At 4:00 am on March 28, 1979, the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 began. That day, 35 years ago this coming Friday, is seared into the memory of most of the people who were working in the industry, who regularly watched the evening news, or who lived in the northeast US. Most can remember exactly what they were doing when they first heard the news and what they did in the next few days as the event unfolded.
I chatted with two people who were working in the nuclear industry at the time of the accident. Les Corrice was working in the operations department at a boiling water reactor owned by the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company while Dave Rossin was the Director of Research for Commonwealth Edison. Despite my advanced years and my status of being a three time grandfather, I was a sophomore in college–at a school where there were few opportunities to watch the evening news–at the time of the event.
Mainly, I listened to the two more experienced individuals share their stories.
We also talked about some of the impacts that the accident had on the nuclear industry. I was able to contribute a little more to that discussion. I think you will learn something from this discussion.
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Another communication glitch was that the NRC thought that an air sample report from a helicopter some distance away was actually from a sample taken directly inside the exhaust stack causing them to think releases from the plant were much higher than actual.
Great show!