The "A Funeral In Which The Pallbearers Need To Stand In Place for 500 years." Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just opened the mail and found my Reminisce and Smithsonian magazines had arrived.  Began leafing through the Smithsonian when I came to a page that had half-way down on the right-hand side of the page the word Meltdown in 24 point bold type.  Drew my attention so I immediately began reading and realized the story dealt with the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear reactor in nearby Middletown, Pennsylvania.  

Three Mile Island as seen the summer of 2018. Click to enlarge.

A short interview with the Mayor of Middletown followed which asked questions such as: How did he learn of the partial meltdown in one of the reactors?; when did the people who evacuated come back?; and How do locals feel about Three Mile Island today, as it considers closing this coming September?  It's been 40 years since the accident at Three Mile Island's Unit 2 reactor which had been in operation for only 90 days.  The accident began at 4 a.m. March 28, 1979 and was caused by a combination of human error, design deficiencies and equipment failures.  

A closer view of the cooling towers.

The accident caused a partial meltdown of the reactor core.  Didn't take long before everyone within 50 miles of TMI knew of the accident. Many residents immediately packed their bags and got as far away from the island on the Susquehanna River as they could.  Carol and I, along with our three children lived 29.8 miles from the plant.  What should we do?  It was a tense few days as we talked about packing our bags and heading away from our home in Lancaster.   March 28 was our oldest son's, Derek, 8th birthday and we had a party planned for him and about half a dozen of his friends at our home.  Should we have it?  Should we postpone it?  We decided to have the party and partway through the party we called the father of one of the boys whose father was a doctor and happened to work in radiology at the local hospital.  We asked him if it would be safe to allow the boys to play in the back yard.  

President Jimmy Carter and Pennsylvania Governor Dick
Thornburgh visit TMI after the reactor's partial meltdown.
President Carter in in the light-colored suit with Thornburgh
in the dark-colored suit behind him.

He assured us that the equipment that the hospital had on the roof was registering a normal amount of radiation in Lancaster.  Days passed and we continued to talk about what to do.  Pennsyl- 
vania's Governor Dick Thornburgh and then-President Jimmy Carter were photographed four days after the accident taking a tour of the reactor's control room as a publicity photo to show the plant's neighbors that it was safe to remain in their homes.  Since that time in history the Unit 2 reactor has remained empty.  

TMI technicians enter the containment building that housed
the disabled reactor.  Couldn't pay me enough to go in there! 

And now, it looks as if the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant will close because of the cost and safety associated with keeping it open.  What will happen to all that radioactive fuel that produced all that electricity for years?  It was back in 1982 that the U.S. Government promised to have a safe national repository for nuclear fuel by 1998.  But, no repository had been built.  Nuclear plants have been forced to build above-ground miniature fortresses and to arrange to maintain them indefinitely, even after all workers have been dismissed.  When TMI closes, it will not be cleaned-up, because there is no where for the nuclear waste to go.  There will still be a high-level of radioactive waste sitting in the middle of the Susquehanna Island with someone overlooking it forever.  Eric Epstein, a member of the TMI Alert nuclear watchdog group said, "This is a funeral in which the pallbearers need to stand in place for 500 years."  The dismantled nuclear plant will have to be guarded for my lifetime and my great-grand children's lifetime and for many years after that.  Environmental monitoring will continue forever.  

Another photograph I took this past summer.

The estimated cost to decommission the plant so far is $1.27 billion!  And...it will never end!!  My home in Lancaster should be safe, but I doubt that you will find many new homes being built on the hills overlooking TMI.  How would you like to be the owner of the land around TMI.  Gonna be worthless if it hasn't been for years already!  Carol and I got up enough courage this past summer and made our way to TMI to take photographs for a story I posted on my blog.  I'll tell you, it was scary seeing the steam emanating from the cooling towers.  I know the steam is not dangerous, but the perception that it looks like it is spewing death from those concrete circular stacks is scary.  I got my photos and drove away from the place as quickly as possible.  It took me almost 40 years to gain the courage to get close enough for photos, and it will probably be the last time I will ever get that close again.  Living 29.8 miles away is close enough. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

PS - For just about 20 years now, tons of Cold War-era waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research across the U.S. has been stashed in the salt caverns that make up the underground facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Seems that what was promised in 1982 finally was built.  The state of New Mexico wasn't happy about having all the waste in their neck-of-the-woods, but some argued that New Mexico had a moral obligation given its legacy of uranium mining and its role in the development of the atomic bomb.  The problem for them now is keeping the 18-wheelers away from the big cities while delivering the atomic waste to Albuquerque.  Isn't life full of adventures?

This photograph shows a tunnel inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant No 2 in New Mexico.  It is 150 feet below the surface.  I'm just glad that's not me driving the golf cart into the tunnel!