People
died--and are still dying--at Three Mile Island.
As the
thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident
approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies
ever told in US industrial history.
As news of
the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no
radiation releases.
That
quickly proved to be false.
The public
was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate
pressure on the core.
Both those
assertions were false.
The public
was told the releases were "insignificant."
But stack
monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
later told Congress it did not know---and STILL does not know---how much
radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went.
Using
unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government
issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it
assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless,
among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated
fallout could come down heavily on specific areas.
Official
estimates said a uniform dose to all persons in the region was equivalent to a
single chest x-ray. But pregnant women are no longer x-rayed because it
has long been known a single dose can do catastrophic damage to an embryo or
fetus in utero.
The public
was told there was no melting of fuel inside the core.
But
robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt.
The public
was told there was no danger of an explosion.
But there
was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl
Unit Four did explode.
The public
was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area.
But
Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and
small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which
was showered with fallout.
In fact,
the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard
wisdom in the health physics community that---due in part to the extreme
vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the
weaknesses of old age---there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever
be found.
The public
was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the
health impacts of the accident.
In fact,
the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers
from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry,
misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent
tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.
The
federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's
residents.
In fact,
the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and
Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought
to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer,
leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and
much more.
A study by
Columbia University claimed there were no significant health impacts, but its
data by some interpretations points in the opposite direction. Investigations by epidemiologist Dr.
Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina, and others, led Wing to warn
that the official studies on the health impacts of the accident suffered from
"logical and methodological problems." Studies by Wing and by Arnie Gundersen,
a former nuclear industry official, being announced this week at Harrisburg,
significantly challenge official pronouncements on both radiation releases and
health impacts.
Gundersen,
a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says: "When I correctly interpreted the containment
pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI
accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than
the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked.
This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that
there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are
also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify
decreases in emergency planning and containment design."
Data unearthed by radiologist Dr. Ernest
Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh, and statisticians Jay Gould (now
deceased) and Joe Mangano of New York have led to strong assertions of major
public health impacts. On-going
work by Sternglass and Mangano clearly indicates that "normal"
reactor radiation releases of far less magnitude that those at TMI continue to
have catastrophic impacts on local populations.
Anecdotal
evidence among the local human population has been devastating. Large
numbers of central Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted
while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many
quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic
taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who
dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and who were exposed to nuclear tests in the
south Pacific and Nevada.
A series
of interviews conducted by Robbie Leppzer and compiled in a "a two-hour public radio
documentary VOICES FROM THREE MILE ISLAND (www.turningtide.com) give some
indication of the horrors experienced by the people of
central Pennsylvania.
They are
further underscored by harrowing broadcasts from then-CBS News anchor Walter
Cronkite (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-c1PrCLaRw) warning that "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."
In March
of 1980, I went into the region and compiled a range of interviews clearly
indicating widespread health damage done by radiation from the accident.
The survey led to the book KILLING OUR OWN, co-authored with Norman
Solomon, Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters (www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO.pdf) which correlated the damage done at TMI with that suffered during nuclear
bomb tests, atomic weapons production, mis-use of medical x-rays, the painting
of radium watch dials, uranium mining and milling, radioactive
fuel production, failed attempts at waste disposal, and more.
My
research at TMI also uncovered a plague of death and disease among the area's
wild animals and farm livestock. Entire bee hives expired immediately
after the accident, along with a disappearance of birds,
many of whom were found scattered dead on the ground. A rash of malformed
pets were born and stillborn, including kittens that could not walk and a dog
with no eyes. Reproductive rates among the region's
cows and horses plummeted.
Much of
this was documented by a three-person investigative team from the Baltimore
News-American, which made it clear that the problems could only have been
caused by radiation. Statistics from Pennsylvania's Department of
Agriculture confirmed the plague, but the state denied its existence, and said
that if it did exist, it could not have been caused by TMI.
In the
mid-1980s the citizens of the three counties surrounding Three Mile Island
voted by a margin of 3:1 to permanently retired TMI Unit One, which had been
shut when Unit Two melted. The Reagan Administration trashed the vote and
re-opened the reactor, which still operates. Its owners now seek a
license renewal.
Some 2400
area residents have long-since filed a class action lawsuit demanding
compensation for the plague of death and disease visited upon their families.
In the past quarter-century they have been denied access to the federal
court system, which claims there was not enough radiation released to do such
harm. TMI's owners did quietly pay out millions in damages to area
residents whose children were born with genetic damage, among other
things. The payments came in
exchange for silence among those receiving them.
But for
all the global attention focused on the accident and its health effects, there
has never been a binding public trial to test the assertion by thousands of
conservative central Pennsylvanians that radiation from TMI destroyed their
lives.
So while
the nuclear power industry continues to assert that "no one died at Three
Mile Island," it refuses to allow an open judicial hearing on the hundreds
of cases still pending.
As the
pushers of the "nuclear renaissance" demand massive tax- and
rate-payer subsidies to build yet another generation of reactors, they
cynically stonewall the obvious death toll that continues to mount at
the site of an accident that happened thirty years ago. The "see no
evil" mantra continues to define all official approaches to the victims of
this horrific disaster.
Ironically,
like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island Unit Two was a state-of-the-art reactor.
Its official opening came on December 28, 1978, and it melted exactly
three months later. Had it operated longer, the
accumulated radiation spewing from its core almost certainly would have been
far greater.
Every
reactor now operating in the US is much older---nearly all fully three decades
older---than TMI-2 when it melted. Their potential fallout that could
dwarf what came down in 1979.
But the
Big Lie remains officially in tact. Expect to hear all week that TMI was
"a success story" because "no one was killed."
But in
mere moments that brand new reactor morphed from a $900 million asset to a
multi-billion-dollar liability. It
could happen to any atomic power plant, now, tomorrow and into the future.
Meanwhile,
the death toll from America's worst industrial catastrophe continues to
rise. More than ever, it is
shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing "renaissance"
hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.