Damaged TMI Reactor to Be Put in Storage

The damaged Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor will be put in storage indefinitely after a $1-billion cleanup is completed, but an eventual restart is not out of the question, officials said Wednesday.

Workers over the next two years will continue removing uranium fuel from the reactor and taking measures to reduce radiation in the plant in nearby Middletown, Frank Standerfer, director of Unit 2, said at a news conference.

After the cleanup, expected to be completed in September, 1988, the plant will go into a “monitored storage” phase. Officials said residual fuel and radiation will be sealed off and there will be little danger of fire.

No Long-Range Plans

Standerfer said no long-range plans have been made for the future of the Unit 2 plant, and that possibilities include scrapping the plant or refitting it to generate electricity.

“We have done nothing to preclude those two options,” Standerfer said.

Equipment in the Unit 2 plant has not been inventoried for suitable use should the reactor be refitted or restarted, said Gordon Tomb, a spokesman for GPU Nuclear Corp. But he said a television inspection of the plant’s reactor found it to be in good shape in spite of the overheating that partly melted its uranium fuel rods.

The cleanup was undertaken after a combination of human and mechanical errors allowed the reactor to lose cooling water, leading to the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident in March, 1979. Some radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere.