Three Mile Island: Exposing the Government's Cover Up of Our Most Infamous Nuclear Accident

By Harvey Wasserman, AlterNet. Posted March 30, 2009.

People died -- and are still dying -- at Three Mile Island. 

As the world marked the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident this week, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history. 

As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases. 

That quickly proved to be false. 

The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core. 

Both those assertions were false. 

The public was told the releases were "insignificant." 

But stack monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later told Congress it did not know -- and still does not know -- how much radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went. 

Using unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless, among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated fallout could come down heavily on specific areas. 

Official estimates said a uniform dose to all persons in the region was equivalent to a single chest x-ray. But pregnant women are no longer x-rayed because it has long been known a single dose can do catastrophic damage to an embryo or fetus in utero. 

The public was told there was no melting of fuel inside the core. 

But robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt. 

The public was told there was no danger of an explosion. 

But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode. 

The public was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area. 

But Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which was showered with fallout. 

In fact, the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard wisdom in the health physics community that -- due in part to the extreme vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the weaknesses of old age -- there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found. 

The public was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the health impacts of the accident. 

In fact, the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more. 

The federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's residents. 

In fact, the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and much more. 

A study by Columbia University claimed there were no significant health impacts, but its data by some interpretations points in the opposite direction. Investigations by epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina, and others, led Wing to warn that the official studies on the health impacts of the accident suffered from "logical and methodological problems." Studies by Wing and by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry official, being announced this week at Harrisburg, significantly challenge official pronouncements on both radiation releases and health impacts. 

Gundersen, a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says: "When I correctly interpreted the containment pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked. This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify decreases in emergency planning and containment design." 

Data unearthed by radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh, and statisticians Jay Gould (now deceased) and Joe Mangano of New York have led to strong assertions of major public health impacts. On-going work by Sternglass and Mangano clearly indicates that "normal" reactor radiation releases of far less magnitude that those at TMI continue to have catastrophic impacts on local populations. 

Anecdotal evidence among the local human population has been devastating. Large numbers of central Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and who were exposed to nuclear tests in the south Pacific and Nevada. 

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Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green alternatives since 1973. His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by General Electric, still a major force pushing atomic power. This article originally appeared at http://freepress.org.

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