The "Revisiting Disaster Again" Story

It was an ordinary day. Watching TV and revisiting Three Mile Island in Middletown, PA all over again. Back on February 15, 2010 I entered a blog story about the APBA Game Company in Lancaster and the problems at Three Mile Island. I can remember my family packing suitcases in case we would have to be evacuated. We lived 26 miles from the nuclear reactors and feared we might have to leave home. Luckily, it never happened. Seems like every time there is a nuclear disaster, Three Mile Island is going to be mentioned. My guess is that what is happening in Fukushima, Japan is much, much bigger and more disastrous than Three Mile Island. Radiation leaks from Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s earthquake and tsunami-stricken reactors represent the worst nuclear power plant accident since the meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine, almost 25 years ago. And it looks like is will get worse before it gets better. Three Mile Island's partial meltdown was in March of 1979 while the Chernobyl disaster was in April of 1986. In Chernobyl a reactor exploded, spewing a radioactive cloud across northern and western Europe. Chernobyl is somewhat different than Fukushima in that it had no containment vessel to block any radioactive release in case of a meltdown. 30 TONS of nuclear fuel were released at Chernobyl causing radiation 10,000 times higher than recorded around the Japanese plant. The Ukraine plant is still surrounded by a 18 mile zone too contaminated for people to inhabit. Dan T. of Lancaster was a quality control inspector at Three Mile Island in 1979 and says how scary it was, but that what is happening in Japan right now is 1,000 times worst. Here everything was contained, but in Japan the roof blew off allowing for the possibility of more radiation to be released. In 1979, Japanese nuclear industry professionals came to Three Mile Island to learn about what can be done in case of a disaster like we experienced. Let's hope that they learned enough to successfullycontain the radioactivity that they are now faced with. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Pixs from the top are: map showing distance of Lancaster from Three Mile Island, the cooling towers at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, a 1986 aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear plant and the explosion and fire in reactor four, view of the bedrooms in a kindergarten in the ghost town of Pripyat near Chernobyl, and the recent accident in Fukushima, Japan where the roofs of the reactors blew off.