Remembering Three Mile Island: ‘The nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident’
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Historical marker for Three Mile Island along Route 441 in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County, as photographed in 2005
Dan Gleiter/PennLive.com via AP
This photo taken in February 2017 shows a safety sign on a building at Exelon Corp. Three Mile Island nuclear generating station.
Associated Press
This March 30, 1979, photo shows an aerial view of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg.
Harry Funk in 1979
If you feel like you’re getting old, try being referenced on a historical marker for “the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident.”
The last time I was in the vicinity, a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission sign was posted near Three Mile Island, recounting the five-day near-catastrophe that began on March 28, 1979, and mentioning that “thousands of residents evacuated the area.”
I was one of them.
The Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station is about a dozen miles as the crow flies from where I grew up, in the Harrisburg suburb of Paxtang.
The plant always was quite the spectacle, with its four reactor towers perpetually belching steam into the sky. I remember my dad pointing out the scene every time we crossed the Susquehanna River on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and we kids were sufficiently impressed.
As youngsters, my friends and I would joke about the possibilities presented by Three Mile Island operating so close to us, such as people growing third arms or developing telekinetic powers. But we knew we were safe. Nuclear reactors never malfunctioned.
Then came “The China Syndrome,” the James Bridges feature film released March 16, 1979, with its postulation of a disaster at a nuclear plant rendering an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.
Twelve days later, the jokes about Three Mile Island ceased abruptly, at least in the Harrisburg area.
That Wednesday, WKBO-AM news director Mike Pintek and his team broke the story that something had gone wrong at the plant. By Thursday, we began to hear of the potential for a meltdown, that the core of a damaged reactor could overheat to a point where radiation could permeate the atmosphere.
Or, perhaps, the whole thing could explode.
My most vivid memory of the last days of March 1979 is sitting in the cafeteria of Central Dauphin East High School that Friday, watching a procession of parents coming in to take their children home. At noon, everyone was excused.
Once my brother and I reached Paxtang, our parents sent us packing to our grandparents’ house in suburban Philadelphia. My parents, though, were staying.
“This is my house,” my father told us. “I’ll die here.”
I’m happy to report he still is with us, and my mom and dad since now are living in the South Hills.
As for me, I can’t say I was all that apprehensive. When you’re a teenager, you believe you’re indestructible. And so was the power plant. Nothing apocalyptic was going to happen. We’d be spared.
I was right about that, but I’m not so sure about my assumption at the time that the near-disaster forever would be commemorated as one of the seminal points of American history, with students required to learn all about it for generations to come.
While talking with some teenagers recently, I mentioned the 40th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident and that I happened to live nearby at the time. In return, I received some blank stares.
Hey, who can blame them? Their parents might not even have been born yet when all that occurred.
Talk about feeling old.
Western Pennsylvania residents will remember Mike Pintek, who died in September, for his longtime radio show on KDKA.
Before moving to Pittsburgh, he worked at WKBO-FM in Swatara Township, just outside of Harrisburg. He was news director there on March 28, 1979, when his team broke the story of the accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in nearby Londonderry Township.
Just 26 at the time, Pintek was thrust into the situation of reporting what could have meant life or death to his listeners. A few weeks after a disaster of epic proportions was averted, he talked about the experience for an article in a publication called Radio News Hotline of Keego Harbor, Mich.
Some of his comments:
“On Wednesday morning when the problem started, the state didn’t have any monitoring equipment to go out and check on the radiation levels. So everybody had to depend on the power company’s statements. Turns out the Legislature had not appropriated money to buy equipment.
“(Power company Met-Ed) said everything’s fine, and the state said the levels are low. Well, you turn around and talk to a scientist, and he says the levels are high and could cause cancer. His opinion is just as valid as the company’s. Then you have the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) coming in.
“By this time, you have four or five sources of information and they’re conflicting with each other. You have a problem then. Do I report all of these things, or what do I do? Well, you don’t have much of a choice, because you don’t know from your own experience or education which is right or wrong.
“I think had the power company come out immediately and said, ‘We have a serious problem here,’ people would not have gotten as excited as they did.”