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The Patriot-News, after intense coverage of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Londonderry Twp., Dauphin County, printed a special section on April 16, 1979, called “The Agony of the Atom.” That section included this chronology, detailing the days around the country’s worst nuclear power plant accident, 45 years ago now. Three Mile Island, March 28, 1979. (Allied Pix archive photo) WEDNESDAY, March 28 3:53 a.m. – A malfunctioning valve causes the shutdown of two pumps in the secondary feedwater system, a separate unit that cools the water circulating through the reactor core, and triggers a...

The 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in central Pennsylvania was and remains the worst accident of its kind in the United States, but, as a new documentary shows, it could have been so much worse. In the four-part Netflix docuseries “Meltdown: Three Mile Island,” which debuted Wednesday, May 4, Rick Parks — a former leading engineer at the facility — reveals how cover-ups, falsifications of safety tests and downright dangerous corner-cutting caused the terrifying nuclear event and could have potentially triggered a second, bigger one that would have affected a huge chunk of the Eastern Seaboard. What Parks found...

The company that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, announced that it plans to shutter the facility in 2019 unless the state of Pennsylvania steps in to keep it open. The plant near Harrisburg, Pa., hasn’t been profitable for the past five years, according to owner Exelon Corp. The company announced last week that it failed to auction off future energy production from Three Mile Island for the third year in a row. “Today is a difficult day, not just for the 675 talented men and women who have dedicated...

Updated (Jan 19, 2014 at 01:45 am) The pattern is not completely clear, and there are pieces missing from the puzzle, but I have found enough bits of evidence to convince me that it is more likely than not that someone purposely initiated the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident. This is a difficult story to tell; it’s not easy to revise history. It’s even harder to it successfully when there is sure to be disbelief, dismissal, and efforts to discredit. I prefer being respected and strive to avoid the potential of being marginalized as a crackpot. However, I feel a...

A reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the nation’s worst nuclear accident, shut down unexpectedly on Thursday afternoon when a coolant pump tripped and steam was released, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told NBC News. The system tripped when "the pump stopped operating and created a power/flow imbalance," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. The plant responded as designed and is stable with no impact on public health or safety, added NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci. If any radiation was in the released steam, Screnci said, it would be below detectable levels. Exelon, the plant operator, said in a statement that...

The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. The current provisional evaluation of 5 is at the...

The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here. Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension...

Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs. Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

“Senator, you were expelled from Harvard for cheating, then you left a woman to drown in your car at Chappaquiddick. What makes you think you have what it takes to be President?” That was the opening question of an interview with the late Senator Edward Kennedy during his unsuccessful bid to secure the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. It might equally now serve as an obituary. The answer to that embarrassing question, of course, can be given in one word: entitlement. The Kennedy dynasty has long assumed a divine right to high office and privilege that accords ill with...

Energy Policy: Obama announces his energy team without mentioning a green source of renewable energy that could create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and reinvigorate a vital manufacturing sector — nuclear power.The domestic auto industry isn't the only uncompetitive industry that seems to require life-sustaining transfusions of government cash to stay in business. Alternative energy sources have relied on such subsidies, called "investments," for years. Yet in President-elect Obama's announcement of his energy team, we were told "the foundations of our energy independence" lie in "the power of wind and solar." Except that for these alternative sources there's been a severe...

If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda. That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask. According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in...

An open-minded review of what extreme environmentalists have wrought on the USA and on the world inescapably leads to the conclusion that they have caused millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in damages and losses. If you think this is incorrect or an exaggeration, let us consider the record with respect to just three issues: the snail darter, nuclear power and DDT. The Snail Darter In 1976, with the Tellico Dam on the Tennessee River 99% complete, its construction was stopped and its destruction was ordered after a tiny fish called the snail darter was discovered in that river.

State police seized more than $500,000 from a truck at the Beaver Valley power plant in Shippingport yesterday. Two men in a tractor trailer tried to enter the plant around 4:15 p.m. to pick up large tool containers. During a routine inspection, plant security discovered a duffel bag with a large amount of cash. State police were called, but in the meantime, the truck left. Shippingport police stopped it a mile away on Route 168. State police arrived and the driver said he didn't know anything about the money or who gave it to him. Police obtained a warrant, opened...

It’s a stretch, but possibly it can be argued that extreme environmentalists are indirectly responsible for the murder of 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001 and for other, anti-American terrorist acts over recent years. This is because these extremists, aided by certain journalists like Walter Cronkite and by movies like The China Syndrome killed the continued development of nuclear power in the USA, and forced us to become totally dependent on oil from Muslim countries. This has had disastrous consequences for our environment, for our economy, for our military, and for our future well-being. If we had not been...

...The reactor type used at Chernobyl was inherently unsafe — it has never been used in this country and never will. Above all else, it lacked a containment structure, designed to contain radiation should everything else fail. The only other meltdown in history came at Three Mile Island — whose containment dome completely contained all the radiation released by the meltdown. Radioactive gases were then control-released into the atmosphere over the course of a week. Sounds scary? Had you been standing at the perimeter fence at TMI during this period, you would have received about the same radiological dose as...

<p>Twenty-five years ago this week, something went horribly wrong at Three Mile Island. Those very words are now synonymous with nuclear meltdown, but back then they merely referred to an obscure nuclear plant in central Pennsylvania. Human error and mechanical failure conspired to send the temperature in the reactor core soaring, threatening a blast of deadly radiation. All of America watched in apprehension. Politicians and regulators bickered, and the media whipped up a frenzy.</p>

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. - AmerGen, the owner of Three Mile Island, has announced plans to add 14 sirens to the emergency warning system as part of a $730,000 upgrade to the nuclear plant. The upgrade follows an acoustic test indicating that the plant's warning system was not loud enough in some areas. The sirens must be audible at a minimum rate of 60 decibels throughout the 10-mile radius, AmerGen spokesman Ralph DeSantis said. The added sirens will bring to 93 the total number within a 10-mile radius of Three Mile Island. Six of the sirens will be replaced by louder ones,...

There is a fire in the turbine room of Three Mile Island. More to follow.