The only documented impact on anything was psychological due to the anxiety of people in the vicinity not knowing what the risk, if any, was. Absolutely no other impact other than disabling the American nuclear program which caused untold pollution and disease due to conventional power plant emissions and the emissions of oil-tankers bringing foreign oil to American shores. Orders for 51 American nuclear reactors were canceled from 1980 to 1984.

There was some leakage of radioactive materials from TMI-2, but much less than is released by natural deposits of uranium in the Reading Prong which reaches from Reading, PA, through northwestern New Jersey into sections of Orange, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess Counties in New York.

Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox) is the nuclear power plant that had a melt down in 1979. TMI-1 was not affected by the accident. Today, the TMI-2 reactor is permanently shut down and defueled, with the reactor coolant system drained, the radioactive water decontaminated and evaporated, radioactive waste shipped off-site to an appropropriate disposal site, reactor fuel and core debris shipped off-site to a Department of Energy facility, and the remainder of the site being monitored. The owner says it will keep the facility in long-term, monitored storage until the operating license for the TMI-1 plant expires at which time both plants will be decommissioned.

TMI-1 was at the time in 1979 shut down for refueling. It is still in use today. TMI-1, which had had its license temporarily suspended following the incident at TMI-2, was permitted to resume operations in 1985. General Public Utilities Corporation, the plant's owner, formed General Public Utilities Nuclear Corporation (GPUN) as a new subsidiary to own and operate the company's fleet of nuclear facilities, including Three Mile Island. The plant had previously been operated by Metropolitan Edison Company (Met-Ed), one of GPU's regional utility operating companies. In 1996, General Public Utilities shortened its name to GPU Inc. Three Mile Island Unit 1 was sold to AmerGen Energy Corporation, a joint venture between Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO), and British Energy, in 1998. In 2000, PECO merged with Unicom Corporation to form Exelon Corporation, which acquired British Energy's share of AmerGen in 2003, dissolving the company in the process. TMI Unit 1 is now owned and operated by Exelon Nuclear Inc., an Exelon Corp. subsidiary.

The net result was that the TMI incident proved the safety designed into American reactors. The operators did the exact wrong things and were unable to cause any harm to themselves or anyone else. The plant melted down and caused no harm to anyone.

Those of us that live in the area served by Met-Ed payed for the TMI-2 clean up with surcharges on our phone bill for a number of years. Now our rates have returned to normal and in many years are below the national average.

Here is a link that might be useful: Radon & Reading Prong (NY Times)

rhody, i recall when that incident occurred. cannot say that i knew everything that you posted.

thanks so much for being so knowledgeable with that information.

maryanne

Thanks a lot Rhodyman, we really appreciate it!
You are a wealth of information.
Is the Susquehanna a fairly clean river? Do people swim/Kayak in it? I know that is is used for cooling on TMI.

Great river! We used to fish and catch a lot of striped Bass from the catwalk on the conowingo dam, but the utility took advantage of the security scare after 9/11 to abrogate their agreements to ALWAYS allow fishing from there and closed it off. You can't fish within 100 yards or so of the dam now.

I agree about 3-mile island and the stupidity and duplicity of the nuclear scare tactic folks. More radiation is released from one coal burning power plant in a day (There are radioactive particles in the coal) than from all the nuclear plants in the US in their entire lifetime.

George