March 28, 1979: On an island in the Susquehanna River, in Londonderry Township, outside the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, stands the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. Its Unit 1 began operation in 1974. Its Unit 2 began on December 30, 1978, just 3 months before the event in question.
On March 16, the film The China Syndrome was released, starring Jack Lemmon as the manager of a nuclear power plant, Jane Fonda as a TV reporter, and Michael Douglas as her cameraman. Douglas, like the other 2 a member of a multi-generational acting family, also co-produced the film. (His eventual wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, was 9 years old, living in Wales, and had probably not yet heard of any of these people.)
American conservatives dismissed the film as fearmongering, since they liked nuclear power. They had also not forgiven Fonda for her activities in the Vietnam War in 1972. Then again, liberals had never forgiven them for making Fonda's activities possible.
But on March 28, just 12 days after the film's release, the fear became real. At 4:37 AM Eastern Time, while most of America was asleep, in TMI's Unit 2, the cooling system malfunctioned. This resulted in the release of 2 radioactive gases: iodine-131 and krypton-85.
Save your Superman jokes: We almost needed a real Superman, and we didn't have one, although Superman: The Movie, starring Christopher Reeve, was still in theaters after 3 months.
On March 16, the film The China Syndrome was released, starring Jack Lemmon as the manager of a nuclear power plant, Jane Fonda as a TV reporter, and Michael Douglas as her cameraman. Douglas, like the other 2 a member of a multi-generational acting family, also co-produced the film. (His eventual wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, was 9 years old, living in Wales, and had probably not yet heard of any of these people.)
American conservatives dismissed the film as fearmongering, since they liked nuclear power. They had also not forgiven Fonda for her activities in the Vietnam War in 1972. Then again, liberals had never forgiven them for making Fonda's activities possible.
But on March 28, just 12 days after the film's release, the fear became real. At 4:37 AM Eastern Time, while most of America was asleep, in TMI's Unit 2, the cooling system malfunctioned. This resulted in the release of 2 radioactive gases: iodine-131 and krypton-85.
Save your Superman jokes: We almost needed a real Superman, and we didn't have one, although Superman: The Movie, starring Christopher Reeve, was still in theaters after 3 months.
Met Ed thought they had the situation under control. But on March 31, a hydrogen bubble was discovered in the dome of the pressure vessel. If it were to explode, the entire plant might blow up, and then it would have been off to the races.
The TV news broadcasts weren't sure what to make of it. How dangerous was it? Walter Cronkite on CBS, John Chancellor on NBC, and Frank Reynolds on ABC were not scientists. ABC News science editor Jules Bergman explained it as best he could.
Had there been an explosion, the wind currents would have carried the radioactive gases east. To the east, it was 89 miles to Center City Philadelphia (the city as a whole then had 1.7 million people), 170 miles to Midtown Manhattan (New York City had a shade over 7 million), and 140 miles to East Brunswick, New Jersey, where 9-year-old yours truly lived, and was watching these reports.
There were 3 stories that really spooked me as a kid. One was the Son of Sam murder case, in New York in the Summer of 1977. But I soon realized that the Son of Sam -- eventually revealed to be mailman David Berkowitz -- wasn't targeting little boys. (Had I known about John Wayne Gacy, that might have spooked me, but he was in Chicago, far away.)
Another was the Jonestown Massacre in November 1978, in which there were children in the nearly 1,000 people who died. But that was in South America: As creepy as it was, it was far from me.
The other was Three Mile Island. This scared the living hell out of me. The TV ads for The China Syndrome didn't help. And it went from box office bust to hit very quickly.
Met Ed found that there was no oxygen in the pressure vessel, meaning the hydrogen bubble would not explode. They managed to reduce and remove the hydrogen, by venting it straight into the atmosphere. That was okay: It was not radioactive.
After 3 days, the crisis was over. To emphasize this, President Carter, who had worked with the Atomic Energy Commission while serving in the U.S. Navy in 1952, toured the plant. It may have been the last time in his Administration that Jimmy Carter inspired confidence in anyone.
Nearly 2 million people were exposed to higher-than-normal radiation. Subsequent studies have shown that there was no increase in cancer, and no deaths for any reason, attributable to the accident.
Nevertheless, Unit 2 was never restarted. Exelon, which now owns the plant, shut Unit 1 down on September 20, 2019. Because of the danger of radiation, it will take until 2079, 100 years after the meltdown, for demolition of the facility to be safe.
As the explosion in Chernobyl, Ukraine proved on April 26, 1986, what happened at TMI could have been a lot worse. It is believed that 43 people died as a result of the Chernobyl explosion, 3 in the initial explosion, the rest from cancer later.
On July 7, 1991, I was with members of the youth group at my church, which had spent the previous week helping to build a Christian camp at a lake in Tennessee. Our trip back took us down the Pennsylvania Turnpike. As we approached the Susquehanna, I saw the cooling towers of Three Mile Island, and a chill ran through me.
I pointed the towers out to the other teenagers in the van. But it just didn't register with them. Most of them were anywhere from 14 to 18 years old -- 3 to 7 years younger than I was. One passenger in the van wasn't even born yet in March 1979. None of them had any memory of it. They only knew it as history, as something that could have been a big deal, but wasn't.
I was there -- well, not there on the ground, but within the path that the radioactive cloud could have taken. And, as much as any kid could have at the time, I knew what was going on.
It was a very big deal. May there never be another such big deal.
*
March 28, 1979 was a Wednesday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was in the off-season. There were 9 games played in the NBA that night:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Seattle SuperSonics, 111-105 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.
* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Washington Bullets, 127-108 at the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway, New Jersey. (It's now named the Jersey Mike's Arena.) "Super John" Williamson scored 37 for the Nets, and Bernard King scored 24. But it was far from enough against the defending NBA Champions, who got 28 from Bob Dandridge, 22 from Elvis Hayes and 20 from Charles Johnson.
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Chicago Bulls, 112-96 at The Spectrum. Julius "Dr. J" Erving scored 35 points for the Sixers.
* The Denver Nuggets beat the Detroit Pistons, 115-110 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Boston Celtics, 135-117 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center
and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the
UW-Panther Arena.
* The Indiana Pacers beat the Houston Rockets, 125-124 at The Summit in Houston. Billy Knight scored 37 for the Pacers. But, knowing that Bobby Knight was then coaching Indiana University, it is strange to see a box score listing of "B. Knight-IND 37." (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the New Orleans Jazz, 122-94 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.
* The Phoenix Suns beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 112-106 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
* And the Golden State Warriors beat the Kansas City Kings, 132-122 in overtime at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
There were 4 games played in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins, 7-1 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.
* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Boston Bruins, 9-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Washington Capitals, 6-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
* And the Los Angeles Kings beat the Detroit Red Wings, 8-1 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
And there were 2 games played in the World Hockey Association, now entering the last 2 weeks of its existence. The Quebec Nordiques beat the Edmonton Oilers, 3-0 at the Colisée de Québec. And the Winnipeg Jets beat the Cincinnati Stingers, 6-3 at the Winnipeg Arena.
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