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Radiation found outside TMI after incident - The York Daily Record
An Exelon Nuclear monitor located about a mile away from Three Mile Island in Dauphin County picked up trace amounts of radiation during the same week workers were exposed to contamination at the plant.
Between Nov. 18 and Nov. 24, one of TMI's seven remote monitors detected an increase of 0.02 millirems, said Beth Archer, an Exelon spokeswoman. A millirem is a measure of radiation exposure.
A second monitor recorded a statistically insignificant change in its reading, she said.
A typical person receives about 360 millirems of radiation annually from natural sources, such as soil and rocks, cosmic rays, food and consumer products.
Clearing the air: TMI must keep area officials informed | Our Views & Yours -
It was just more than 30 years ago when no one noticed that a valve had opened in Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor allowing reactor coolant to escape.
That mechanical failure was followed by a series of bad decisions that led not only to the fuel core starting to melt but also to detectable radiation being released into the air and water.
It was the worst nuclear power plant accident in the United States.
There were many issues and lessons learned. We thought one of them was the need for honesty and transparency from the owners of the nuclear facility.
Former Gov. Dick Thornburgh was in office for just 72 days when the call came about the accident. In 1999, he offered reflections on what happened as events unfolded.
One of the things he said was:
“The credibility of the utility, in particular, did not fare well. It first seemed to speak with many voices, and then with none at all. On the first day, it made its debut by seeking to minimize the incident — assuring us that ‘everything is under control’ when we later learned it wasn’t, and that ‘all safety equipment functioned properly’ when we later learned it didn’t.”
And even when company technicians found that radiation levels in the area surrounding the island had climbed above normal, the company neglected to include that information in its statement to the public.
OpEdNews - Article: Still more fluff, lies and radiation from TMI and the new nuke media machine
Yet another "perfectly safe" release at Three Mile Island has irradiated yet another puff of hype about alleged "green" support for new reactors.
The two are inseparable.
In 1979, when TMI's brand new Unit Two melted, stack monitors and other critical safeguards crashed in tandem. Nobody knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it harmed. Cancers, leukemia, stillbirths, malformations, asthma, sterility, skin lesions and other radiation-related diseases erupted throughout central Pennsylvania. Some 2400 families sued, but never got a full public hearing in federal court.
Unit Two had operated just three months when it melted. By a 3-1 margin, three central Pennsylvania counties then voted that TMI-One, which opened in 1974, stay shut. But Ronald Reagan tore down that wall.
Gov unhappy over TMI plant’s wait to disclose leak - Somerset - Daily American
Gov. Ed Rendell is steamed over a five-hour wait before officials at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant told state officials about a radiation leak.
Rendell’s letter sent to top Exelon Corp. executives said it is “totally unacceptable” that plant officials waited so long to report Saturday’s accident.
The accident at the central Pennsylvania plant exposed employees to small amounts of radiation.
The Associated Press: Pipe-cutting led to radiation at Pa. nuke plant
Radioactive dust unexpectedly blew out of a pipe being cut by workers during weekend maintenance at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and officials on Monday were trying to determine exactly how and why it happened.
The accident at the central Pennsylvania plant — the site of the nation's worst nuclear power plant disaster — exposed a dozen employees to radiation, but the public was in no danger, plant officials and government regulators said.
Plant officials likened workers' maximum exposure to the equivalent of two medical X-rays, while the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the workers were exposed to a small fraction of the annual federal regulatory limit.
Associated Press: NRC investigating radiation at Three Mile Island
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is sending investigators to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant after a small amount of radiation was detected there.
About 150 employees were sent home Saturday afternoon after the radiation was detected at the central Pennsylvania plant.
Officials say there is no public health risk.
Exelon Nuclear spokeswoman Beth Archer says investigators are searching for a cause of the release. She says the radiation was quickly contained.
Tests showed the contamination was confined to surfaces inside the building.
Three Mile Island renewed for another 20 years - The York Daily Record
Read the release that details how TMI will operate for an additional 20 years
* Record Tracker blog: More on TMI's renewal, including links to documents.
* York Town Square blog: Three Mile Island emergency indelibly written into memories.
Thirty years after Three Mile Island Unit 2 suffered a partial meltdown, a federal agency has approved its sister reactor to operate for an additional 20 years.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed the operating license Thursday for TMI Unit 1 in Dauphin County. The new license will expire April 19, 2034.
The reactor's original 40-year license was
Read TMI's response to landing license renewal.
set to run out April 19, 2014.
Getting There: SHA takes on another big nuclear move - From roads to rails to runways, Michael Dresser tracks transportation - baltimoresun.com
Fresh from its recent move of a giant transformer to the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant across Harford County last month, the State Highway Administration plans to take on another oversize move next week.
On Tuesday, the first of two million-pound steam generators will be taken off a barge at Port Deposit in Cecil County to begin an almost three-week journey to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Facility outside Harrisburg. The next day, a second 510-ton generator is expected to arrive.
For both humongous cargoes, the first legs of their journey will take them over the roads of Cecil County to the Pennsylvania state line. The equipment will first be transported along Route 222 to the former Bainbridge Naval Training Facility. From that staging area, they will be moved starting Sept. 13 along Route 276, through the roundabout at Route 273, then up U.S. 1 to Pennsylvania.
The Free Press - Walter Cronkite, 3 Mile Island & "Lamar's Folly" in the Climate Bill
The accolades are still pouring in for departed anchorman Walter Cronkite. Few mention his critical "that's the way it is" reporting on the atomic melt-down at Three Mile Island.
Yet Cronkite and TMI are at the core of today's de facto moratorium on new reactor construction---which the industry's new champion, Senator Lamar Alexander, now wants to reverse through the proposed federal Climate Bill.
Technicians who knew what was happening shook with terror as Cronkite opened his March 28, 1979, newscast with "the world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the Atomic Age. And the horror tonight is that it could get much worse.." ( http://www.examiner.com/x-14272-70s-Culture-Examiner~y2009m7d18-Walter-Cronkite-reporting-on-Three-Mile-Island ) .
Three Mile Island reactor gets environment OK | Markets | Markets News | Reuters
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed the environmental part of the license renewal proceeding for Exelon Corp's (EXC.N) 786-megawatt Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, the NRC said in a release Friday.
The NRC concluded there were no environmental impacts that would preclude the reactor's license renewal for an additional 20 years of operation.
The current license for Three Mile Island 1 expires April 19, 2014. A new license would extend the reactor's operating life until 2034.
NRC: TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force Final Report (NUREG-0585)
The following links on this page are to documents in our Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). ADAMS documents are provided in either Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). To obtain free viewers for displaying these formats, see our Plugins, Viewers, and Other Tools. If you have problems with viewing or printing documents from ADAMS, please contact the Public Document Room staff.
* NUREG-0585 (PDF - 3.53 MB)
In its final report reviewing the Three Mile Island accident, the TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force has suggested change in several fundamental aspects of basic safety policy for nuclear power plants. Changes in nuclear power plant design and operations and in the regulatory process are discussed in terms of general goals. The appendix sets forth specific recommendations for reaching these goals.
Group says satellite images of Three Mile Island pose security risk - PennLive.com
Visitors at Three Mile Island are asked not to photograph guard towers, vehicle barriers and other security measures. Yet these items are easily seen on the Internet through such sites as Microsoft's maps.live.com, now bing.com/maps.
Scott Portzline, a consultant for the watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert, thinks this is a security issue. He has been monitoring sites like Google Earth, which bring satellite images to home computers, for several years. But he noticed that recently the level of detail has increased.
The amount of detail on Microsoft's site "could show terrorists the quickest and best route to buildings," Portzline said.
LancasterOnline.com: Public can ask questions about TMI generators
A plan to carry two massive generators through Lancaster County en route to Three Mile Island is generating a lot of interest — and concern — among local residents.
Anyone interested in asking questions or learning more about the plan will have three opportunities to do so. AREVA Inc., the Paris-based manufacturer of the 811-ton steam generators, will host three public meetings to discuss the matter.
The following meetings are scheduled:
LancasterOnline.com:News:Transport of huge generators will disrupt county
If you want to snap a photo of two of the largest objects ever to move across the Lancaster County landscape later this summer, don't worry, they will be creeping by at a tortoise-like 2 or 3 miles per hour.
Two steam generators, each weighing about the same as two locomotives, will be pulled by the same kind of self-propelled transport that moves the space shuttle to the blastoff pad.
As they navigate the length of the county in August or September en route to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, there will be a whole lot of commotion in front of the oversized loads.
LancasterOnline.com:News:Firm won't disclose route of Three Mile Island generators
The company orchestrating one of the largest moving projects in Lancaster County history wants to talk to the public.
Representatives from the France-based AREVA Inc. are scheduling meetings for the week of June 8 at the Conoy Township building, Columbia High School and Solanco High School to present information and answer questions about the company's plans to move two 510-ton steam generators through Lancaster County. The journey will begin in Port Deposit, Md., and end when the generators are delivered to the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Dauphin County.
The 70-mile move is expected to take about 20 days as 26-axle truck-and-trailer rigs hauling the generators creep along at about 3 mph.
Overhead utility wires will have to be moved, temporary bridge bypasses will have to be built and traffic will have to be stopped.
AREVA officials recognize the impact of the move on Lancaster County's roads and communities will be massive and so they want to "come talk about what impacts there might be and how we can minimize those impacts," said Denise Woernle, AREVA's manager of corporate communications.
TMI steam generators to be replaced - PennLive.com
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant will undergo its biggest modification ever this fall when two new steam generators are brought in to replace the originals.
The work, plus other maintenance work which will be done at the same time while the plant is shut down, will bring an extra 3,000 workers to the island for a couple of months, according to spokesman Ralph DeSantis. The workers will include pipe fitters, electricians, carpenters, ironworkers and boilermakers who will be contracted through their unions, DeSantis said.
The steam generators are each seven stories tall and weigh more than one million pounds. They are being assembled in France and will come to Three Mile Island by barge, ship, and 150-wheel trailer.
The project, which has been in the planning stages for two years, is projected to cost $280 million, DeSantis said.
Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor could cost nearly $1 billion to shut down - PennLive.com
It could cost nearly $1 billion to shut down Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor if the plant's owner does not get its operating license renewed, according to a report prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Though the report acknowledges Exelon Generation will likely receive a 20-year extension, the report detailing the shutdown cost is required every time a nuclear plant comes within five years of the end of its license. The plant's current license expires in 2014.
The report gives several scenarios for decommissioning the plant. The most likely is a system called SAFSTOR, which basically means mothballing the unit and monitoring it for up to 60 years, according to NRC spokesman Neal Sheehan. The size of the industrial site, coupled with the need to safeguard radioactive materials, leads to the high decommissioning costs, he said.
New revelations about Three Mile Island disaster raise doubts over nuclear plant safety: The truth behind the meltdown: News: National/ International: Independent Weekly: Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill
Editor's note: This story originally appeared in Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies. For links to supporting documents, please see the original story.
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near
It was April Fool's Day, 1979—30 years ago this month—when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant's Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.
The Free Press - Cracking the corporate media's Iron Curtain around death at Three Mile Island
Chernobyl exploded and Three Mile Island missed by a whisker. They both killed people.
But thirty years after the Pennsylvania melt-down, a Soviet-style Iron Curtain has formed between the corporate media and the alternatives, with nuclear power at its center.
The Soviets denied for days that the Chernobyl accident had happened at all. America's parallel corporate media says "no one died at TMI."
Documenting Three Mile Island | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
# Starting as the NRC's historian in June 1979, J. Samuel Walker's career was very much shaped by the TMI accident.
# He found false information spread on the accident, which he hoped his book would correct.
# Although the industry has improved its safety record, more recent problems prove the accident's lessons must never be forgotten.
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