gilmore’s reply when asked, as he faced the firing squad in Utah, if he had a final request. “Yeah, how about a bullet-proof vest?” he asked.

But times of stress usually add some significant one-liners that serve the temporary purpose of pulling one through. Ask a combat veteran and he’ll tell you the humor gets better as the action gets closer.

The trick is to know when to laugh.

In the early assessments of the TMI situation, as the public was told radiation fallout was less dangerous than having teeth X-rayed, some were comforted, others confused.

“Is MetEd hustling toothpaste?” a visiting journalist wondered.

This, of course, led to a bushel of “having a radiant smile” lines. The radiation theme, like the possibility of radiation fallout, pervaded the atmosphere.

“Anything we raise here,” Cavenagh said at the Dickinson slogan contest and T-shirt sale, “will go toward some charity to help the people in Middletown.” He said he didn’t think the dollar figure would be a large one as a result of the T-shirt business “but at least this is a gesture.”

Some entries were philosophical, such as “Nobody’s Perfect,” a truly forgiving state of mind while some reflected ever-present doubts such as “I Survived Three Mile Island…I think.”

Then, as expected, there was “Kiss me, I’m Radionated.”

Another six-word slogan, “I’m Part of the Critical Mass,” cut both ways like a two-edged sword.

“That slogan,” Cavenagh said, “could be adopted by groups lobbying against nuclear power.”

Which is, he said, no laughing matter.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 5, 1979
Title: TMI Suit is Filed, Withdrawn
Author: Bill Pennewill, Staff Writer

An Etters area couple have withdrawn their class-action civil suit filed in federal court against Metropolitan Edison Co., and Babcock and Wilcox in the wake of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear generating station.

The suit-seeking to shut the plant and gain compensation for everyone living within a five-mile radius of Three Mile Island-was filed Monday in the U.S. Middle District Court office in Scranton by James A. and Mary Ann Callahan of Etters RD 1 and withdrawn Tuesday, according to officials.

Callahan, who lives within five miles of the nuclear reactor, Tuesday refused to discuss the case.

“I’d just as soon not talk about it,” Callahan said, noting he had sent his family out of the danger area.

Paul Riffle, of the Athens Law firm of Riffle and Foster, attorney for the Callahans, said no specific monetary claim was contained in the “short-lived suit” seeking damages from MetEd and Babcock and Wilcox, supplier of the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island.

Riffle said issues in the suit include the question of negligence in design, manufacture, construction and operation of Three Mile Island.

He said other issues raised in the civil action include:

–Whether operation of the nuclear power plant constitutes an ultra-hazardous activity
–Whether operation of TMI constitutes a nuisance
–Whether members of the plaintiff class should be compensated for damage to property because of direct contamination.

Newspaper: The Patriot
Date: April 4, 1979
Title: Most Schools Report ‘A Nearly Normal Day’
Author: Roger Seip

After being closed for two days because of the Three Mile Island accident, Wednesday was a near-normal day in most area schools, according to school officials.

Harrisburg School District teachers Wednesday reported a “fairly normal day.” About 65 percent of the district’s 10,000 students had returned to classes, according to district officials. Normally average attendance runs about 88 percent.

Approximately 90 percent of the district’s 700 teachers reported to work, they said.

The district was unable to find enough substitute teachers to take up the slack-a problem which has often plagued the district in normal times-and had to reshuffle classes and teachers in some instances, they said. No assignments went uncovered, they said.

Attendance at individual buildings ranged from 34 percent at Camp Curtin Early Childhood Center to 77 percent at the William Penn Campus of Harrisburg High School.

AT THE Middle School, where 64 percent of the students showed up, it was decided to continue with the Mr. Mathematics Pageant Competition which had originally been scheduled for Wednesday.

Finals will be held as scheduled Thursday from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Middle School.

Benjamin F. Turner, superintendent, said he is going to recommend to the school board that the school year be extended a day, with the last day to be June 12. He said the district had schedule a 182-day school year, but that the two days lost to the Three Mile Island accident combined with a day lost because of snow, makes lengthening of the school year necessary.

However, he said that graduation for seniors will remain unchanged.

In the shadow of Three Mile Island, Middletown Area School District, remained closed.

For the Steelton-Highspire District it was “a good normal day” except that slightly fewer than half of the pupils were in attendance at Highspire Elementary school, according to Andy Padjen, high school principal. Part of Highspire is within the five-mile radius within which Gov. Dick Thornburgh has continued his recommendation that pregnant women and pre-school age remain away.

At the high school, Padjen said attendance was about 71 percent and no teachers were absent because of the Three Mile Island accident. Of those absent at the high school, Padjen said, “probably a good majority” were from Highspire.

LOWER DAUPHIN School District, which has two elementary schools within a five-mile radius of Three Mile Island, opened all schools except those two, which are in Conewago and Londonderry townships. All students living in the two townships are being excused from school, according to Dr. Henry Hoerner, superintendent.

At the West Shore School District’s Fishing Creek Elementary School, slightly more than five miles from Three Mile Island, Principal Ronald R. Shuey estimated that only 25 percent of the pupils were in class.

He said about half of the schools enrollment comes from within the five-mile radius, and all pupils from that area have been excused until further notice.

At neighboring Red Land High School, Principal Harry H. Finkelstein reported 648 of its 1,295 pupils were absent.

West Shore’s Newberry Elementary School remains closed because it is within the five-mile radius.

At East Pennsboro Area High School, principal Clarence G. Walters Jr. estimated a 10 percent absenteeism rate compared to a normal 5 percent.

At Good Hope Middle School in the Cumberland Valley School District, absenteeism was estimated at 20 percent by Dr. Anthony Colistra, principal.

Newspaper: The Evening Sentinel
Date: April 2, 1979
Title: Gas Bubble Decreasing, Radiation Levels Lower
Author: United Press International

HARRISBURG (UPI)-The crippled Three Mile Island nuclear reactor is steadily cooling down and the dangerous hydrogen bubble that blocked final shutdown efforts appears to have shrunk dramatically, a top Nuclear Regulatory Commission official reported today.

“I think it is certainly safer than yesterday,” said Harold Denton, NRC operations chief at the site, referring to the bubble which not only blocked final shutdown operations but also posed the risk of an internal reactor explosion.

Thousands of area residents, however, remain poised to evacuate if necessary.

DENTON SAID he still wanted to double check mathematical equations used to guess at the size of the bubble before saying with certainty the bubble had dramatically decreased in size. He said the calculation had been satisfactory while the bubble size was steady but may be flawed now because it leaves out other vrather than hours (on how to cool down the core),” Thompson told reporters at the NRC news center.

He also reported that general radiation levels outside the plant were declining although radiation inside the concrete containment building surrounding the reactor were at lethal levels.

It was because original efforts to eliminate the bubble produced no results that mass evacuation plans for the whole area were being considered.

Engineers at the site continued the slow process of starting to convert hydrogen gas in the containment building back to water to help cool the reactor.

The recombiners are designed to convert some of the hydrogen gas buildup in the containment building back into water by heating it with oxygen-a process similar to the way steam from a teapot is converted back into water vapor.

Once that is achieved, the engineers hope to use the reconverted water to help in the cooling process.

Success in the conversion attempt also would reduce the possibility of a second hydrogen gas explosion. Officials believe such an explosion damaged the facility last Wednesday, less than 10 hours after the nation’s worst nuclear accident began.

Authorities said the maneuver posed no new danger and Thornburgh-as if to stress that stance-ordered state employees to report for work as usual today in the state Capitol complex, 10 miles from the plant site. Carter-who 27 years ago was part of a Navy disaster in an experimental reactor at Chalk River in Canada-made a 26-minute on-site inspection of the mist-shrouded Three Mile Island plant Sunday. During his visit, he passed a wall of beige instrument panels that was covered with red, yellow, and white lights-and an occasional green one-showing the damaged reactor’s condition.

Later, he went to nearby Middletown, Pa., and told residents Thornburgh may have “to take further steps” to protect the population. He appealed to residents in the affected area to remain calm.

Civil Defense officials put six counties in central Pennsylvania on “advanced alert” Sunday for possible evacuation of the population in an area ranging up to 20 miles from the nuclear facility-some 636,000 people.

Thousands of residents already had fled the area because of the danger posed by the accident at the plant. There has been no official evacuation order, but Thornburgh suggested that pregnant women and pre-school children stay at least five miles away from the crippled nuclear facility.

The main task now faced by the engineers is to cool the reactor core so they can shut it down cold. Unless the fuel core can be cooled, the danger of a meltdown of the core-the worst possible nuclear catastrophe-could arise. The cooling process has been complicated by the hydrogen gas bubble engineers were now trying to eliminate.

Harold Denton, the Nuclear Regulatory Commision’s operation chief at the plant site, said the level of hydrogen in the containment building was increasing. But Denton said if the increase in hydrogen was due to a decrease in the size of the bubble, “that’s what we hoped to achieve.”

Carter, cheered and applauded enthusiastically by about 600 Middletown residents when he arrived at the local town hall, shook hands, grinned and waved to the crowd as he departed for Washington.

But inside the hall, the president appeared grim as he repeated three times that his main concern was the safety of the population.

“If we make an error, we want to err on the side of extreme caution and extra safety,” Carter said. “The health and safety of the people will be paramount.”

Carter stood in front of a basketball backboard-the town hall doubles as a community recreation center and, as of Sunday, served as the new NRC command post-with Thornburgh at his side.

He twice praised the townspeople for the calm with which they faced the nation’s worst nuclear accident and expressed “admiration of the citizens who behaved in such a calm manner.”

But Carter coupled the praise with an appeal to the people to remain calm “should Governor Thornburgh ask you to take further steps.”

Carter did not use the word “evacuate” or explain what “further steps” Thornburgh might ask people to take.

Joseph Hendrie, chairman of the NRC, has said it might be “prudent” to evacuate the entire population for up to 20 miles away from the nuclear plant if the hydrogen bubble which is complicating the cooling system cannot be eliminated by normal means and other, more risky methods must be attempted.

“Time is on our side in an event like this,” Denton said.