Anniversary of Nuclear Leak Marked

More than 100 people holding flickering candles stood in the rainy predawn gloom around the Three Mile Island power plant Sunday to mark the 20th anniversary of the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history.

The crowd turned a plant access road at the Susquehanna River site just south of Harrisburg into a sea of multicolored umbrellas as anti-nuclear activists spoke out against atomic power and the nightmare that gripped the nation for days, bringing tremendous change to the nuclear power industry.

“I thought it would be great to reflect on not just this mistake, but those of all humanity,” said Jill Aaron, who was in grade school at the time of the accident.

Five protesters crossed a police line and were arrested without incident by police and security officers. They were charged with criminal trespass and released.

The huge plant itself was invisible in the darkness except for the flash of the red warning lights outlining its four 350-foot concrete cooling towers.

About 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, sirens blared at Three Mile Island’s Unit-2 reactor when a relief valve stuck, releasing radioactive water as steam. Plant operators then mistakenly shut off cooling water to the 150-ton radioactive core, prompting a partial meltdown and the evacuation of about 140,000 people from the Harrisburg area.

“Up until that time, we didn’t know whether the safety systems would work, and apparently they did because we didn’t have a meltdown. Maybe that was the No. 1 thing we learned from it,” said Rep. William F. Goodling, the area’s Republican congressman, who testified before his colleagues months after the disaster.

A $1-billion cleanup followed. Despite anecdotal reports of cancer and other health problems, official studies have shown no evidence of accident-related health effects, aside from mental stress.

The incident left an indelible mark on the tidy communities along the Susquehanna, installing a perpetual force of anti-nuclear activists who hosted viewings of the 1979 nuclear-horror film “The China Syndrome” over the weekend.

Not a single new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States since the Three Mile Island incident, and the tremendous tightening in safety procedures and regulatory scrutiny that followed the accident has turned nuclear energy into a white elephant for investors.

Critics say the eventual expense of decommissioning the 103 nuclear plants that now provide 20% of U.S. electricity will fall on taxpayers. There is also the task of storing spent fuel safely for thousands of years.

But the nuclear power industry still has high hopes for a renaissance amid growing demands for electricity and government plans to contain pollutants generated by other forms of energy.