http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/04/investigation-revelations-about-three-mile-island-disaster-raise-doubts-over-nuclear-plant-s
What the Thompsons say they found out during their time inside TMI suggests radiation releases from the plant were hundreds if not thousands of times higher than the government and industry have acknowledged -- high enough to cause the acute health effects documented in people living near the plant but that have been dismissed by the industry and the government as impossible given official radiation dose estimates.
The Thompsons tried to draw attention to their findings and provide health information for people living near the plant, but what they say happened next reads like a John Grisham thriller. They tell of how a stranger approached Randall Thompson in a grocery store parking lot in late April 1979 and warned him his life was at risk, leading the family to flee Pennsylvania.
How they ended up in New Mexico working on a book about their experiences with the help of Joy's brother Charles Busey, another nuclear Navy vet and a former worker at the Hatch nuclear power plant in Georgia. How one evening while driving home from the store Busey and Randall Thompson were run off the road, injuring Thompson and killing Busey. How a copy of the book manuscript they were working on was missing from the car's trunk after the accident. These allegations were detailed in several newspaper accounts back in 1981.
And Arnie Gundersen has weighed in on the same TMI issues
Here is the conclusion from an independent analysis.
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/tmi.html
Proof that cancers went way up
All of the iodine-131 from TMI2 was gone within 3 months. All of the xenon-133 was gone within 20 years. That was the vast bulk of it (with a few lesser others). The heavy elements that went out as particulates fell close to the facility (3-5 miles per the actual weather pattern at the time). Those have worked their way over decades along natural drainage pathways that all end up in the river and go with it to the Chesapeake. Some no doubt still buried in the soil, to be churned up annually by plows and washed along those same pathways over time. Not much relative to Fukushima or Chernobyl. I was there. I assure you that I wouldn't have been there if I couldn't have protected myself from what was present. The releases were outrageous and harmed many who did NOT know how to protect themselves. The toll ran into thousands, and it's still not over. They simply diluted the population harmed with a few million extra people who were never exposed, so it looks miniscule. Evil to the [MIA] core. Accident releases (short of uncontained corium/chunks of fuel/rods) don't increase in radioactivity over a quarter million years, as the bulk of long-lived crap remains contained if a river isn't running through it (like at Fuku). Shine is the big problem there, you put a cap on it. Spent fuel waste does increase like that. They've still got no place to put thousands of tons' worth of that all over the damned place. A serious danger to us all.
I can tell you that the 20+ tons of MIA core went out the vent stack and main steam dump valves into the atmosphere, not the discharge piping into the river. Sure, the vaporized fuel did end up deposited on land and water beneath the plume (and in people's lungs, and on their sandwiches, and…). What went into the river ended up in the Chesapeake years ago. That was regular old melting nuke crap that had been released to coolant water that escaped the reactor, a portion of the core that WAS accounted for in the end. It is not the cause of intersex fish inhabiting rivers and lakes in PA, since that's present all over the country and coincides with approaching extinction of many amphibious species (frogs, salamanders, etc.).
Scientists always claim to be "baffled" when there's a gag imposed on actual/most likely causes. USGS assigns most likely cause to endocrine disrupting agricultural chemicals. Other researchers suspect the presence in sewage discharge of a common diabetic drug. Cancerous fish lesions have been known for decades to be caused by dioxins dumped into rivers and streams and marshes as waste from a number of prevalent industries. Causes can be complex (many pollutants overwhelming biosystems), but there's always something that pushes things over the line.
"Like ice cream in the sun"
T hey
M elted
I t
http://i.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/24/978871/-Like-Ice-Cream-in-the-Sun
"They didn't say much about that void in the center of the core to the public, of course, as they were quite stunned to find that 20 tons of reactor fuel and the rods that once contained it had gone missing completely – they never found it, anywhere. Just gone, as if it had never been there at all."
2 years later, we used to skip school when i was a senior and go to the susquehanna river and cover our bodies with iodine and baby oil to get a tan, then have to explain how we got so sunburnt at school to our parents! lol
Three Eyed Island.. ouch.
"3-eyed Willie", the 3D-viewing fish.
ReplyDeleteThat was a memorable ENE topic. "Best-Of", actually (excepting the inappropriate profanity directed Joy's way). Have always liked her posts.
Such a shame that a wonderful topic was followed up by Jihad (or Holy War) in the next topic.
"Can't we all just get along?" - The late Rodney King.
Agreed, I enjoy Joy comments too.
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