Tag Archives | Three Mile Island

Viewpoint: Lessons from Three Mile Island aren’t over

By on April 8, 2019 in Energy, Environmental Justice, Nuclear Power, Xcel Energy

Note: This was published in the Red Wing Republican Eagle on April 5, 2019. It is a shorter version of this previous post.

Alan Muller is an environmental consultant. He has been executive director of Green Delaware, an environmental and public advocacy organization in Delaware, since 1995, and before that was a contract consultant DuPont Co.’s engineering department. Muller focuses on environmental and health issues including energy; waste; incinerators; air, water and land quality and pollution; and climate change.

To ignore the human impacts of the nuclear industry is a moral failure

Forty years ago, on March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in central Pennsylvania partially melted down and experienced at least one explosion.

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40 years on, have we learned the lessons of Three Mile Island?

By on March 28, 2019 in Childrens' Health, City of Red Wing, climate change, Energy, Nuclear Power, Xcel Energy
Monticello nuke plant with tall stack for venting radioactives.


[Note: A version of this distributed by email had the wrong title. Apologies!]

40 years ago, on March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 nuclear power plant melted down and experienced a hydrogen explosion.  (Unit 1 has continued to run all these years but likely will be shut down soon as it loses a lot of money for the owners.) 

Days afterwards: “Governor Thornburgh advised pregnant women and pre-school age children to leave the area within a five-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice. This led to the panic the governor had hoped to avoid; within days, more than 100,000 people had fled surrounding towns.”

The cause was a combination of equipment failures, design defects, and operator errors.

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