Three Mile Island: Is Thirty Years Is Enough to Forget?
Ah, nuclear power. It could be the greatest thing ever, except for all that radioactivity.
March 28, 2009 is the thirtieth anniversary of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station a bit south and downriver of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was a partial meltdown of the second reactor that released so many curies of radioactive materials. It’s how many curies that are still a point of contention. Officially, the numbers are low and no one was hurt; but one study has shown higher incidences of cancers in the area . The higher numbers could be unrelated, maybe even higher because newer tests find it earlier, so that’s inconclusive for many people. But would it be so hard to maybe do some more studies?
A New York Times article from 1981 reported that the State of Pennsylvania concluded that the accident had no effect on infant deaths around the time of the accident, despite admitting that numbers of deaths went up in the six months following the meltdown, jumping to 1.9% from a normal 1.3%. That may not seem like a big number, but that equates to six out of one thousand babies. Nobody likes dead babies, especially when it could have been prevented.
I am not saying that perhaps the scope of the danger involved was dismissed or covered up, but I’m also not saying it wasn’t. If you look up a chart on the rise of the nuclear power industry around the world, you see a definite plateau in the number of nuke plants starting just a few years after the accident at Three Mile Island, right around the time Chernobyl happened.
And as if the accidents were not bad enough, the idea of nuclear power as “clean” power is a bit of a myth, which undercuts the whole package of nuclear power generation. You see, nuclear power creates more than just water vapor (which is actually a “greenhouse gas”). It creates all kinds of long-lasting toxic waste that you don’t want in your backyard.
But it’s ok if it’s someone else’s yard…
I’m not trying to be coy. Just saying that nuclear fission-based power is not the answer we need to power the future responsibly.
nuclear power, Three Mile Island, TMI, nuclear plant, radioactivity, waste, Chernobyl, fission, accident, meltdown, reactor
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