Ivey DeJesus* says that 40 years after the Three Mile Island accident, debate over the safety of nuclear energy continues.
Arnold “Arnie” Gundersen was a lead nuclear engineer in 1979 when the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island (pictured) sent a tide of fear and panic across central Pennsylvania.
Gundersen, a former licensed reactor operator, needed no coaxing to convince a jittery public that it had nothing to fear with regards to the 28 March 1979 accident at the plant.
“I was on television telling people not to worry,” said Gundersen, whose wife was pregnant at the time.
“I was telling everybody, ‘Don’t worry. No radiation got released.’”
“I think I said, ‘The Titanic hit the iceberg and the iceberg sunk.’”
“I think that was my comment at the time and boy was I wrong.”
But it took him about a decade to change his mind.
His conversion from proponent to nuclear whistleblower occurred gradually in the 1990s as Gundersen, among other things, served on nuclear energy symposiums and as an expert witness for plaintiffs’ lawsuits against the nuclear industry.
“I would call myself a nuclear zealot back then as opposed to a nuclear critic now.”
Others come at the nuclear energy debate from a decidedly opposite direction.
Kristin Zaitz and Heather Matteson, for instance, were once adamantly distrustful and suspicious about nuclear energy.
They worried about exposure to radiation and the dangers of a catastrophic nuclear plant accident.
These days, Matteson and Zaitz are ardent supporters of nuclear energy.
“I realise people need energy for a higher quality of life and the best way to do that is by using resources that are more energy dense,” Matteson said.
Forty years after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island changed the trajectory of nuclear energy in the US and globally, the debate over its safety and viability continues.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has long stood by its determination that the amount of radiation released in the 1979 Three Mile Island accident was well under acceptable levels and that no member of the public was put in danger as a result.
Now 70, Gundersen, stands by his conviction that the health of untold numbers of people across central Pennsylvania was endangered by the Three Mile Island partial meltdown.
Over the years in his testimonies, Gundersen has attested to a litany of factors he said contributed to the misrepresentation by the nuclear industry about the facts of the accident, including the number of radiation plumes released, the amount of radiation released and the amount of radioactive waste that was released inside the reactor.
Gundersen said that because of the inaccurate assessments released to the public, subsequent medical studies on the impact of Three Mile Island radiation exposure were compromised.
“The plant wives pulled all the kids out of school by 11 am,” Gundersen said.
“The plant staff knew how serious it was.”
“Civilians, who trusted government, didn’t do a darn thing.”
The 2011 Fukushima Daiishi nuclear plant disaster in Japan has furthered fuelled the debate on nuclear energy, reinforcing the public opinion chasm.
Radiation particles from the plant, which was destroyed that March in the wake of a powerful tsunami, spread over an area of more than 14,000 sq km.
About a quarter of a million people fled the area.
Zaitz and Matteson say that experts have determined that the Fukushima accident released far less radiation — and subsequent risks to the public — than initially estimated.
In the wake of the accident, Japan took offline its entire fleet of nuclear plants and turned instead to natural gas and coal as its sources of energy.
Japan, once a leader in the fight against climate change, now ranks among the world’s biggest emissions violators.
“It’s having adverse health effects including killing people every year,” Zaitz said.
“It’s affecting far more people who live there than Fukushima ever will.”
A report published by Scientific American in January noted some areas near the Fukushima plant continue to exceed five times the level of radiation set by Japan as safe for the general public.
The debate goes beyond radiation and certainly includes arguments about uranium mining and radioactive waste.
Nuclear proponents say the mining of uranium has a far lower impact on the environment than fracking, natural gas pipelines and other fossil fuel sources.
Gundersen argues that uranium mining exposes workers to radiation and contaminates groundwater and aquifers.
Gundersen discredits the assessments released on Fukushima.
He claims the nuclear industry used “identical tactics” to deal with that disaster as it did with the Three Mile Island accident, Chernobyl and even the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
That includes downplaying the risks and telling the public it is in no immediate danger.
“The industry controls the narrative,” Gundersen said.
“The orthodoxy very quickly circles the wagons and protects trillions of dollars of investment.”
Eric Epstein, chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, an anti-nuclear advocacy group, stands behind Gundersen’s assessment of the lack of transparency in the nuclear industry.
Epstein says the industry will never own up to the dangers of nuclear energy nor the dangers inflicted as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.
He says he remains resolutely cynical about nuclear: “We can all agree that there are no safe levels of radiation exposure.”
“But the industry can’t afford to acknowledge the truth.”
“It would bankrupt the nuclear industry.”
Japan has reactivated about seven of its nuclear plants.
Gundersen remains troubled by the nuclear industry.
For Zaitz and Matteson, co-founders of Mothers for Nuclear, too much is at stake not to stand behind it.
“In college, I learned about the biases we all have,” Zaitz said.
“I started evaluating my beliefs and using more data instead on a feelings-based approach.”
“I used that to examine beliefs about nuclear … it aligns with my values about preserving the environment.”
“The ability to use electricity on a tiny footprint with no emissions was something that made me challenge my views.”
* Ivey DeJesus is a reporter for PennLive. She tweets at @iveydejesus.
This article first appeared at www.witf.org.
