Three-Mile Island Nuclear Disaster Still Resonates Today
Mar 30 - Dayton Daily News
The accident was actually larger than most people know, according to Samuel
Walker, a Nuclear Regulator Commission historian, whose new book examines the
crisis and its aftermath.
"The accident was worse than anyone realized at the time, half of the
core had actually melted," Walker said Friday. "On the other hand, the
plant held and was not breached. So there is good news and bad news."
Walker's book, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective,
was released this week by the University of California press.
No one died in the March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island accident, but it was the
worst-case scenario experts had long feared. Had the walls of the containment
building not held, a deadly plume of radiation would have descended on hundreds
of thousands of people. That is what happened in 1986 when the nuclear reactor
at Chernobyl in the Ukraine melted down, killing 31 people and poisoning the
environment for decades.
Three Mile Island did release some radiation in the form of a large hydrogen
gas bubble, and authorities are still conducting health studies of the local
population.
"We are still looking at long-term trends and right now, the signs are
favorable," Walker said.
Government studies have indicated that the approximately two million people
in the area received a dose of radiation less than a typical chest X-ray.
The effect on the nuclear power industry, however, was nearly fatal. No new
nuclear power plants have been ordered in the United States since then, and the
existing ones are sometimes the subject of controversy. In the 1980s, the Zimmer
plant on the Ohio River, owned in part by Dayton Power and Light, was converted
from nuclear to coal. Still, 51 of the 103 nuclear plants in the U.S. ordered
before 1979 are part of the power grid today, according to Steve Kerekes of the
Nuclear Energy Institute.
Industry advocates tout nuclear power as a clean energy source, free of the
air pollutants associated with the burning of coal, but questions about plant
operations and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel remain.
The Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, operated by FirstEnergy, reopened
for the first time in two years two weeks ago, then had to shut down again
because of a valve leak. The plant, which closed in 2000 after a football-sized
hole caused by acid corrosion was discovered at the top of the cooling tower, is
now scheduled to reopen sometime next week.
Ohio has two nuclear plants, Davis-Besse and North Perry, both near Lake
Erie, supplying about 10 percent of the state's power needs.
Walker's research into the Three Mile Island accident found that it led to
much-needed reforms for the industry. Plant operators in 1979 weren't exactly
like the cartoon character Homer Simpson, but it was close.
"The operators were not well trained," Walker said. "They took
a minor malfunction and turned it into a major accident. There were 100 lights
going off on the control panel, but it was not telling them clearly what to
do."
As a result of Three Mile Island, both the industry and the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission have undertaken a series of reforms.
"There is now one-site control rooms at every one of our
facilities," the Nuclear Energy Institute's Kerekes said. "The boric
acid problem at Davis-Besse was known about for a decade. They didn't follow the
standards."
The Three Mile Island power plant is actually two units. Unit Two was where
the valve malfunction occurred that led to the meltdown. It has been emptied and
sealed.
Unit One is still operating.
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