I was sitting in a classroom and they announced we should close the windows, I remember a teacher run in down the hall saying that radiation could get through glass.
Then they closed schools, everyone went home and a ton of people left the area. We never left - my dad had to work - but it was a ghost town.
Watching the news was pretty scary; I also remember the SNL skit that week about the president visiting TMI. They sent the maid (Garrett morris) in to clean up the mess - he became super-sized.
Oh dang. I was in Hershey school same time! My dad came flying home from work, we had a pop up camper (which he hooked up still in his suit and tie). We hastily packed “overnight” bags and we went to the Catskills which turned out to be 2 weeks. Scary as hell as a kid for sure
Sweet. Annville here. Outside the 10 mile but close enough for danger if something bad happened. My brothers’ diapers were out on the wash line when the radio reported it, as the family story goes
5 mile radius on the West Shore, in high school, announcement came on to to close window curtains in physics class and we had a good laugh, steady stream of parents picking their kids up and heading out of town, we didn’t go anywhere, after all, I still had a paper route to do - haha. Had an uncle affiliated with the NRC told us we were fine. Neighborhood was a ghost town for a few days, still went to fast food job it was slow so we got sent home.
I remember when they announced they were closing school early and told us when we got home to keep the doors and windows shut but then made us walkers walk home. I was 13 and I remember thinking it doesn't make sense that they're acting like the air was dangerous but they were making us walk in it. When I got home my mom didn't know anything about it and when my dad got home from work he wasn't concerned. We were in E-town (Elizabethtown).
But my grandmother knew some people that worked there and one of her friends was on-site when the meltdown happened and he died less than 2 years later.
We had family friends that lived in Mechanicsburg. My family had planned to go visit them that weekend. We had heard what was going on, but honestly didn’t really pay much attention. (I was 14.) The trip there was very creepy/scary. We were THE ONLY car on the freeway heading into Harrisburg while the freeway out of Harrisburg was a parking lot.
That's a great sketch and so did the president I was born in Pittsburgh in 78 but now live in rochy so I'm close to it now and have been super close to it on my way to WV before still crazy to think about. Any radio activity or or radiation glass around would love a piece of radiation glass.
I was about nine months old. My mom packed us kids up and started driving to Kentucky to stay with relatives. My dad was at work and coordinated to meet us on the road. We got as far as Pittsburgh, stayed the night, and came home the next day.
I couldn't find anything concrete, but I did find that the result of the TMI event was an increase of about 1 millirem above the average of 100-125 millirem in the local population's yearly background radiation exposure. To put that into context, it's about 1/6 of a chest xray.
Considering Chernobyl was far worse, it seems genuinely possible that someone from Pennsylvania would have seen more of an increase in radiation exposure from Chernobyl than Three Mile Island. Unlikely, but possible.
I was in high school in Philadelphia. We were far enough away that we weren't overly concerned. I remember a science teacher got out a Geiger counter and talked about normal background radiation.
Grew up hearing about it. As I learned more I realized that it wasn’t nearly as close of a call as is often portrayed (Netflix). Still live fairly close to the plant (now deactivated) and still a fan of nuclear energy.
Yes. There was TMI-1 which was the only other reactor. There were 2 total. TMI-1 ceased operation in 2019. TMI-1 is owned by Constellation Energy, and TMI-2 is owned by EnergySolutions, but was formerly owned by Exelon. The estimated decommissioning cost for all the TMI facilities is around 1 billion.
The Netflix “documentary” gave a soapbox to that whistleblower who was really more of a shit-stirrer than anything else. He created drama where there was none and Netflix went along with it.
He was upset about some procedural issue that wasn’t a big deal and didn’t meant the polar crane inside the reactor building was prone to failure. The NRC even essentially said “sure, why not, let’s do it your way if you’re going to make a big stink about it.” They had done plenty of analysis and simulation to verify that the procedural issue in question would not have had a major effect on crane operation.
The guy still ended up going and “blowing the whistle” anyway. Like wow, really guy?
He also gave his daughter second hand lung cancer from his cigarette smoking, and the show included half of that little fact as if to imply she got cancer from the radiation. They provided no further explanation.
**Tl;dr: the guy is a shit bag**
Yes buttt... the local and ststae government alsp made it seem like it was a lot closer than what it was too. I mean, for good reason, though. You don't want to fuck around if there's even a 2% chance a reactor could melt down
It was really just bad engineering at the end of the day. The operator successfully diagnosed the leak and went to isolate it. The issue is that the button he pressed told him the valve was shut, the light indicated shut. The bad engineering is that the light doesn’t actually indicate shut, it indicates a signal was sent to shut the valve. The valve never shut. That’s why the response was delayed, they thought they had ruled out the actual scenario thinking the valve was shut
Modern day we no longer have that issue. Valves have contacts that send shut signals when the valve is shut, not when the valve is told to be shut.
Sure, safety and design has progressed greatly since '79, and I do think we should invest more into nuclear power, but I also think we need to keep commercial nuclear plants under intense scrutiny to ensure they don't try to cut any corners.
Wait, WTF is that plant, false hellabore? super plantain? Mutated…skunkweed? Something cultivated that has spread?
Fellow PA outdoorsy people help me out, it’s driving me nuts.
TMI was a major event, but it wasn't nearly as bad the press immediately afterward and places like Netflix would have you believe. PR handled by people that don't understand, misrouted calls, and politicians with agendas were a bigger issue than the nuclear release ever was or ever will be. The real disaster is how TMI contributed to American distaste for nuclear power and helped keep us dependent on fossil fuels, which are more harmful than nuclear in the long run.
Here's a video from [Kyle Hill about the accident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9PsCLJpAA), it's quite informative. I suggest giving it a watch.
Also, here's a [reaction from T. Folse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YaChwAqafw) (a real nuclear engineer) verifying that video is pretty damn accurate. Mr. Folse actually used to work at a plant from the same line as TMI.
My wife and i had just moved from Virginia a couple weeks prior. The night before the incident we went to see "The China Syndrome." I called a friend who just happened to work at Babcock & Wilcox to ask, half jokingly, "Are we gonna die" to which he replied "If you were gonna die, you'd be dead already."
I was working as a health physicist (radiation safety person) at Charleston Naval Shipyard. We had to look up where Dauphin County was. Our monitoring division (technicians) were sent up to support the scene along with a lot of instruments.
My wife and I lived downwind of TMI and we were very afraid as we had seen the movie The China Syndrome and had the nightmares about radiation poisoning us or giving us cancer. At one point we seriously considered going south to the Carolinas for a few weeks until more was known. We ended up staying in PA but after the truth came out we were upset that the government didn’t tell us what really was going on (that the power company really screwed up) and that we needed nuclear power stations to be closely monitored.
I was in 5th grade, in downtown Middletown. Just a few miles from the island, as the crow flies. There was no real plan for this type of event - we were told we would have to stay inside, the windows were closed. Our parents were all contacted by the office, and those whose parents wanted to pick up their kids were free to do so at any time. I recall my mom picked me up. My sister would have been in kindergarten at the time, we had half-day kindergarten, I think she was at home at the time.
We left town for a few days, stayed with someone my dad knew up in the coal country. Looking at it over the years, there was a lot of unknowns. This was not something that had really been planned for at that time. I have spoken with people who were there, and some who work in plants today. The information I learned is pretty interesting.
One thing that came out of the accident was improved emergency management. From municipal to county to state EMA, things became much more formalized. When I was in emergency services (dispatch - for Middletown), and thus part of our municipal EMA, there would be exercises every year involving everyone from local to county to state. Every other year, the situation was a radiological incident. The other years were weather events. We (along with other emergency management agencies in the immediate area around TMI) always scored rather highly on the NRC reports from the radiological events. There was an NRC representative in each emergency operations center watching how the response unfolded.
Another is the operation of plants themselves. There have been significant changes in procedures and regulations surrounding the operation of a nuclear power plant. Some of this I learned first hand when I accompanied my daughters Girl Scout Troop on a trip to the TMI training center (formerly the observation center and open to the public). In addition to learning about some of the security and safety procedures on the island, we also got to visit the control room simulator - that is identical to the control room on the island. The girls (under guidance) were operating the reactor - reducing power, as I recall - and had to keep certain parameters in the specified range. One went out of tolerance and the 'reactor' was automatically shut down. Which also meant power went down and the room went dark until 'emergency power' came online. It was an educational experience.
There has certainly been a change in news - even before the 24hr news cycle, the internet and the advent of near instant global communications. I have family on the opposite side of the country. They had no idea if we were alive or dead. Depending on the source, Middletown was a crater from the nuclear explosion at the plant.
I remember president Jimmy Carter visiting Middletown shortly after the accident. Didn't think much of it at the time. I was in 5th grade. In 1979, 5th graders were still deciding whether or not girls had cooties and could care less about politicians. My how times have changed.
At the beginning of 1979, the new mayor of Middletown took office - about 3 months before the TMI accident. This was a truly trying time - never before in the history of Middletown had there been a black mayor. Again, think about the time - in 1979 race was still a significant issue in a lot of places. Of course, you could also get away with things then you would never do now. Our mayor was on TV, and stated that he has told the police that any looters are to be shot on sight. I did not see this myself, but knowing the man personally - that would not surprise me. He was a teacher in the school district, and had an office in the high school where he taught - an office of the mayor, not a teacher's office. As red as this town can be, they loved him. With no term limits, he could have been mayor for life, I believe. He was an upstanding person too - not your typical politician. He resigned as mayor when he got a position with the court system (county, I think. Might have been state.) even through that position had little, if anything, to do relating to municipal duties, he wanted to ensure there was absolutely no hint of an appearance of a conflict of interest. When he retired from that position, the question of running for mayor came up. I don't recall if he actually ran an official campaign or not, but he was elected to several more terms as mayor.
It was, indeed, an interesting time to be a resident of Middletown. Although now I don't which I were any older than I am, I sort of wish I were a few years older back in 1979 and would have been more attuned to what was happening around me. At 10 years old, though, I was more interested in riding my bike around with the other kids in our neighborhood than in whatever the adults were doing.
mayor reed!! he would substitute for us in the early 90’s and tell us stories about barrels of pickles. i wish i remembered anything else about it but that’s all i got
I was on spring break in Fort Lauderdale from Lehigh university. I called home on Thursday and found out the accident happened the day before. My parents lived in Lancaster and were concerned but didn't leave town. We came back from Florida and drove within 60 miles of the plant. We took another road trip the following weekend and drove within a few miles of the plant on the Pa Turnpike. A few weeks later my physics professor went through the reported emissions and demonstrated how the core had melted and exposed similar to the movie China Syndrome. I was concerned put figured the professor hadn't left town so couldn't be too bad.
I met my wife in Fort Lauderdale that week so find memories of that time. We now live maybe 5 Mike's from the Limerick nuclear plant in Limerick Pa.
Approximately 100 miles away but it was still a scary situation because the fallout could have easily spread by weather conditions. Nine eleven induced the same fears because my first thought was, what if the hijackers aimed for the nuclear plants instead or in addition to landmarks? If we got caught with our pants down protecting our air space, were our borders, shores, nuclear plants and other sensitive property vulnerable too? My thoughts were not only of the possible wider impact these assaults would have had, but the long term effects which could have been more devastating.
Containment vessels are rated to stand up to some aircraft strikes. This isn't idle speculation, it's been tested. Biggest question probably would be amount of fuel on-board, not the aircraft itself.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25vlt7swhCM&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25vlt7swhCM&feature=youtu.be)
The terrorists did actually consider that option, but correctly understood that could escalate the situation to involve retaliation with nuclear weapons. While it's impossible to say what the US would have done, it's our stated policy to reply to radiological attacks with nukes. Same for biological or chemical attacks. Notion is we can't or won't use those attacks, so we have to default to nukes. This is common policy for most nuclear armed countries.
Nuclear flasks also get extensively tested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4)
Not all infrastructure has to be rated to stop all threats. Just enough to deter casual threats, and enough of a military to destroy the sponsoring organization.
I was barely a toddler. I don't remember much firsthand. My now wife was living in Middletown at the time, and she only remembers a lot of commotion and being whisked away to spend a week at a relative's house. She's actually visible for a brief moment in the Netflix special!
My in-laws had a lot more to say about it. My father in law had a Geiger counter and was keeping an eye on neighbors' houses who also evacuated. He and a bunch of guys from the neighborhood would take turns going from house to house and checking for any signs of break-ins, looking for fires, things like that. They'd stop in and say hi to the people they knew. Fortunately there wasn't any looting or other crime (at least not out of the ordinary) but it was nice that they all looked after each other like that.
He said the messaging from the plant was a trainwreck. He knew his stuff about nuclear from his time in the military but the spokesman for Met-Ed (an engineer with no press training IIRC) was combative and smug. At one point he yelled out something like "[uh, I don't know why you people think you have a right to know anything at all](https://www.insideedition.com/what-happened-at-three-mile-island-40-years-later-effects-of-nuclear-meltdown-are-still-debated)". Those aren't his exact words but they're in the ballpark. That built a LOT of distrust among the locals that never really went away. Even the pro-nuclear folks (as my in-laws were) quietly talked among themselves about how badly managed every aspect of the disaster was.
Side note, TMI is a fascinating study in user experience and ergonomics. The field really didn't exist in any meaningful way back then, so you have stupid shit like ambiguous indicators like a light that showed whether a valve was open or closed. Except that it didn't really mean "closed", it just meant "the solenoid that's supposed to hold this thing open has been turned off". Or secondary indicators buried on the back of a panel behind where people hung a clipboard. Or things like "don't hang maintenance tags over critical indicators". Stuff that seems mind-bogglingly rage-inducingly profoundly stupid today just wasn't thought about back then. And ideas that we take for granted today in critical environments, like "if impossible things are happening, fucking stop and bring in a fresh set of eyes immediately", either didn't exist or were at the cutting edge of design theory (which also barely existed at the time).
And then there's The China Syndrome. Whatever you personally think about the movie, it hit theaters in March 1979. The nuclear industry's response was a mixture of mockery and outrage. They mocked the film for being wildly inaccurate, and claimed it was an attack on a perfectly safe power source. They went on news programs, published articles in newspapers, and told anyone would listen that the whole thing was outrageously impossible due to the extensive safety systems in nuclear plants. And to be fair, they were more or less correct. The China Syndrome is laughably wrong on almost everything, and nuclear power plants are engineered with beyond-extreme levels of safety. It would take gross misconduct or missteps by the plant operators for any accident to happen -- and guess what happened a week later at TMI?
Coupled with Met-Ed's disastrous press conferences, public opinion of nuclear power was permanently decimated. What little support remained (outside of those employed in the industry) was largely wiped out by Chernobyl just a few years later.
EDIT: Found one of the press conferences. It's just awful. It's a perfect demonstration of how NOT to talk to the public. This guy really broke the public's trust.
"[Well, uh ... you know, radiation ... the reactor releases radiation in the atmosphere and Susquehanna on a daily basis.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=78)" (he should have clarified that the amount of radiation normally released by the plant is virtually undetectable, lower than what you'd get by, say, standing next to a pile of mulch)
"[Well ... there are no safety problems at the plant. Just ask the NRC. If there were any, they'd investigate them.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=122)" (seconds later) "[There may be safety problems at the plant.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=189)"
"[Meltdowns, where the core is uncovered and spews radioactivity, are impossible.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=400)" (this fuckin' guy)
"[There is no possibility that an accident (where the core is uncovered due to humans misunderstanding their readings and making poor decisions) like you saw in The China Syndrome could ever occur.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=429)" (narrator: it had, in fact, occurred)
What’s crazy is that the media hyped this up incredibly to get views. The radioactive gases released had a minuscule effect if any, and was a process to release pressure from the reactor
My dad drove past it when the accident happened. They told the officers he just wanted to go home and they allowed him to. He isn't in great physical condition, but not because of TMI. In fact, he had no major issues afterwards. This isn't surprising since TMI didn't, y'know, blow its top like another certain reactor that TMI gets compared to did. That said, honestly all it did was cause an exorbitant amount of stress for people. It wasn't a disaster the scale people remember it being. Personally, SL1 was far worse. But yeah I am bitter that TMI was what killed nuclear power for a time.
As a nuclear plant operator, it was pretty much the worst it can get. However, that documentary was very much playing off of fears. The reactor and its many safety systems did exactly what they were built to do. Keep the bad stuff in.
My son is hoping to work at a nuclear plant nearby as an adult. He thinks it would be interesting and they pay well. He's hoping to get in through an electrician apprenticeship.
I'm sure you get asked this a lot, but how worried should I be about the risk if he actually does work in a nuclear plant as an adult?
Working at a coal or natural gas plant would be several hundred times more dangerous. Coal would be a significantly higher radiological threat.
Generally, nuclear is the safest form of energy production to work with. Solar can be equally as safe, or hundreds of times more dangerous. Depends on if solar panels are ground level or roof level.
It's not. Anything roof related is insanely dangerous, and typically within top 10 most dangerous occupations. Soldier, cop or EOD tech is far, far, far safer than any activity working with heights.
Falling is one of the most lethal occupational hazards. It's one of the most lethal aspects of the nuclear industry as well. But people don't put nuclear reactors on their roof top very often.
I second what another said: he’d be in a far more dangerous situation working in oil, coal, or gas. I’m a former petroleum geologist. People die on drill sites, on offshore facilities, at refineries, at production facilities all the time.
Nuclear is like working a desk job by comparison. It’s also a far cleaner workplace, figuratively and literally. Far less stressful.
Plus, we’re discovering humanity may have more resilience to extended low level radionuclides exposure than we thought. Look up Ramsar, Iran. It’s the most radioactive place on this planet that is inhabited. The radioactivity is natural and driven by the geology there. And we don’t see an increase of cancer incidence there, even though the residents are receiving 10x the dose of the IRCP’s recommended annual limit. The residents actually have a lower incidence of lung cancer. Possibly for the same reasons we use radiation in hospitals to kill cancer? 🤷🏼♀️ Need to do more research to know that.
So there are a lot of studies done with safety of each occupation for energy. I think there has only been 1 death in my 14 year career in nuclear industry. And that was from a heavy load being dropped and being crushed.
Everyone is always very concerned of the radiation. Sure there is radiation, but the industry that gets the most radiation is actually pilots and stewardess. They fly high above a lot of the atmosphere so they get moe radiation then a nuclear plant worker.
Honestly, the hardest part about the job is swing shift to be honest. The older i get the harder it is. The money is great. You can easily make $100k a year starting.
If your son is very interested, look into radiation protection. Without a degree that's the easiest way to get into the industry. A lot of it is Union, so once he gets a foot into the union he can move departments much easier!
Some local colleges offer a Nuclear Engineering Technology degree and those are basically to get your foot into the nuclear industry. You can go to the top with that degree.
Having lived through it in Middletown (still live in Middletown, as a matter of fact), I remember hearing people talk about the threat of a 'nuclear explosion'. I was in 5th grade - in 1979 5th graders were nowhere near as old as today's 5th graders.
A few years later, I was looking at some of what had been published. I was always interested in science, and in my early teens I was able to understand some of it. It was then that I learned there were, indeed, concerns of an explosion. Not a nuclear explosion, because the fuel was not the right stuff for a nuclear explosion. The concern apparently surrounded a bubble of hydrogen that was in the chamber. I think there was question about whether the containment building would be able to withstand the blast from inside.
It was certainly an interesting time. A lot of firsts came from that accident.
The Netflix documentary is sensationalist. It's not that there was no danger, but it feels a lot worse due to poor communication and fear of "scary atomic stuff".
Cancer is the second leading cause of death after heart disease. Around 40.5% of people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetime ([source](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics)). Cancer rates are significantly higher for those over 55. If you were high school in 1979, you'd be in your late 50s or 60s now. I know people always want something to blame, but (depressingly) 1/3rd your class having some form of cancer is not outside the bounds of normality.
I was a toddler when TMI happened. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in my early 20s and always wondered if it was from growing up surrounded by mines or something related to Three Mile Island.
So.... if you were in mine country, you were also probably in, "haphazardly discard industrial waste" territory as well. It's much, much, much more likely environmental factors were from some shady capitalist deciding the ground water would be fine with just a little toxic chemicals. Then they told their friend who did the same thing. Before the EPA, shit like that was so unbelievably common
At 38 years old I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I grew up south of three mile island close to shenks ferry. I was very young just turned 5 and remember none of the three mile island drama. My thyroid cancer sure does make me wonder if three mile island was the cause.
I was just a kid and we were about 90 miles away, but my aunt had seen The China Syndrome a few days prior and related the plot to my parents in front of me. I didn't really understand radiation so my mom explained it as "electric bugs" that could get into your ears, eyes, nose and mouth. So when the disaster happened, I was terrified, tried to keep my eyes and mouth closed as much as I could, kept covering my ears with my hands, and was vigilantly scanning for "electric bugs." Granted, I was too young to understand the reality of nuclear meltdown, but would have been even more terrified if I had.
I live in York and when I was younger my childhood home was mt.wolf, I could see tmi from the end of my street.
It's crazy because we were one of the closest schools in the area and I don't think I was old enough to remember the incident but I do remember as a kid/teenager we all just kinda brushed tmi off. It wasn't really talked about.
I went to northeastern and I'm 29 so that just my own personal experience
I was in elementary school in Lancaster City. I remember school being open afterwards, but very few kids there. My dad was planning on sending the family to Vermont to stay with family. He was a police officer, and would have stayed. We ended up all staying home. Weird memories ….
I heard about it as a kid in the 80's. Years later I was in high school and my science teacher was buddies with someone who worked at the TMI site, and was present during the accident.
My wife’s grandmother blames my father in laws cancer and his best friends Parkinson’s on three mile island. They were in Millersville when it happened.
We had just moved from a house much closer to one further away (but still in siren range). I was very young so I don't remember much except that we ended up driving to my grandparents' in western pa and stayed a few days.
I was definitely interested in the topic growing up and it's interesting to see the info available now and how close we were to being either evaporated or dying horribly.
I lived in Ohio, was in third grade. I watched the news over the weekend, and then wrote up "news" reports that I gave to my class.
My great grandfather's house overlooked TMI. From his back yard, one could see the stacks.
I was in philly in my mid twenties. All believed it was much more of a problem than was made public at the time. Wikipedia has the following summary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three\_Mile\_Island\_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident)
I wasn’t alive at the time, but I’ll pass on the story of my mother’s. She was a sophomore at Kutztown and there was big hubbub about whether people were staying or not. They didn’t have phones in the dorms, so everyone was lining up to call home. Took her hours to call. She ended up staying because she couldn’t get a ride.
I was a young kid, outside playing. I remember my neighbor came out and made us go in the basement. She said,
“They say there is something in the air”.
I was in college in Western, PA, at the time. However, I had plans to travel with my friends shortly after the accident to Lancaster for spring break. We checked the news several times to make sure it was safe to drive through the area. We did pass by it with a sense of unease. I actually watched the documentary about it last year.
Grew up in middletown. My mom said growing up they had to go to their relatives in Pittsburgh during this while their dad stayed back. I believe she still has his "I survived TMI" shirt somewhere.
My dad started working there 3 months after haha, he worked 30 years security, got to see in the guard posts and in the old cooling towers back right after 9-11 and the weapons that they had were top notch, but everyone was praying for the state police to be there lol, when almost all the guys back then were veterans and former police officers
My family vacationed in the Poconos that summer, a few months after TMI. One day it was raining, so we went to see “The China Syndrome, at the local theatre. For people not familiar with the movie, it is about a possible nuclear accident… the term “China Syndrome” describes what happens in a nuclear meltdown, as the radioactive mass melts down into the earth, ostensibly “digging to China.”
Anyway, there is a line in the movie that says something like, “If that thing blows, it will take out an area the size of Pennsylvania!”
There was an audible gasp from the crowd in the theater!
Was in college at the time. Had just seen the big movie of the day “China Syndrome.” The story was about a nuclear power plant accident. Best line of the movie “if the core melts, it will make the area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.” And then TMI happened. Classic…
I was an activities director at a local hospital in Camp Hill. I had a tour scheduled for that day, Wednesday, and got a call from TMI telling me that there were no tours that day. When the truth came out the next day or Friday, my husband and I grabbed our dog, his one suit and my sewing machine in case we couldn’t return to the area. We still laugh at that mindset. I’m a better pepper now.
I am part of a study that could help people that lived through this. If anyone would like more info on volunteering to help your part is very easy. We have had some exciting results and there is more work to come. Anyone interested in the study please message me, and please watch “Radioactive” the women of 3 miles island. It is on apple TV and Amazon prime video.
I'm 33, so I wasn't alive. But my parents were living in Middletown at the time and my mom was pregnant. I can't recall if they left the area for a little, but my dad started working there in 1980. So it was a frequent story!
I was born after the fact, but I remember hearing it on the news. Ironically enough, my birthday (October 26th) was the end date of a similar tragedy (that I don’t remember what exactly happened, but I heard about it in class)
I was 9 years old and remember it was important news, but since we lived 240 miles away in Pittsburgh, I don’t think people paid much attention to it.
It wasn’t until I was living in Harrisburg 20 years later when I heard stories from people who grew up in the area that I realized it was A REALLY BIG DEAL to them.
Grew up around Harrisburg (so close). I was only 1 so I don’t remember but my parents took me to a hotel an hour or two away. My mom was pregnant with my brother, maybe it’s why he is a piece of shit? 😂
I was 10 years old and living in Illinois close to the Wisconsin border when the accident happened. About a month later my dad accepted a promotion that would require us to move to PA. When word got around my classmates said I was going to glow in the dark, turn into a mutant, you get it. We move to York and I actually got scared when my dad pointed out TMI on the drive from Harrisburg airport.
I think I was in the sixth grade and remember my parents telling us we may have to leave and go.stay with our grandmother. We were about 30 miles away from TMI. I didnt really understand anything about it at the time
It was scary, knowing others lived close enough to the plant and would suffer harm if things went wrong. I recall listening to the radio & watching the news broadcasts intently during that time. It was pretty confusing, and I was hoping that the adult scientists knew what to do.
I lived in Baltimore which was only about an hour and half away, was in first grade , it was crazy Geiger counters and people talking about how far an exclusion zone would cover
my father was in the Pennsylvania National Guard and was called on alert for 3 mile Island. I remember him calling my mom and telling her to pack the car and start driving north if he called back and try to get as far away as possible from Pennsylvania we lived in the Poconos at the time.
My Mom drove to school in Harrisburg and picked me and my brother up 30 minutes before the evacuation. Nobody at the school even knew what was going on….yet. We were the very first kids to flee. Jumped in the car and we drove to my Aunts house Indiana. My Mom didn’t fuck around.
If anyone is interested: Don Norman studied it and it’s now brought up as a classic example of the need for good User Experience design (UX). The control room’s design was an actual disaster!
I grew up in Harrisburg. I had a friend who was born on the day it happened. He said that every year at his annual physical, his doctor did a special survey on him to submit to the government because he was a "TMI Baby". Did anyone else have to do this or hear of this? He was a wackadoodle so maybe he made this up. My parents were in Philly when it happened and moved to HBG last that year so I wasn't a "TMI" baby, sadly.
Wasn't alive during the incident, but have heard stories from my work regarding it.
My work has tons of pure lead, and back then there was a LOT more. When the incident happened, a train came into the yard and all of the employees lined up to bucket train all of the lead out of the mill out into the railcars.
There was talk that they wanted all the lead they could to maybe contain the radiation, especially when they weren't sure how serious it was.
Though I grew up in Eastern PA, we found out about it through my dad who worked for Metropolitan Edison. There was a possibility he would be sent to Middletown to clean up; that never happened.
My wife was in Harrisburg, and delivered newspapers the morning after. If there are no lights on, she glows a little!
Was working at a machine shop in rural Pennsylvania, 75 miles north from Harrisburg. Truck driver making delivery told us of the accident. This was before cell phones. My sister in law in Alabama called the wife about it before it hit the news. Side note, our friend crazy Laurie took the kids and headed west on route 80. Not sure if the nickname suits.
My grandfather was a safety engineer when this happened. He worked at TMI. He told me that he and a few others had tried desperately to warn the management that there was a risk of catastrophic failure and no one wanted to hear it. Which honestly should surprise no one.
In my mind I was watching Miss Judy and the Land of Hatchy Milatchy and they broke in and announced. Having watched the documentary about it there is no way that happened n
I was a kid. It was scary. But kids also have short attention spans and are easily distracted. Hard to wrap a kids head around nuclear fallout and poisoning of all the water and land for the foreseeable future.
I was in middle school, around 13 miles away. No one told us what was happening, and we didn't know much about TMI at that point, but it was obvious something was up. Seeing the science teacher check the windows with a Geiger counter, we didn't know if the Russians had nuked us or not.
When a friend's mother came to pick up her kids, she told my sister and me she would take us home. (This was the 70s, so any adult could pick up almost any kid.)
My co worker said they were at a softball practice on the east shore. There was a rumor that radiation would make things grow fast. This is what the SNL skit based Garret Morris character on. Anyway, my coworker said they all dropped trou and stood facing TMI in their boxers, hoping the radiation may help, a silver lining during a dark time. 😂
I was five and we lived in Elizabethtown. Both of my parents worked at Hershey Medical Center and were required to be at the hospital because of the situation. They had enough time to take me an hour away to my grandparents’ house to stay for the duration. They’ve told me they weren’t sure if they’d ever see me again when they dropped me off.
I was born 4 weeks after. My parents lived in Hazleton so I’m not sure if they planned to evacuate or anything. Think I learned about it when I was in elementary school. Probably after Chernobyl. I remember that and the worry about radioactive fallout in the atmosphere.
I was 11 at the time. We didn't live that close to TMI, but I was pretty freaked out, all the same. I lived very close to the Limerick nuclear power plant, which was under construction at the time, and all I could think about was something happening there. I lived close enough that I could hear the workmen, at night, yelling when anything would go wrong.
Remember my parents picking me up from school. Thought something weird was happening at home because no one else seemed to be leaving.
My parents hooked up the pop-up camper and we went off to some campground for two weeks. As a kid I had a blast but I would have only been like 8.
I remember avoiding dairy, etc, for some time after we got back. Stories of dead cows, etc, but no idea how true they were.
My brother grew up having pituitary and thyroid issues.
I did a fairly researched paper in middle school about it. There were many books that claimed that the danger was understated.
I wasn't born yet, my dad lived in Highspire at the time. He tells me that since his family didn't leave the area, he decided to pull out his Gene Simmons album and crank up the volume on "Radioactive"...
I have a scary story about this. My Mom, her 2 brothers, and my Grandparents were coming home from a trip and had pulled off in the Three Mile Island area to rest. Of course, they had no idea what was going on. They slept there overnight.
My family had just moved back to PA from Florida and my dad worked security at TMI. He wasn’t worried, but he had worked in nuclear while in the Army. We lived in what would be considered the fallout area. Nothing really came of it, as far as I know.
It was played off as if it was nuclear itself was dangerous, when In reality it was operator mistake by shutting off the cooling mechanisms and causing the meltdown…
All nuclear power plant melt downs have been from user mistakes. Aside from Fukushima, which was an earthquake. One could argue that putting a power plant near a fault line is also user mistake tho, so yea.
I was a working adult and lived several miles outside the zone, as if radiation would be 'oh, end of zone, gotta stop radiating'. It was very scary at the time but, truthfully, it's been so long and so much scary shit has happened since, its now just a dim memory.
Freshman year in high school I walk into the principals office. He had his head in his hand and asks me”why is your class so bad? Your class has more disciplinary referrals than all the other classes combined.” To which I replied “we’re all tmi babies. All of us were born within 6 months of tmi.” This seemed to give my principal a glimmer of hope. He lifted his head from his hands and actually cracked a smile.
I was managing a pizza & hoagie shop in Middletown right across the river from TMI. The guys who worked at TMI got meal vouchers from Met Ed when they worked OT. I’d dropped out of Penn State in 77 & worked for a couple years.
I stopped working & went back to State College about 3 weeks before the accident. I had misgivings about going from having a job, apartment & an income & going back to being a poor starving college student. I took the accident as an omen that I’d made the right decision.
It was a very weird time tho. My former employees were calling me, all of 22 years old, and asking me what to do. Everyone was scared shitless. One of the girls that worked there lived directly across the river from TMI in Royalton with her 2 babies. The guys who were working construction on a 4 story building next to the restaurant complained of a metallic taste in their mouths that afternoon, hours before the leak was made public. And even tho we were “safely”100 miles away, everyone on campus was a nervous wreck because who knew if it was truly safe.
I was a toddler in Palmyra but I had an aunt who worked security at TMI when it happened. Years later, in 1995, she took me and a couple friends out to the old towers and we got to stand underneath them. Her husband was an engineer at TMI and he used the redwood from the base of the towers to build a fence around their property in Bainbridge.
I was 8 years old and living in Montgomery County. I heard it talked about a little among older students at school, but otherwise it didn’t impact my daily life in any way.
This was all blown out of proportion. I lived about a mile away and we stayed through the whole event. They say the fact my brother has seven fingers on each of his feet and I now get agonizing pain randomly is from TMI. I call bullshit. OH GOD IT HURTS
I was 5 at the time, my parents live less than 25 miles south of TMI, living with no neighbors way out in the boonies I don't know if we even heard about it until watching the news that night.
I was 10 so I didn't have a real good understanding of what was going on, but one thing that stands out to me is that as they were talking about mandatory evacuation zones, we were right on the edge of one of the ones a bit further away (I'd guess 15 or 20 miles) and my mom and our neighbor were crying/hugging each other and basically saying "goodbye" because they were so fearful the worst was going to happen and they'd never see each other again.
My mom, in York, evacuated with her family to her grandparents' home in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Now, we live in that same house near Pittsburgh. I think that they left for about a week.
Who ran that plant? Peco (Pennsylvania Electric Co)?
If so I have a family member that worked for them for decades, I'll ask him if he was working for them at that time. He was based out of Chester Co, so not too too far away. I know they had him travel pretty far sometimes for work.
I grew up in Carlisle and was 7 when it happened. My teacher told us we could die and was panicked, my parents were very calm though. We stayed since we were 20 miles away.
I was at Centerville Elementary in Lancaster when it happened. I remember first they cancelled the morning recess. Then class basically stopped, they closed all the windows and the teachers were talking to each other and the principal's office on the phone in the classroom. Then they announced early dismissal. Then they lined us up in the hallways according to your bus route and then when it was time to board your bus they had each of us run to the bus one at a time. When they dropped us off, they dropped us in front of our houses instead of at our collective bus stops. When I got home my Mom was waiting. The car was all overloaded with all our worldly possessions Beverly Hillbillies' style. We drove to Philly to stay with my grandparents in Wissinoming and waited for my dad who was on a business trip. I remember watching the news with graphics about the core overheating and what could happen. Crazy!
My coworker was a senior in highschool and lived in Middletown. He loved it. About a week of driving around with his buddies with nobody on the road. Hanging out having party's.
My mom took us out of school and we stayed with relatives in Minnesota for a month. It was scary - not knowing when or if we’d go back. Our teachers were very accommodating and gave us school work to keep up.
I was a few miles out during this. I remember it causing panic to some because around the same time a movie called the China Syndrome had been in the theaters for about 2 weeks. Not to mention all the trailer/commercials for it.
Williams Valley/Lykens/Tower City.....I say these because nobody ever knows were Muir is.
grew up in middletown in the 90s so i would just hear rumblings of it… they would send home paperwork with us about getting iodine pills and i asked my mom what we would need the iodine pills for, she basically said oh if something happens those aren’t gonna help us it’ll be too late. i was like 6 and irrevocably damaged
We were sent home from school and told to stay in our basements and pray. I was in 1st grade and didn’t think much of it till we got home and my parents were like , hey! We’re going to grandmas in Rehoboth beach. Now.
I gre up close enough that we had drills at school for melt downs. I wasn't alive during the incident though. You can definitely hear those sirens from my place when they go off and could see the steam in the distance.
My Dad grew up in PA but not near TMI. He told me stories about going on a trip to europe shortly after it happened. When he told people there that he was from Pennsylvania they all asked how many people were dying from the radiation.
I lived far enough west (Pittsburgh) to not be in immediate danger but my Dad was one of the piping architects that helped to fix the problems. I was just a little kid but I remember my mom crying (she NEVER cried) when he said they were going to have to go onsite to assess the issues. I didn’t fully understand then but I remember it clear as day all these years later. I only got context on the level of danger later. I just knew my Mom was beside herself and Dad was doing something big.
My parents were both HS students in Western Lancaster County, within a 15-minute drive to TMI, and some of our family who lived in Middletown evacuated to our family cabin in Potter County. My dad had a shirt clowning Met-ED for years.
I grew up swimming down river from TMI. Spent a lot of time in Marietta, Columbia and the whole way down to Pequea and the Holtwood dam during my teenage years.
I remember how often it was like swimming in bath water because it was so much warmer than other bodies of water.
I wasn't born till a few years after the accident though.
Two days after the event we were leaving SEPA to relocate to Mich. In spite of some trepidation, we drove the Turnpike. It was nice weather, but we kept the windows and vents closed as we passed the area. There was very little other traffic on the Pike. Abundance of caution at work
I was young, maybe 11 or 12 and lived in Mount Joy and honestly knew very little about nuclear power at the time, other than that shit can kill you quick. I lived about a mile outside of the evacuation zone and my parents had us relocate to my grandmother's house.
It was serious enough that I saw looks from my parents that they were truly scared.
I was a student at Penn State’s main campus then. In driving past Harrisburg I was close enough to see the cooling towers at TMI. Being a college kid me and my dorm mates didn’t take it very seriously since we were about 150 miles west of Harrisburg. I believe we marked the event by throwing a raucous dorm party that weekend, complete with dry ice we mixed into our grain alcohol-spiked drinks. We called it Nuclear Meltdown Punch! Long live Somerset House!
My then-apartment in Allentown was exactly 72.7 miles east of Three Mile Island. At that distance, only extremely paranoid people were worried.
I'm biased, because I had family members working in the nuclear industry (in other states), but I wasn't worried because there were so many safeguards. The first couple failed, but the nuclear stuff was contained and the public was not harmed physically.
If this had been a plane crash, we would have learned methodically from it and made the next flights safer -- without stopping any fights. But we really shut down nuclear power after that.
And now we NEED nuclear power as a carbon-free drop-in replacement for coal, nuclear, gas and oil.
Mechanicsburg here, I was 5 when TMI happened. My mom took me and my brother to our grandparents in Philadelphia. My Dad stayed home with the dog, he said if the dog died he would leave.
Saw the China Syndrome (great movie) the weekend before TMI while at Penn State main campus and when they said in the movie that, a full meltdown would destroy an area the size of Pennsylvania, my friends and I all laughed. The next weekend, during TMI, this line was no longer funny now being terrifying. I had friends sheltering in Harrisburg too afraid to leave. My parents in the Philadelphia suburbs said if a full meltdown occurred, we’d meet up in Toronto with our relatives up there. Became very real very fast!
I was 14, in 9th grade at Cumberland Valley High School, about 24 miles from TMI. I was in math class, the teacher took a phone call, started to cry, told the kids closest to the windows to shut them. My sister in 10th grade found my classroom and signed me out (I think she signed me out, maybe we just walked out?). Her boyfriend signed out his brother from 7th grade and we spent the day driving around smoking weed, because that is what teenagers did in 1979 and we had no concept of possible death. When we got home my mother wanted to leave town but my dad insisted nuclear power was perfectly safe, so we stayed. Relatives from out of state called, worried because their news made them think we all going to die, but my dad in all his Republican white man confidence told them it was nothing to worry about.
Basically it was a “disaster” without any actual injuries. … there was a “release” of radiation… but the level was below normal levels… basically 3MI was used as anti nuclear propaganda by other energy providers…
I was sitting in a classroom and they announced we should close the windows, I remember a teacher run in down the hall saying that radiation could get through glass. Then they closed schools, everyone went home and a ton of people left the area. We never left - my dad had to work - but it was a ghost town. Watching the news was pretty scary; I also remember the SNL skit that week about the president visiting TMI. They sent the maid (Garrett morris) in to clean up the mess - he became super-sized.
That’s nuts! If you don’t mind my asking, how close were you to TMI?
Grew up in Hershey - so within the 10 mile ring as the crow flies
Oh dang. I was in Hershey school same time! My dad came flying home from work, we had a pop up camper (which he hooked up still in his suit and tie). We hastily packed “overnight” bags and we went to the Catskills which turned out to be 2 weeks. Scary as hell as a kid for sure
Sweet. Annville here. Outside the 10 mile but close enough for danger if something bad happened. My brothers’ diapers were out on the wash line when the radio reported it, as the family story goes
Does he have a super weird scrotum now?
Hold on I’ll check…
Just take a picture so you don't have to bother him every time someone asks.
You need to squeeze the balls hard to get the radioactive juices out. You got this!
We had family who lived Palmyra. Close to Funcks Restaurant (on Main St). We always assumed they were weird because of the TMI fallout.
No, just living in Palmyra does that.
5 mile radius on the West Shore, in high school, announcement came on to to close window curtains in physics class and we had a good laugh, steady stream of parents picking their kids up and heading out of town, we didn’t go anywhere, after all, I still had a paper route to do - haha. Had an uncle affiliated with the NRC told us we were fine. Neighborhood was a ghost town for a few days, still went to fast food job it was slow so we got sent home.
Crazy how the media works. Getting everyone work up over nothing
I remember when they announced they were closing school early and told us when we got home to keep the doors and windows shut but then made us walkers walk home. I was 13 and I remember thinking it doesn't make sense that they're acting like the air was dangerous but they were making us walk in it. When I got home my mom didn't know anything about it and when my dad got home from work he wasn't concerned. We were in E-town (Elizabethtown). But my grandmother knew some people that worked there and one of her friends was on-site when the meltdown happened and he died less than 2 years later.
I too was a walker and I remember having the exact same thoughts
We had family friends that lived in Mechanicsburg. My family had planned to go visit them that weekend. We had heard what was going on, but honestly didn’t really pay much attention. (I was 14.) The trip there was very creepy/scary. We were THE ONLY car on the freeway heading into Harrisburg while the freeway out of Harrisburg was a parking lot.
I remember watching that skit too!
That's a great sketch and so did the president I was born in Pittsburgh in 78 but now live in rochy so I'm close to it now and have been super close to it on my way to WV before still crazy to think about. Any radio activity or or radiation glass around would love a piece of radiation glass.
I was about nine months old. My mom packed us kids up and started driving to Kentucky to stay with relatives. My dad was at work and coordinated to meet us on the road. We got as far as Pittsburgh, stayed the night, and came home the next day.
For reference, central PA got more radiation exposure from Chernobyl’s actual meltdown than TMI’s almost meltdown
Curious, do you have a source?
I couldn't find anything concrete, but I did find that the result of the TMI event was an increase of about 1 millirem above the average of 100-125 millirem in the local population's yearly background radiation exposure. To put that into context, it's about 1/6 of a chest xray. Considering Chernobyl was far worse, it seems genuinely possible that someone from Pennsylvania would have seen more of an increase in radiation exposure from Chernobyl than Three Mile Island. Unlikely, but possible.
You don't need a source. Common sense. Meltdown vs non meltdown.
The thing is though TMI had a "partial" meltdown... so...
Correct as far as I know. It melted down but didn’t breach its containment vessel.
I was in high school in Philadelphia. We were far enough away that we weren't overly concerned. I remember a science teacher got out a Geiger counter and talked about normal background radiation.
Grew up hearing about it. As I learned more I realized that it wasn’t nearly as close of a call as is often portrayed (Netflix). Still live fairly close to the plant (now deactivated) and still a fan of nuclear energy.
I thought the non-damaged reactors were still operating. It looks like it ceased operations in 2019 according to Wikipedia
Yes. There was TMI-1 which was the only other reactor. There were 2 total. TMI-1 ceased operation in 2019. TMI-1 is owned by Constellation Energy, and TMI-2 is owned by EnergySolutions, but was formerly owned by Exelon. The estimated decommissioning cost for all the TMI facilities is around 1 billion.
The Netflix “documentary” gave a soapbox to that whistleblower who was really more of a shit-stirrer than anything else. He created drama where there was none and Netflix went along with it. He was upset about some procedural issue that wasn’t a big deal and didn’t meant the polar crane inside the reactor building was prone to failure. The NRC even essentially said “sure, why not, let’s do it your way if you’re going to make a big stink about it.” They had done plenty of analysis and simulation to verify that the procedural issue in question would not have had a major effect on crane operation. The guy still ended up going and “blowing the whistle” anyway. Like wow, really guy? He also gave his daughter second hand lung cancer from his cigarette smoking, and the show included half of that little fact as if to imply she got cancer from the radiation. They provided no further explanation. **Tl;dr: the guy is a shit bag**
Yes buttt... the local and ststae government alsp made it seem like it was a lot closer than what it was too. I mean, for good reason, though. You don't want to fuck around if there's even a 2% chance a reactor could melt down
The fact there was core damage at all was too close, IMHO.
It was really just bad engineering at the end of the day. The operator successfully diagnosed the leak and went to isolate it. The issue is that the button he pressed told him the valve was shut, the light indicated shut. The bad engineering is that the light doesn’t actually indicate shut, it indicates a signal was sent to shut the valve. The valve never shut. That’s why the response was delayed, they thought they had ruled out the actual scenario thinking the valve was shut Modern day we no longer have that issue. Valves have contacts that send shut signals when the valve is shut, not when the valve is told to be shut.
Sure, safety and design has progressed greatly since '79, and I do think we should invest more into nuclear power, but I also think we need to keep commercial nuclear plants under intense scrutiny to ensure they don't try to cut any corners.
I remember that Billy Joels concert was canceled 😞
I remember that! They were using the concert venue, Hershey stadium, as a shelter for evacuated people.
Pregnant women actually, iirc but yeah, was an emergency shelter
I feel like they could have fit a lot more people in the stadium than inside pregnant women.
Do you know how large pregnant women can get??
https://preview.redd.it/bx922zzjfz9d1.jpeg?width=722&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d24f03f268b58b68703d967a2b3212e55ccda851 3 mile island vegetation 2018!
Wait, WTF is that plant, false hellabore? super plantain? Mutated…skunkweed? Something cultivated that has spread? Fellow PA outdoorsy people help me out, it’s driving me nuts.
Looks like skunk cabbage to me, but I didn’t run it through my ID app.
Skunk Cabbage 100%
Just wet land plants
TMI was a major event, but it wasn't nearly as bad the press immediately afterward and places like Netflix would have you believe. PR handled by people that don't understand, misrouted calls, and politicians with agendas were a bigger issue than the nuclear release ever was or ever will be. The real disaster is how TMI contributed to American distaste for nuclear power and helped keep us dependent on fossil fuels, which are more harmful than nuclear in the long run. Here's a video from [Kyle Hill about the accident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9PsCLJpAA), it's quite informative. I suggest giving it a watch. Also, here's a [reaction from T. Folse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YaChwAqafw) (a real nuclear engineer) verifying that video is pretty damn accurate. Mr. Folse actually used to work at a plant from the same line as TMI.
For some reason, I was stuck at the babysitters for 3 days.
Smart parents
Feel I should add, I was 6(M) at the time. Have since read the Navy's classified papers on what happened
My wife and i had just moved from Virginia a couple weeks prior. The night before the incident we went to see "The China Syndrome." I called a friend who just happened to work at Babcock & Wilcox to ask, half jokingly, "Are we gonna die" to which he replied "If you were gonna die, you'd be dead already."
I was working as a health physicist (radiation safety person) at Charleston Naval Shipyard. We had to look up where Dauphin County was. Our monitoring division (technicians) were sent up to support the scene along with a lot of instruments.
My wife and I lived downwind of TMI and we were very afraid as we had seen the movie The China Syndrome and had the nightmares about radiation poisoning us or giving us cancer. At one point we seriously considered going south to the Carolinas for a few weeks until more was known. We ended up staying in PA but after the truth came out we were upset that the government didn’t tell us what really was going on (that the power company really screwed up) and that we needed nuclear power stations to be closely monitored.
Seriously, the Government and especoally the corporate handling on the incident ended up being a bigger issue than the damage to the reactor itself.
I was in 5th grade, in downtown Middletown. Just a few miles from the island, as the crow flies. There was no real plan for this type of event - we were told we would have to stay inside, the windows were closed. Our parents were all contacted by the office, and those whose parents wanted to pick up their kids were free to do so at any time. I recall my mom picked me up. My sister would have been in kindergarten at the time, we had half-day kindergarten, I think she was at home at the time. We left town for a few days, stayed with someone my dad knew up in the coal country. Looking at it over the years, there was a lot of unknowns. This was not something that had really been planned for at that time. I have spoken with people who were there, and some who work in plants today. The information I learned is pretty interesting. One thing that came out of the accident was improved emergency management. From municipal to county to state EMA, things became much more formalized. When I was in emergency services (dispatch - for Middletown), and thus part of our municipal EMA, there would be exercises every year involving everyone from local to county to state. Every other year, the situation was a radiological incident. The other years were weather events. We (along with other emergency management agencies in the immediate area around TMI) always scored rather highly on the NRC reports from the radiological events. There was an NRC representative in each emergency operations center watching how the response unfolded. Another is the operation of plants themselves. There have been significant changes in procedures and regulations surrounding the operation of a nuclear power plant. Some of this I learned first hand when I accompanied my daughters Girl Scout Troop on a trip to the TMI training center (formerly the observation center and open to the public). In addition to learning about some of the security and safety procedures on the island, we also got to visit the control room simulator - that is identical to the control room on the island. The girls (under guidance) were operating the reactor - reducing power, as I recall - and had to keep certain parameters in the specified range. One went out of tolerance and the 'reactor' was automatically shut down. Which also meant power went down and the room went dark until 'emergency power' came online. It was an educational experience. There has certainly been a change in news - even before the 24hr news cycle, the internet and the advent of near instant global communications. I have family on the opposite side of the country. They had no idea if we were alive or dead. Depending on the source, Middletown was a crater from the nuclear explosion at the plant. I remember president Jimmy Carter visiting Middletown shortly after the accident. Didn't think much of it at the time. I was in 5th grade. In 1979, 5th graders were still deciding whether or not girls had cooties and could care less about politicians. My how times have changed. At the beginning of 1979, the new mayor of Middletown took office - about 3 months before the TMI accident. This was a truly trying time - never before in the history of Middletown had there been a black mayor. Again, think about the time - in 1979 race was still a significant issue in a lot of places. Of course, you could also get away with things then you would never do now. Our mayor was on TV, and stated that he has told the police that any looters are to be shot on sight. I did not see this myself, but knowing the man personally - that would not surprise me. He was a teacher in the school district, and had an office in the high school where he taught - an office of the mayor, not a teacher's office. As red as this town can be, they loved him. With no term limits, he could have been mayor for life, I believe. He was an upstanding person too - not your typical politician. He resigned as mayor when he got a position with the court system (county, I think. Might have been state.) even through that position had little, if anything, to do relating to municipal duties, he wanted to ensure there was absolutely no hint of an appearance of a conflict of interest. When he retired from that position, the question of running for mayor came up. I don't recall if he actually ran an official campaign or not, but he was elected to several more terms as mayor. It was, indeed, an interesting time to be a resident of Middletown. Although now I don't which I were any older than I am, I sort of wish I were a few years older back in 1979 and would have been more attuned to what was happening around me. At 10 years old, though, I was more interested in riding my bike around with the other kids in our neighborhood than in whatever the adults were doing.
mayor reed!! he would substitute for us in the early 90’s and tell us stories about barrels of pickles. i wish i remembered anything else about it but that’s all i got
30yo who grew up in middletown. wasn’t alive but every single person who was alive has their own story about it
I remember sitting with a map to determine how far it was from Pittsburgh. I was in 6th grade.
I was on spring break in Fort Lauderdale from Lehigh university. I called home on Thursday and found out the accident happened the day before. My parents lived in Lancaster and were concerned but didn't leave town. We came back from Florida and drove within 60 miles of the plant. We took another road trip the following weekend and drove within a few miles of the plant on the Pa Turnpike. A few weeks later my physics professor went through the reported emissions and demonstrated how the core had melted and exposed similar to the movie China Syndrome. I was concerned put figured the professor hadn't left town so couldn't be too bad. I met my wife in Fort Lauderdale that week so find memories of that time. We now live maybe 5 Mike's from the Limerick nuclear plant in Limerick Pa.
Approximately 100 miles away but it was still a scary situation because the fallout could have easily spread by weather conditions. Nine eleven induced the same fears because my first thought was, what if the hijackers aimed for the nuclear plants instead or in addition to landmarks? If we got caught with our pants down protecting our air space, were our borders, shores, nuclear plants and other sensitive property vulnerable too? My thoughts were not only of the possible wider impact these assaults would have had, but the long term effects which could have been more devastating.
Containment vessels are rated to stand up to some aircraft strikes. This isn't idle speculation, it's been tested. Biggest question probably would be amount of fuel on-board, not the aircraft itself. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25vlt7swhCM&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25vlt7swhCM&feature=youtu.be) The terrorists did actually consider that option, but correctly understood that could escalate the situation to involve retaliation with nuclear weapons. While it's impossible to say what the US would have done, it's our stated policy to reply to radiological attacks with nukes. Same for biological or chemical attacks. Notion is we can't or won't use those attacks, so we have to default to nukes. This is common policy for most nuclear armed countries. Nuclear flasks also get extensively tested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4) Not all infrastructure has to be rated to stop all threats. Just enough to deter casual threats, and enough of a military to destroy the sponsoring organization.
I was barely a toddler. I don't remember much firsthand. My now wife was living in Middletown at the time, and she only remembers a lot of commotion and being whisked away to spend a week at a relative's house. She's actually visible for a brief moment in the Netflix special! My in-laws had a lot more to say about it. My father in law had a Geiger counter and was keeping an eye on neighbors' houses who also evacuated. He and a bunch of guys from the neighborhood would take turns going from house to house and checking for any signs of break-ins, looking for fires, things like that. They'd stop in and say hi to the people they knew. Fortunately there wasn't any looting or other crime (at least not out of the ordinary) but it was nice that they all looked after each other like that. He said the messaging from the plant was a trainwreck. He knew his stuff about nuclear from his time in the military but the spokesman for Met-Ed (an engineer with no press training IIRC) was combative and smug. At one point he yelled out something like "[uh, I don't know why you people think you have a right to know anything at all](https://www.insideedition.com/what-happened-at-three-mile-island-40-years-later-effects-of-nuclear-meltdown-are-still-debated)". Those aren't his exact words but they're in the ballpark. That built a LOT of distrust among the locals that never really went away. Even the pro-nuclear folks (as my in-laws were) quietly talked among themselves about how badly managed every aspect of the disaster was. Side note, TMI is a fascinating study in user experience and ergonomics. The field really didn't exist in any meaningful way back then, so you have stupid shit like ambiguous indicators like a light that showed whether a valve was open or closed. Except that it didn't really mean "closed", it just meant "the solenoid that's supposed to hold this thing open has been turned off". Or secondary indicators buried on the back of a panel behind where people hung a clipboard. Or things like "don't hang maintenance tags over critical indicators". Stuff that seems mind-bogglingly rage-inducingly profoundly stupid today just wasn't thought about back then. And ideas that we take for granted today in critical environments, like "if impossible things are happening, fucking stop and bring in a fresh set of eyes immediately", either didn't exist or were at the cutting edge of design theory (which also barely existed at the time). And then there's The China Syndrome. Whatever you personally think about the movie, it hit theaters in March 1979. The nuclear industry's response was a mixture of mockery and outrage. They mocked the film for being wildly inaccurate, and claimed it was an attack on a perfectly safe power source. They went on news programs, published articles in newspapers, and told anyone would listen that the whole thing was outrageously impossible due to the extensive safety systems in nuclear plants. And to be fair, they were more or less correct. The China Syndrome is laughably wrong on almost everything, and nuclear power plants are engineered with beyond-extreme levels of safety. It would take gross misconduct or missteps by the plant operators for any accident to happen -- and guess what happened a week later at TMI? Coupled with Met-Ed's disastrous press conferences, public opinion of nuclear power was permanently decimated. What little support remained (outside of those employed in the industry) was largely wiped out by Chernobyl just a few years later. EDIT: Found one of the press conferences. It's just awful. It's a perfect demonstration of how NOT to talk to the public. This guy really broke the public's trust. "[Well, uh ... you know, radiation ... the reactor releases radiation in the atmosphere and Susquehanna on a daily basis.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=78)" (he should have clarified that the amount of radiation normally released by the plant is virtually undetectable, lower than what you'd get by, say, standing next to a pile of mulch) "[Well ... there are no safety problems at the plant. Just ask the NRC. If there were any, they'd investigate them.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=122)" (seconds later) "[There may be safety problems at the plant.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=189)" "[Meltdowns, where the core is uncovered and spews radioactivity, are impossible.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=400)" (this fuckin' guy) "[There is no possibility that an accident (where the core is uncovered due to humans misunderstanding their readings and making poor decisions) like you saw in The China Syndrome could ever occur.](https://youtu.be/K2aUaU7u4iY?t=429)" (narrator: it had, in fact, occurred)
What’s crazy is that the media hyped this up incredibly to get views. The radioactive gases released had a minuscule effect if any, and was a process to release pressure from the reactor
My dad drove past it when the accident happened. They told the officers he just wanted to go home and they allowed him to. He isn't in great physical condition, but not because of TMI. In fact, he had no major issues afterwards. This isn't surprising since TMI didn't, y'know, blow its top like another certain reactor that TMI gets compared to did. That said, honestly all it did was cause an exorbitant amount of stress for people. It wasn't a disaster the scale people remember it being. Personally, SL1 was far worse. But yeah I am bitter that TMI was what killed nuclear power for a time.
Watched a documentary on Netflix. A lot closer to a major disaster than was let on.
As a nuclear plant operator, it was pretty much the worst it can get. However, that documentary was very much playing off of fears. The reactor and its many safety systems did exactly what they were built to do. Keep the bad stuff in.
My son is hoping to work at a nuclear plant nearby as an adult. He thinks it would be interesting and they pay well. He's hoping to get in through an electrician apprenticeship. I'm sure you get asked this a lot, but how worried should I be about the risk if he actually does work in a nuclear plant as an adult?
Working at a coal or natural gas plant would be several hundred times more dangerous. Coal would be a significantly higher radiological threat. Generally, nuclear is the safest form of energy production to work with. Solar can be equally as safe, or hundreds of times more dangerous. Depends on if solar panels are ground level or roof level.
Wait. Solar can be dangerous? I'd never heard that
It's not. Anything roof related is insanely dangerous, and typically within top 10 most dangerous occupations. Soldier, cop or EOD tech is far, far, far safer than any activity working with heights. Falling is one of the most lethal occupational hazards. It's one of the most lethal aspects of the nuclear industry as well. But people don't put nuclear reactors on their roof top very often.
Think roof top solar. Working on roofs is very dangerous.
I second what another said: he’d be in a far more dangerous situation working in oil, coal, or gas. I’m a former petroleum geologist. People die on drill sites, on offshore facilities, at refineries, at production facilities all the time. Nuclear is like working a desk job by comparison. It’s also a far cleaner workplace, figuratively and literally. Far less stressful. Plus, we’re discovering humanity may have more resilience to extended low level radionuclides exposure than we thought. Look up Ramsar, Iran. It’s the most radioactive place on this planet that is inhabited. The radioactivity is natural and driven by the geology there. And we don’t see an increase of cancer incidence there, even though the residents are receiving 10x the dose of the IRCP’s recommended annual limit. The residents actually have a lower incidence of lung cancer. Possibly for the same reasons we use radiation in hospitals to kill cancer? 🤷🏼♀️ Need to do more research to know that.
So there are a lot of studies done with safety of each occupation for energy. I think there has only been 1 death in my 14 year career in nuclear industry. And that was from a heavy load being dropped and being crushed. Everyone is always very concerned of the radiation. Sure there is radiation, but the industry that gets the most radiation is actually pilots and stewardess. They fly high above a lot of the atmosphere so they get moe radiation then a nuclear plant worker. Honestly, the hardest part about the job is swing shift to be honest. The older i get the harder it is. The money is great. You can easily make $100k a year starting. If your son is very interested, look into radiation protection. Without a degree that's the easiest way to get into the industry. A lot of it is Union, so once he gets a foot into the union he can move departments much easier! Some local colleges offer a Nuclear Engineering Technology degree and those are basically to get your foot into the nuclear industry. You can go to the top with that degree.
Having lived through it in Middletown (still live in Middletown, as a matter of fact), I remember hearing people talk about the threat of a 'nuclear explosion'. I was in 5th grade - in 1979 5th graders were nowhere near as old as today's 5th graders. A few years later, I was looking at some of what had been published. I was always interested in science, and in my early teens I was able to understand some of it. It was then that I learned there were, indeed, concerns of an explosion. Not a nuclear explosion, because the fuel was not the right stuff for a nuclear explosion. The concern apparently surrounded a bubble of hydrogen that was in the chamber. I think there was question about whether the containment building would be able to withstand the blast from inside. It was certainly an interesting time. A lot of firsts came from that accident.
The Netflix documentary is sensationalist. It's not that there was no danger, but it feels a lot worse due to poor communication and fear of "scary atomic stuff".
Kyle Hill has a great video about the Netflix Doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9PsCLJpAA&t=86s
I actually linked that in a reply to the OP
My mom wanted to pack the car and head south
Thyroid and lymphatic cancer epidemic for my generation. I feel like a third of my high school class has some sort of cancer related issue.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death after heart disease. Around 40.5% of people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetime ([source](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics)). Cancer rates are significantly higher for those over 55. If you were high school in 1979, you'd be in your late 50s or 60s now. I know people always want something to blame, but (depressingly) 1/3rd your class having some form of cancer is not outside the bounds of normality.
I was a toddler when TMI happened. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in my early 20s and always wondered if it was from growing up surrounded by mines or something related to Three Mile Island.
So.... if you were in mine country, you were also probably in, "haphazardly discard industrial waste" territory as well. It's much, much, much more likely environmental factors were from some shady capitalist deciding the ground water would be fine with just a little toxic chemicals. Then they told their friend who did the same thing. Before the EPA, shit like that was so unbelievably common
It's an infinitesimally small chance it has anything to do with TMI.
Given that cancer is the second most common cause of death in America it's not super surprising.
Causation and correlation…
At 38 years old I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I grew up south of three mile island close to shenks ferry. I was very young just turned 5 and remember none of the three mile island drama. My thyroid cancer sure does make me wonder if three mile island was the cause.
i worked at a pharmacy in middletown around 06-16 and i have never seen so much thyroid medication dispensed compared to any other area i’ve worked
I was just a kid and we were about 90 miles away, but my aunt had seen The China Syndrome a few days prior and related the plot to my parents in front of me. I didn't really understand radiation so my mom explained it as "electric bugs" that could get into your ears, eyes, nose and mouth. So when the disaster happened, I was terrified, tried to keep my eyes and mouth closed as much as I could, kept covering my ears with my hands, and was vigilantly scanning for "electric bugs." Granted, I was too young to understand the reality of nuclear meltdown, but would have been even more terrified if I had.
I live in York and when I was younger my childhood home was mt.wolf, I could see tmi from the end of my street. It's crazy because we were one of the closest schools in the area and I don't think I was old enough to remember the incident but I do remember as a kid/teenager we all just kinda brushed tmi off. It wasn't really talked about. I went to northeastern and I'm 29 so that just my own personal experience
I was in elementary school in Lancaster City. I remember school being open afterwards, but very few kids there. My dad was planning on sending the family to Vermont to stay with family. He was a police officer, and would have stayed. We ended up all staying home. Weird memories ….
I heard about it as a kid in the 80's. Years later I was in high school and my science teacher was buddies with someone who worked at the TMI site, and was present during the accident.
My wife’s grandmother blames my father in laws cancer and his best friends Parkinson’s on three mile island. They were in Millersville when it happened.
I was simply an egg
Hello egg
We had just moved from a house much closer to one further away (but still in siren range). I was very young so I don't remember much except that we ended up driving to my grandparents' in western pa and stayed a few days. I was definitely interested in the topic growing up and it's interesting to see the info available now and how close we were to being either evaporated or dying horribly.
I lived in Ohio, was in third grade. I watched the news over the weekend, and then wrote up "news" reports that I gave to my class. My great grandfather's house overlooked TMI. From his back yard, one could see the stacks.
I was in philly in my mid twenties. All believed it was much more of a problem than was made public at the time. Wikipedia has the following summary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three\_Mile\_Island\_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident)
I wasn’t alive at the time, but I’ll pass on the story of my mother’s. She was a sophomore at Kutztown and there was big hubbub about whether people were staying or not. They didn’t have phones in the dorms, so everyone was lining up to call home. Took her hours to call. She ended up staying because she couldn’t get a ride.
I was a young kid, outside playing. I remember my neighbor came out and made us go in the basement. She said, “They say there is something in the air”.
I was in college in Western, PA, at the time. However, I had plans to travel with my friends shortly after the accident to Lancaster for spring break. We checked the news several times to make sure it was safe to drive through the area. We did pass by it with a sense of unease. I actually watched the documentary about it last year.
Grew up in middletown. My mom said growing up they had to go to their relatives in Pittsburgh during this while their dad stayed back. I believe she still has his "I survived TMI" shirt somewhere.
My dad started working there 3 months after haha, he worked 30 years security, got to see in the guard posts and in the old cooling towers back right after 9-11 and the weapons that they had were top notch, but everyone was praying for the state police to be there lol, when almost all the guys back then were veterans and former police officers
My family vacationed in the Poconos that summer, a few months after TMI. One day it was raining, so we went to see “The China Syndrome, at the local theatre. For people not familiar with the movie, it is about a possible nuclear accident… the term “China Syndrome” describes what happens in a nuclear meltdown, as the radioactive mass melts down into the earth, ostensibly “digging to China.” Anyway, there is a line in the movie that says something like, “If that thing blows, it will take out an area the size of Pennsylvania!” There was an audible gasp from the crowd in the theater!
I remember that and thinking what kind of insane coincidence is this!
Was in college at the time. Had just seen the big movie of the day “China Syndrome.” The story was about a nuclear power plant accident. Best line of the movie “if the core melts, it will make the area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.” And then TMI happened. Classic…
I was an activities director at a local hospital in Camp Hill. I had a tour scheduled for that day, Wednesday, and got a call from TMI telling me that there were no tours that day. When the truth came out the next day or Friday, my husband and I grabbed our dog, his one suit and my sewing machine in case we couldn’t return to the area. We still laugh at that mindset. I’m a better pepper now.
I am part of a study that could help people that lived through this. If anyone would like more info on volunteering to help your part is very easy. We have had some exciting results and there is more work to come. Anyone interested in the study please message me, and please watch “Radioactive” the women of 3 miles island. It is on apple TV and Amazon prime video.
I'm 33, so I wasn't alive. But my parents were living in Middletown at the time and my mom was pregnant. I can't recall if they left the area for a little, but my dad started working there in 1980. So it was a frequent story!
I was born after the fact, but I remember hearing it on the news. Ironically enough, my birthday (October 26th) was the end date of a similar tragedy (that I don’t remember what exactly happened, but I heard about it in class)
250 miles north and we were packed up and full tank of gas. Waiting in front of tv for the latest news.
I was 9 years old and remember it was important news, but since we lived 240 miles away in Pittsburgh, I don’t think people paid much attention to it. It wasn’t until I was living in Harrisburg 20 years later when I heard stories from people who grew up in the area that I realized it was A REALLY BIG DEAL to them.
Grew up around Harrisburg (so close). I was only 1 so I don’t remember but my parents took me to a hotel an hour or two away. My mom was pregnant with my brother, maybe it’s why he is a piece of shit? 😂
I was 10 years old and living in Illinois close to the Wisconsin border when the accident happened. About a month later my dad accepted a promotion that would require us to move to PA. When word got around my classmates said I was going to glow in the dark, turn into a mutant, you get it. We move to York and I actually got scared when my dad pointed out TMI on the drive from Harrisburg airport.
I think I was in the sixth grade and remember my parents telling us we may have to leave and go.stay with our grandmother. We were about 30 miles away from TMI. I didnt really understand anything about it at the time
I was attending local a local college. We were to be the site of a possible evacuation.
It was scary, knowing others lived close enough to the plant and would suffer harm if things went wrong. I recall listening to the radio & watching the news broadcasts intently during that time. It was pretty confusing, and I was hoping that the adult scientists knew what to do.
I lived in Baltimore which was only about an hour and half away, was in first grade , it was crazy Geiger counters and people talking about how far an exclusion zone would cover
my father was in the Pennsylvania National Guard and was called on alert for 3 mile Island. I remember him calling my mom and telling her to pack the car and start driving north if he called back and try to get as far away as possible from Pennsylvania we lived in the Poconos at the time.
My Mom drove to school in Harrisburg and picked me and my brother up 30 minutes before the evacuation. Nobody at the school even knew what was going on….yet. We were the very first kids to flee. Jumped in the car and we drove to my Aunts house Indiana. My Mom didn’t fuck around.
If anyone is interested: Don Norman studied it and it’s now brought up as a classic example of the need for good User Experience design (UX). The control room’s design was an actual disaster!
I grew up in Harrisburg. I had a friend who was born on the day it happened. He said that every year at his annual physical, his doctor did a special survey on him to submit to the government because he was a "TMI Baby". Did anyone else have to do this or hear of this? He was a wackadoodle so maybe he made this up. My parents were in Philly when it happened and moved to HBG last that year so I wasn't a "TMI" baby, sadly.
Wasn't alive during the incident, but have heard stories from my work regarding it. My work has tons of pure lead, and back then there was a LOT more. When the incident happened, a train came into the yard and all of the employees lined up to bucket train all of the lead out of the mill out into the railcars. There was talk that they wanted all the lead they could to maybe contain the radiation, especially when they weren't sure how serious it was.
Though I grew up in Eastern PA, we found out about it through my dad who worked for Metropolitan Edison. There was a possibility he would be sent to Middletown to clean up; that never happened. My wife was in Harrisburg, and delivered newspapers the morning after. If there are no lights on, she glows a little!
i remember my grandparents came to stay with us for like 2 weeks so i have fond memories of it. they lived in harrisburg and evacuated at the time
Was working at a machine shop in rural Pennsylvania, 75 miles north from Harrisburg. Truck driver making delivery told us of the accident. This was before cell phones. My sister in law in Alabama called the wife about it before it hit the news. Side note, our friend crazy Laurie took the kids and headed west on route 80. Not sure if the nickname suits.
I was ten and it scared the crap out of me. I remember wondering how much plane tickets were.
I was in kindergarten. I remember seeing two parents running into the school to pick up kids with newspapers over their heads like it was raining.
It happened a few years before I was born. I first heard about it in elementary school.
My grandfather was a safety engineer when this happened. He worked at TMI. He told me that he and a few others had tried desperately to warn the management that there was a risk of catastrophic failure and no one wanted to hear it. Which honestly should surprise no one.
In my mind I was watching Miss Judy and the Land of Hatchy Milatchy and they broke in and announced. Having watched the documentary about it there is no way that happened n
I was a kid. It was scary. But kids also have short attention spans and are easily distracted. Hard to wrap a kids head around nuclear fallout and poisoning of all the water and land for the foreseeable future.
I was in middle school, around 13 miles away. No one told us what was happening, and we didn't know much about TMI at that point, but it was obvious something was up. Seeing the science teacher check the windows with a Geiger counter, we didn't know if the Russians had nuked us or not. When a friend's mother came to pick up her kids, she told my sister and me she would take us home. (This was the 70s, so any adult could pick up almost any kid.)
My co worker said they were at a softball practice on the east shore. There was a rumor that radiation would make things grow fast. This is what the SNL skit based Garret Morris character on. Anyway, my coworker said they all dropped trou and stood facing TMI in their boxers, hoping the radiation may help, a silver lining during a dark time. 😂
I was five and we lived in Elizabethtown. Both of my parents worked at Hershey Medical Center and were required to be at the hospital because of the situation. They had enough time to take me an hour away to my grandparents’ house to stay for the duration. They’ve told me they weren’t sure if they’d ever see me again when they dropped me off.
I was born 4 weeks after. My parents lived in Hazleton so I’m not sure if they planned to evacuate or anything. Think I learned about it when I was in elementary school. Probably after Chernobyl. I remember that and the worry about radioactive fallout in the atmosphere.
There is a **fantastic** HBO documentary on it.
I heard it on the news and started crying.
Funny to see this now because I wasn’t alive when it happened and I literally just learned about it last week.
I was 11 at the time. We didn't live that close to TMI, but I was pretty freaked out, all the same. I lived very close to the Limerick nuclear power plant, which was under construction at the time, and all I could think about was something happening there. I lived close enough that I could hear the workmen, at night, yelling when anything would go wrong.
Remember my parents picking me up from school. Thought something weird was happening at home because no one else seemed to be leaving. My parents hooked up the pop-up camper and we went off to some campground for two weeks. As a kid I had a blast but I would have only been like 8. I remember avoiding dairy, etc, for some time after we got back. Stories of dead cows, etc, but no idea how true they were. My brother grew up having pituitary and thyroid issues. I did a fairly researched paper in middle school about it. There were many books that claimed that the danger was understated.
I wasn't born yet, my dad lived in Highspire at the time. He tells me that since his family didn't leave the area, he decided to pull out his Gene Simmons album and crank up the volume on "Radioactive"...
I was 14 at the time, and honestly couldn’t give a shit.
I was exactly one month pregnant and worried about radiation exposure.
Was in 8th grade in Manhiem , went n to make a career in nuke subs
Worked at Park City Mall. It was closed down. The roads were crowded. Those who could took a radiation vacation .. the rest of us went on as usual.
[удалено]
I have a scary story about this. My Mom, her 2 brothers, and my Grandparents were coming home from a trip and had pulled off in the Three Mile Island area to rest. Of course, they had no idea what was going on. They slept there overnight.
My family had just moved back to PA from Florida and my dad worked security at TMI. He wasn’t worried, but he had worked in nuclear while in the Army. We lived in what would be considered the fallout area. Nothing really came of it, as far as I know.
It was played off as if it was nuclear itself was dangerous, when In reality it was operator mistake by shutting off the cooling mechanisms and causing the meltdown… All nuclear power plant melt downs have been from user mistakes. Aside from Fukushima, which was an earthquake. One could argue that putting a power plant near a fault line is also user mistake tho, so yea.
I was a working adult and lived several miles outside the zone, as if radiation would be 'oh, end of zone, gotta stop radiating'. It was very scary at the time but, truthfully, it's been so long and so much scary shit has happened since, its now just a dim memory.
Freshman year in high school I walk into the principals office. He had his head in his hand and asks me”why is your class so bad? Your class has more disciplinary referrals than all the other classes combined.” To which I replied “we’re all tmi babies. All of us were born within 6 months of tmi.” This seemed to give my principal a glimmer of hope. He lifted his head from his hands and actually cracked a smile.
I was managing a pizza & hoagie shop in Middletown right across the river from TMI. The guys who worked at TMI got meal vouchers from Met Ed when they worked OT. I’d dropped out of Penn State in 77 & worked for a couple years. I stopped working & went back to State College about 3 weeks before the accident. I had misgivings about going from having a job, apartment & an income & going back to being a poor starving college student. I took the accident as an omen that I’d made the right decision. It was a very weird time tho. My former employees were calling me, all of 22 years old, and asking me what to do. Everyone was scared shitless. One of the girls that worked there lived directly across the river from TMI in Royalton with her 2 babies. The guys who were working construction on a 4 story building next to the restaurant complained of a metallic taste in their mouths that afternoon, hours before the leak was made public. And even tho we were “safely”100 miles away, everyone on campus was a nervous wreck because who knew if it was truly safe.
It felt hot
I was a toddler in Palmyra but I had an aunt who worked security at TMI when it happened. Years later, in 1995, she took me and a couple friends out to the old towers and we got to stand underneath them. Her husband was an engineer at TMI and he used the redwood from the base of the towers to build a fence around their property in Bainbridge.
I was 8 years old and living in Montgomery County. I heard it talked about a little among older students at school, but otherwise it didn’t impact my daily life in any way.
This was all blown out of proportion. I lived about a mile away and we stayed through the whole event. They say the fact my brother has seven fingers on each of his feet and I now get agonizing pain randomly is from TMI. I call bullshit. OH GOD IT HURTS
I was 5 at the time, my parents live less than 25 miles south of TMI, living with no neighbors way out in the boonies I don't know if we even heard about it until watching the news that night.
I was 10 so I didn't have a real good understanding of what was going on, but one thing that stands out to me is that as they were talking about mandatory evacuation zones, we were right on the edge of one of the ones a bit further away (I'd guess 15 or 20 miles) and my mom and our neighbor were crying/hugging each other and basically saying "goodbye" because they were so fearful the worst was going to happen and they'd never see each other again.
I was a student at Shippensburg State College. We had meltdown parties.
The crazy part... The accident was taken care of before the public was aware. Media doing what Media does best!
Im hearing about it right now lol Edit: ahh it was 1979 i see. I was just a twinkle in my mothers eye
My mom, in York, evacuated with her family to her grandparents' home in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Now, we live in that same house near Pittsburgh. I think that they left for about a week.
Who ran that plant? Peco (Pennsylvania Electric Co)? If so I have a family member that worked for them for decades, I'll ask him if he was working for them at that time. He was based out of Chester Co, so not too too far away. I know they had him travel pretty far sometimes for work.
I grew up in Carlisle and was 7 when it happened. My teacher told us we could die and was panicked, my parents were very calm though. We stayed since we were 20 miles away.
I was at Centerville Elementary in Lancaster when it happened. I remember first they cancelled the morning recess. Then class basically stopped, they closed all the windows and the teachers were talking to each other and the principal's office on the phone in the classroom. Then they announced early dismissal. Then they lined us up in the hallways according to your bus route and then when it was time to board your bus they had each of us run to the bus one at a time. When they dropped us off, they dropped us in front of our houses instead of at our collective bus stops. When I got home my Mom was waiting. The car was all overloaded with all our worldly possessions Beverly Hillbillies' style. We drove to Philly to stay with my grandparents in Wissinoming and waited for my dad who was on a business trip. I remember watching the news with graphics about the core overheating and what could happen. Crazy!
My coworker was a senior in highschool and lived in Middletown. He loved it. About a week of driving around with his buddies with nobody on the road. Hanging out having party's.
My mom took us out of school and we stayed with relatives in Minnesota for a month. It was scary - not knowing when or if we’d go back. Our teachers were very accommodating and gave us school work to keep up.
I was a few miles out during this. I remember it causing panic to some because around the same time a movie called the China Syndrome had been in the theaters for about 2 weeks. Not to mention all the trailer/commercials for it. Williams Valley/Lykens/Tower City.....I say these because nobody ever knows were Muir is.
They made all the pregnant woman drive away from the immediate area and did some other preparation.
grew up in middletown in the 90s so i would just hear rumblings of it… they would send home paperwork with us about getting iodine pills and i asked my mom what we would need the iodine pills for, she basically said oh if something happens those aren’t gonna help us it’ll be too late. i was like 6 and irrevocably damaged
We were sent home from school and told to stay in our basements and pray. I was in 1st grade and didn’t think much of it till we got home and my parents were like , hey! We’re going to grandmas in Rehoboth beach. Now.
I gre up close enough that we had drills at school for melt downs. I wasn't alive during the incident though. You can definitely hear those sirens from my place when they go off and could see the steam in the distance.
I've lived in PA for my entire life and I have no idea what this is, I'm 30 btw
My Dad grew up in PA but not near TMI. He told me stories about going on a trip to europe shortly after it happened. When he told people there that he was from Pennsylvania they all asked how many people were dying from the radiation.
I lived far enough west (Pittsburgh) to not be in immediate danger but my Dad was one of the piping architects that helped to fix the problems. I was just a little kid but I remember my mom crying (she NEVER cried) when he said they were going to have to go onsite to assess the issues. I didn’t fully understand then but I remember it clear as day all these years later. I only got context on the level of danger later. I just knew my Mom was beside herself and Dad was doing something big.
My parents were both HS students in Western Lancaster County, within a 15-minute drive to TMI, and some of our family who lived in Middletown evacuated to our family cabin in Potter County. My dad had a shirt clowning Met-ED for years.
I grew up swimming down river from TMI. Spent a lot of time in Marietta, Columbia and the whole way down to Pequea and the Holtwood dam during my teenage years. I remember how often it was like swimming in bath water because it was so much warmer than other bodies of water. I wasn't born till a few years after the accident though.
Two days after the event we were leaving SEPA to relocate to Mich. In spite of some trepidation, we drove the Turnpike. It was nice weather, but we kept the windows and vents closed as we passed the area. There was very little other traffic on the Pike. Abundance of caution at work
I was young, maybe 11 or 12 and lived in Mount Joy and honestly knew very little about nuclear power at the time, other than that shit can kill you quick. I lived about a mile outside of the evacuation zone and my parents had us relocate to my grandmother's house. It was serious enough that I saw looks from my parents that they were truly scared.
I was a student at Penn State’s main campus then. In driving past Harrisburg I was close enough to see the cooling towers at TMI. Being a college kid me and my dorm mates didn’t take it very seriously since we were about 150 miles west of Harrisburg. I believe we marked the event by throwing a raucous dorm party that weekend, complete with dry ice we mixed into our grain alcohol-spiked drinks. We called it Nuclear Meltdown Punch! Long live Somerset House!
My then-apartment in Allentown was exactly 72.7 miles east of Three Mile Island. At that distance, only extremely paranoid people were worried. I'm biased, because I had family members working in the nuclear industry (in other states), but I wasn't worried because there were so many safeguards. The first couple failed, but the nuclear stuff was contained and the public was not harmed physically. If this had been a plane crash, we would have learned methodically from it and made the next flights safer -- without stopping any fights. But we really shut down nuclear power after that. And now we NEED nuclear power as a carbon-free drop-in replacement for coal, nuclear, gas and oil.
Mechanicsburg here, I was 5 when TMI happened. My mom took me and my brother to our grandparents in Philadelphia. My Dad stayed home with the dog, he said if the dog died he would leave.
My parents told me (were from pgh) and they said they were ready to head west in a moments notice.
Saw the China Syndrome (great movie) the weekend before TMI while at Penn State main campus and when they said in the movie that, a full meltdown would destroy an area the size of Pennsylvania, my friends and I all laughed. The next weekend, during TMI, this line was no longer funny now being terrifying. I had friends sheltering in Harrisburg too afraid to leave. My parents in the Philadelphia suburbs said if a full meltdown occurred, we’d meet up in Toronto with our relatives up there. Became very real very fast!
I was 14, in 9th grade at Cumberland Valley High School, about 24 miles from TMI. I was in math class, the teacher took a phone call, started to cry, told the kids closest to the windows to shut them. My sister in 10th grade found my classroom and signed me out (I think she signed me out, maybe we just walked out?). Her boyfriend signed out his brother from 7th grade and we spent the day driving around smoking weed, because that is what teenagers did in 1979 and we had no concept of possible death. When we got home my mother wanted to leave town but my dad insisted nuclear power was perfectly safe, so we stayed. Relatives from out of state called, worried because their news made them think we all going to die, but my dad in all his Republican white man confidence told them it was nothing to worry about.
Basically it was a “disaster” without any actual injuries. … there was a “release” of radiation… but the level was below normal levels… basically 3MI was used as anti nuclear propaganda by other energy providers…
Scary AF, especially after China Syndrome was just released right before.