Radiation detected at Three Mile Island; public OK

Three mile island leak

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — A small amount of radiation has been detected in a reactor building at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania. Officials say there is no public health risk. About 150 employees were sent home after the radiation was detected Saturday afternoon. Exelon Nuclear spokeswoman Beth Archer says investigators are searching for the cause. She says the radiation was quickly contained. Radiological surveys showed the contamination was confined to surfaces inside the building.

Glad they kept this one contained. It's been shut down for a couple weeks as they work on it. When these plants mess up the consequences can be deadly.

reply to post by Seiko


Yeah...not fun living 80 miles away from this location. Especially considering the fact it was the place of an "almost meltdown" back in the 70s...fact I didn't know when moved in the area, as well as haven't heard until it was mentioned in the article about this accident...

reply to post by psycho13


Yes I believe it was 1979. After the accident then at three mile they stopped building nuclear power plants here in the states.

It could have been a lot worse. It does make you worry, an accident of a nuclear plant could be devastating.

I used to live 12 miles from three mile island. There was a hill near my house and when i drove up the hill I could see the power plant in the distance.

Actually when the accident happened, we didn't really know how bad it was, we could measure radiation released to the outside and that wasn't a disaster, but we didn't know how bad it was inside until 3 years later when remote control cameras were sent in to assess the damage. Everything was melted to the point that it came much closer to a "China Syndrome" accident than anyone had previously thought. It's fortunate the US plants built such good containment vessels, and advantage they had over Russian built plants like Chernobyl.

Here is part 6 of a 1999 documentary on 3 mile island, showing some then never before seen footage of the meltdown damage, at around 4 1/2 minutes into the video.



All 6 parts are interesting and worth watching, you can find the links to the other parts by opening the youtube link.