Category: Text (Page 16 of 33)

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 6, 1979
Article: Nuclear plants safe, episode shows
Author: William Rusher

NEW YORK – Press and public reaction to the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania dramatically illustrates how difficult it is in a democracy to discuss nuclear power calmly, let alone reach national decisions regarding its use.

Public awareness of nuclear energy was born in that awesome mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, and has never really shaken free of that image. There are undoubtedly many millions of Americans who sincerely believe that, if the right combination of accidents occurred, a similar explosion could take place at Middletown, Pa. Now, as it happens, that one thing – in fact, very nearly the only thing – that could not possibly occur; the technology required to produce an atomic bomb is wildly different from that used to produce electrically by nuclear means. But how can the average housewife be expected to understand that?

A MORE POPULAR scenario, because it is at least technically conceivable, is the one forever being pushed by the foes of nuclear energy: Some mechanical accident occurs that ruptures or otherwise evades the containment systems surrounding a nuclear reactor, and nuclear energy in one form or another (usually wastes) spews out into the environment.

Given that hypothesis, all one has to do is 1) imagine that the quantity of contaminated material is large enough, 2) imagine that winds or other natural means capable of spreading it do in fact arise and do their job, and 3) imagine that the winds or whatever spread the contaminated material where it will do the maximum harm – and presto! There’s your nuclear disaster.

Since such an event is, as I have said, at least technically conceivable, all the supporters of nuclear energy can do is point out, rather lamely, that is extremely unlikely, and that no such disaster has ever occurred. As a matter of fact, it remains as true today as it was before the Three Mile Island accident that there has never yet been a single fatality as a result of a nuclear accident of any type in any American commercial reactor.

But doesn’t the Three Mile Island episode suggest that the disaster scenario is likelier than we had been led to believe? After all, a mechanical accident did occur; contaminated wastes did get out into the environment; and increased radiation levels were detected miles away.

ON THE CONTRARY, this episode illustrates vividly just how safe a nuclear power plant is. When the accident occurred, the safety control automatically began to close down the reactor. When, as a result of a separate but simultaneous accident, contaminated wastes did reach the outer environment, they were far below dangerous levels. The significant fact is not how much happened, but how little.

None of this however, will prevent the foes of nuclear power from opportunizing gaudily, or reassure average citizens who understandably fear dangers not disclosed by their five senses. “Detectable levels of increased radiation have spread over a four – country area,” the New York Times reported. The statement is quite true, but what danger, if any does the radiation pose to the public? A Harvard biology professor, long known for his support of leftist causes, dashes into the area and purports to answer the question: “Any dose is unsafe” – literally any at all. A hard man to please! Yet the same Times article quotes state officials as saying that the very highest levels of radiation detected anywhere outside the plant would expose, over a period of an hour to about as much radiation as one receives in less than a second from an ordinary dental X-ray.

The Clamshell Alliance and the leftist Harvard professor may yet get their way and stop nuclear energy in this country dead in its tracks. (It is being expanded briskly everywhere else.) In that case, we will clearly have to increase coal consumption sharply. In 1977 there were 139 fatal accidents in American coal mines. In the five preceding years, the average was 143 per year. What kind of mentality is it that can compare those figures with the brilliant 30-year record of the American nuclear power industry and call nuclear power unacceptably unsafe?

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 7, 1979
Article: Evacuees filtering back; Anxiety levels minimal
Author: United Press International

HARRISBURG (UPI) – Residents in small communities surrounding the slowly cooling Three Mile Island nuclear reactor have uneasily made their way home and they appear to be taking things in stride.

Clergymen and mental health workers say the prevailing mood is calm as citizens try to settle back into their normal routines after the nation’s worst nuclear accident.

Yet, both religious and secular counselors agree that anxiety may mount in following weeks when residents must deal with feelings that have been denied or assuaged by the sudden tightening of family community ties that occurs in any crisis.

“People are actually aware of the situation now,” says Rev. Catherine Welton of the St. Michael and All Angeles Episcopal Church in Middletown. “But I expect in a month or so, anxiety is going to hit in some form.

“In any crisis, you get along for a while with the help of neighbors and friends… Everybody is always calling and letting you know they care,” she said.

“BUT THERE comes a point where friends stop checking so much … that people aren’t being so supportive … and they realize what they’ve been through and there’s this feeling of aloneness…”

Brian Fogarty, a psychotherapist at Harrisburg Hospital agrees.

“In something like this, the community pulls together and people become more interdependent,” he said.

“Then, after a while, they start forgetting and people are left alone to deal with the feelings they’re having,” he added.

Others feel that many of those affected just haven’t had the time to think about what they’ve experienced and what it means.

“We really haven’t got many calls relating to it (Three Mile Island),” says Joe Bushman, counselor at the Dauphin County Crisis Intervention Center. “It seems we’ve hit a lull … it hasn’t sunk in yet … people are somehow denying what’s happened.”

“WHEN IT does sink in, I think we’ll have our work cut of for us,” he said.

He also noted that unlike previous crises in this area, like the Susquehanna River flood of 1975, people cannot work out anxiety “in a physical way.”

“In that, they could help people move or throw sandbags around. This is intangible … it’s frustrating,” he said.

And the Rev. Billy Holmes of the First Church of God in Highspire says of his 200 parishioners still may be stunned by the unreality of it all.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 7, 1979
Article: Japan feeling TMI shock waves
Author: United Press International

TOKYO (UPI) – The Three Mile Island nuclear accident has caused shock waves in Japan – the only country to have suffered from an atomic bomb attack.

The Japanese government is already taking steps to drastically revise its own ambitious nuclear power programs, with construction of seven new plants now in doubt, according to one high-ranking government official.

Government officials have warned that the shut down of seven potentially defective nuclear power plants may cause a power crisis in the Tokyo area this summer.

One official said safety in nuclear power is emerging as a major agenda topic at the Tokyo summit of industrial nations this June because of the accident near Harrisburg. Fear of possible nuclear power plant accidents in Japan prompted some 60 anti-nuclear protestors to stage a sit-in in a conference room of the Natural Resources and Energy Agency of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry Thursday night.

The demonstrators, representing diverse anti-nuclear groups, held four agency officials in the room by force overnight when their demand for a meeting with ministry head Masumi Esaki was not immediately granted.

The officials were finally released Friday morning after the demonstrators received assurances contact with Esaki would be made.

Japan currently has nine nuclear power plants in operation of two other reactors, officials said a “power crisis” may occur in Tokyo and surrounding areas if the June rainy season this year is dry and the summer is hot.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 7, 1979
Article: Tax extension?
Author: Unknown

Residents of a six-county area around Three Mile Island will have until May 15 to file federal income tax forms.

Internal Revenue Service officials announced Friday they would grant the request of U.S. Sen. John Heinz to give residents living around the nuclear plant a 30-day extension. Heinz asked for a 30-day extension because of hardships residents might have faced in filing because of the nuclear plant accident March 28.

THE EXTENSION would affect all taxpayers in the counties of Cumberland, York, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and Perry counties.

An IRS spokesman said tax-payers in those counties do no have to have actually been evacuated to be eligible, but if they take the extension, they should write the word “evacuee” at the top margin of the front page of their income tax form when it is filed.

HE SAID PERSONS who owe taxes will have to pay six percent interest on them during the extension period. But he added that six out of eight taxpayers do not owe additional taxes anyway and would not be affected by the interest charge.

Any taxpayer can obtain an automatic 60-day extension on filing his income tax form by submitting a form 4868 to the IRS on or before the tax due date.

But persons filing form 4868 must estimate the amount of taxes they owe, if any, and send that amount with the 4868 form.

Residents around the power plant who have questions about the IRS 30-day extension may call 783-8700 or a tollfree number, 1-800-462-4000.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 7, 1979
Article: N- plant faces license loss
Author: United Press International

WASHINGTON (UPI) – The crippled Three Mile Island nuclear power plant could lose its license for violations of federal regulations, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said today.

“This is one course of action that is available to us, depending on the degree of non-compliance,” the spokesman said.

He noted, however, the investigation of what went wrong in the Middletown, Pa., plant was still in “very initial stages.”

“The most important thing right now is bringing the reactor to a cold shutdown,” he said.

The Washington Post in its Saturday editions quoted a NRC source as saying “loss of license is a distinct possibility” for the Three Mile Island plant.

THE SOURCE told the newspaper that “it boggles the mind” that plant officials allowed the reactor to operate without the auxiliary cooling system, the second line of defense in preventing damage to or meltdown of the nuclear core.

“The rules allow two backup pumps to be down at any one time and then only for a short time,” the source said. “If you have all three down, you’re supposed to shut the plant down.”

HE SAID switches controlling the valve were tagged in the operating room so technicians could see the auxiliary pumps were closed.

But logs of the accident show that 30 seconds after the main coolant pumps failed, the auxiliary pumps automatically switched on. Water began to flow through the auxiliary pipes but was stopped by the closed valves.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 7, 1979
Article: 3-Mile crisis clouds future of nuclear uses: Thornburgh
Author: United Press International

HARRISBURG, Pa (UPI) – With the crisis ebbing at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, Gov. Dick Thornburgh says he had “deep and serious” doubts about the future of atomic power in Pennsylvania.

The governor said in an address Friday night that the remainder of his term in office will be dedicated to making sure that an accident such as the one that teetered on catastrophe at Three Mile Island “must not happen again.”

“Like most of you, I always looked upon nuclear power as one of many ways to conserve and expand energy resources here in Pennsylvania,” he said.

“Like most of you, I always tempered my hopes with an obvious concern about the safety of this awesome power we have placed within our communities.

“Like most of you, I now have doubts – deep and serious doubts – about opening the plant on Three Mile Island again, about expanding nuclear power in Pennsylvania and about assuming that we can’t go back to safer things.”

ENGINEERS, meanwhile, continued the slow process aimed at bringing the reactor past the danger point. Final, cold shutdown of the reactor was expected late next week.

One of two pumps circulating water in the reactor pressure vessel failed Friday but operators quickly turned on one of three backup pumps and the incident caused additional harm to the uranium fuel core.

Specialists at the plant on an island in the Susquehanna River have activated equipment to slow the leakage of radiation from the plant. But Thornburgh’s office said the governor was still advising pregnant women and young children to stay out of a five-mile radius around the plant. The unborn and pre-school children are most vulnerable to radiation exposure.

THE GOVERNOR said he soon hoped to be able to tell pregnant women and young children that it is safe for them to go home.

“I shall treasure that moment for as long as I live,” he said. “For I believe it will mark the end of the most dangerous days of decision any governor has had to face in this century.”

At the plant, engineers Friday activated a gas removal system aimed at significantly reducing the amount of radiation escaping into the environment.

When the system first was turned on, some radiation escaped and made its way out of the plant. That leakage was eliminated later and the operation went as planned.

Although reactor conditions were reported stable, a mid-day blast of steam from the second, non-operating unit at the plant startled observers. The NRC assured area resident that the steam came from an oil-fired burner and was not radioactive.

In an indication of how things were going, the NRC’s chief on the scene, Harold Denton, announced at a late afternoon news conference Friday that emergency crews were cutting back on their coverage in the control room. Between midnight and 6 a.m, only a skeleton crew would watch the instruments, monitoring the crippled reactor.

He also said the plant resumed dumping mildly radioactive waste water into the Susquehanna River.

In Washington, the White House sought to assure consumers food from the area is safe.

“Current readings show nothing to fear from food grown, harvested or produced in that area,” a White House official said.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 9, 1979
Article: Iodine risk lower; state still cautious
Author: United Press International

HARRISBURG, Pa. (UPI) – The risk of cancer-causing iodine contamination in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident has been greatly reduced, federal officials say.

But for the 11th consecutive day, Gov. Dick Thornburgh today warned pregnant women and little children to stay clear of a five-mile radius of the stricken nuclear power plant as a precaution.

But in an interview with CBS, Thornburgh later said “my hope would be within the next day or so we can advise those people to return to the area.” Asked if that meant today, the governor said, “We hope so.”

THORNBURGH MADE his decision to keep the advisory in effect after meeting Sunday night with two high-ranking officials of the U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Chairman Joseph Hendrie and Harold Denton, the commission’s top expert on the scene.

In a brief statement Sunday night, the NRC said, “conditions at the reactor continue to improve.” Thornburgh has said he will not lift the advisory for pregnant women and preschool children until the danger has completely passed.

Residents of the stricken area flocked to churches Sunday – Palm Sunday – to give thanks that the worst of America’s most serious nuclear crisis apparently was over. Others staged a demonstration to demand an end to nuclear power.

In Middletown, Pa., one of the communities nearest the Susquehanna River plant site, 267 people turned up to pray at the Evangelical United Methodist Church. A week ago, at the height of crisis, only 112 people attended services.

“Brothers and sisters, be thankful for every evidence of his (God’s) mercy toward us,” the Rev. Percy Brown said during the service Sunday.

ON THE STEPS of the Pennsylvania State Capitol, more than 500 protestors carrying signs reading “Split Wood Not Atoms” and “Fission Not, Fail Not,” asked that the Three Mile Island plant be closed.

In Middletown, an NRC official, Robert Bernero, said engineers applied sodium thyosulfate and hydrazine to radioactive iodine in the plant during the weekend and were successful in stabilizing it.
“Iodine doesn’t dissolve freely. Iodine is one of the principal contributors to radiation doses. It can get in kids’ milk and cause thyroid cancer. Now airborne releases of iodine are less likely,” Bernero said.

Iodine has been detected – but in reportedly small, unharmful amounts – in milk from the Pennsylvania dairy farmland that surrounds the plant site.

In another development, Bernero said engineers started up their degasification plan to eliminate radioactive gases within the nuclear power plant’s cooling system and start the process of bringing the reactor to a safe, cold shutdown.

NRC OFFICIALS also said 186 400-pound pallets of charcoal were sent to Three Mile Island from Pasco, Wash., for use in a backup filtering system to stop iodine and other radioactive gases from getting into the air.

Another small cloud of low-level radiation burst from the crippled nuclear power plant site Saturday night during a continuing plan to depressurize the plant’s reactor cooling system, the NRC said.

NRC officials said the latest average maximum reading on radiation levels around the plant was 0.05 milliems per hour a mile away from Three Mile Island. They called the level insignificant.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 9, 1979
Article: Infighting blocked NRC from acting on plant flaws, paper says
Author: United Press International

DETROIT (UPI) – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission knew of serious safety flaws at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant before last month’s crippling accident but failed to take corrective action because of staff infighting, according to a newspaper report.

The Detroit News, in a copyright article from its Washington bureau, said an ideological split between opponents and advocates of nuclear power on the NTC staff has “semiparalyzed” the agency and may be at least partly to blame for the accident that crippled the Pennsylvania plant.

THE NEWSPAPER said it conducted separate interviews last week with six NRC officials who complained the staff has become so “politicized” in the past year and a half that it is incapable of responding with speed to the type of problems that turned up at the Three Mile Island plant.

According to the report, NRC members met several times in the past three months to discuss reports of cooling equipment failures and inadequate staff training at the plant, but could not agree on what action to take.

All six of the NRC staff members interviewed by the News said the ideological division has considerably slowed inspection and licensing processes, sometimes leaving the agency unable to respond quickly to safety deficiencies.

One source told the newspaper the disputes have “left the agency semiparalyzed in dealing with reports of safety flaws at the Three Mile Island plant, as well as several other new plants that were having some start-up problems that normally should have been corrected quickly.”

THE NEWS SAID the six NRC officials, ranging from middle to high level management, asked to remain unidentified to prevent further escalation of hostilities within the agency.

The six officials told the newspaper that NRC inspectors and utility executives reported 12 separate cooling equipment failures at Three Mile Island in the past year, including two malfunctions as recently as Feb. 6.

In addition, the News said, the NRC received several reports of discrepancies in the coding of computerized equipment used to monitor conditions inside the nuclear core at Three Mile Island reactor No.2. None of those conditions has been corrected or even thoroughly investigated, the officials said.

The News quoted one senior NRC official as saying the agency had several reports of “glaring gaps” in training for technicians who operate the Three Mile Island plant, but that agency staff members had dismissed the reports as “inconsequential.”

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 9, 1979
Article: Harold Denton: Hero of Three Mile Island?
Author: Jim Kershner

If anyone comes close to being a hero in the Three Mile Island crisis it is Harold R. Denton.

Denton, who President Carter said “has the confidence of the American people,” is the calm, sandy-haired nuclear engineer who was dispatched Thursday from the Department of Energy’s Rockville, Md., headquarters to take control of the situation.

Besides being the man on the scene with the president’s endorsement, Denton has also been the primary source of information for the hundreds of news correspondents who have gathered in Middleton to cover the incident.

Throughout the entire episode, including the first news conference when angry reporters bombarded him with often hostile questions, Denton kept his composure.

IN SPITE OF the fact that the anxious reporters shout out “Dr. Denton,” he does not hold a doctorate.
He is a 1958 graduate of North Caroline State College with a bachelor of science in nuclear engineering. He also did graduate work at the University of Maryland and was a participant in a reactor safety course sponsored by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in 1967.

After graduation from college, Denton went to work for the DuPont company and participated in the design and operation of nuclear reactors at the Savannah River Plant of the Atomic Energy Commission operated by DuPont at Aiken, S.C.

In 1963 he went to work for the AEC himself, first as a reactor physicist, then a reactor inspector chief of the technical support branch of the compliance division, and assistant director of site and radiation safety.
In 1975 he was appointed director of the division of site safety and environmental analysis as the AEC changed its name to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

HIS CURRENT position is director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. He and his wife, Lucinda, and their three children live in Rockville.

When he returns home he will have been transformed from an obscure member of the government’s vast bureaucracy into an internationally-known figure.

He will also have become famous as a man who reassured a nation with his calm demeanor while he headed a team that solved a problem fraught with incredible danger and complexity.

“There are no Red Adairs to come flying in from Texas and fix this like he puts out oil rig fires,” an NRC press officer said Sunday.

But there is Harold Denton.

Newspaper: The Sentinel
Date: April 9, 1979
Article: The rally: Not just activists
Author: Dennis O’ Brien

HARRISBURG – Like most rallies, impassioned radicals called for an end to Three Mile Island and its “nuclear time bomb.”

Folk singers led chants.

Petitions were signed and a number of bumper stickers and buttons were sold or handed out.

Marching demonstrators wore gas masks, shouted slogans and carried signs with sayings that read “Ban the nuke,” “Danger, radiation city,” and “Nuclear power is not healthy for little children and other living things.”

But there was something different at this demonstration – something that set it apart from the antiwar rallies of the 60s.

MOST OF THE demonstrators, out under cloudy skies Sunday on the Capital steps, were not the fire breathing activists or militant reactionaries that called for an end to Vietnam before it became popular.

They were central Pennsylvania’s middle class. Factory workers, preschool children, old men and mothers – the type you might see on a floor wax commercial or in a cigarette advertisement.

Mixed in with the long hair, the blue jeans and the army jackets, were the hard hats, the baby carriages and the teenagers in football jerseys.

“The whole TMI thing is something that’s got me worried,” said Angela Herrider, a Middletown resident and the mother of two children.

“It’s the kind of thing husbands and wives are fighting about. The husbands are saying there’s no danger and the wives want their kids out of there,” she said.

Herrider, with one five-year old and one eight-year old, said she intended to go back to college, but is now using the money she saved for tuition to enroll her children in a private school in Maryland.

“WITH RADIATION, the things is, you never know about the effects,” said another mother from Mechanicsburg. She looks to the crowd of about 1,000 people at the rally and adds, “The reason only this many people showed up is that they’re still afraid to come out… and I’m talking about my neighbors.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Thomas Winters, a physician from the University of Massachusetts, told the crowd that “there’s nothing you can do to run from the (radiation’s) effects.

“There are two ways you can battle with the end effects, though,” said Winter, a member of a group called Physicians for Social Responsibility.

“You can use a very complicated and expensive method of chemical treatments, or you can just make sure that no nuclear plants like Three Mile Island are ever built,” Winters said to a cheering crowd.
The rally slated for 2 p.m. at the capitol, was planned by Three Mile Island Alert, a group that has opposed TMA for several years.

BUT IT WAS apparent from the rally that the group was not a full-time organization, or one that was used to planning major assemblies.

At times, the public address system failed. They ran out of copies for the press of the list of speakers and their names.

There were repeated pleas for money and most of the eight or ten speakers were concerned local residents, not polished performers.

Dr. Judith Johnsrud, co-director of the statewide Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power, charged that Metropolitan Edison had been illegally operating unit two of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant since it started up Dec.31.

She claimed there were no environmental impact statements filed before the unit began operating and the plant violated certain safety requirements of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act.

She said the group has filed a petition in the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. stating that the plant’s license was improperly issued.

If the group wins the case, Met Ed, the government and the plant’s designers will be liable for the damages, Johnsrud said.

“You were told that this type of accident couldn’t happen now you know that it could,” she said. “How ready were you to evacuate, did you have your birth certificates, your insurance policies and your other records packed and ready? How informed were you? she asked.

Ken Cassidy, a factory worker from Middletown told the crowd that he was very concerned about the Three Mile Island and about the lack of information he had about the incidents,
WITH A pregnant wife and a 14-month-old baby, he said he didn’t know who to believe.

“They waited 2½ days before telling us that we should leave the area,” said Cassidy.

He adds that in the near future he intends to leave the area permanently.

“They claim that the biggest advantages to nuclear power are that it’s safe, that it’s inexpensive and that it’s all right for the environment, but I think this has shown that it’s not safe, it’s not cheap and it’s not going to be around, I hope,” he said.

Renny Cushing, a founder of the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance, based in Seabrook, N.H., said the alliance was supporting the antinuclear drive in Pennsylvania.

“They said that it’s safe now at Three Mile Island, and that the danger’s over. But it’s not over, it’s only beginning.”