Word: harrisburgs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...scene from TIME was Peter Stoler, who wrote for the magazine's Science and Environment sections before he became a New York City-based correspondent in 1977. Accompanied by Photographer Bill Pierce, Stoler began the assignment with an early-morning high-speed drive on a rainswept turnpike to Harrisburg. For the next three days, Stoler interviewed plant workers, area residents and protesters, and visited the Pennsylvania Governor's offices, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission vania Governor's offices, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission control van parked on a knoll directly across the Susquehanna River from the plant...
...dead of night, the hulks of four 372-ft. cooling towers and two high domed nuclear reactor container buildings were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the Susquehanna River, eleven miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pa. Inside the brightly lit control room of Metropolitan Edison's Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch. Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated jargon of the nuclear power industry, an "event" had occurred. In plain English, it was the beginning...
...this time, in Harrisburg, Lieut Governor William Scranton III expressed alarm that he might be getting inaccurate reports from plant officials. He told reporters: "This situation is more complex than the company first led us to believe. Metropolitan Edison has given you and us conflicting information." Indeed federal investigators from the nearby headquarters of the NRC in King of Prussia reported later in the day that radio activity had been detected as far as 16 miles from the plant, and claimed that radiation within the reactor containment building had risen to a startling 1,000 times its normal level...
...plant, surprisingly calm. "There was an accident, not a disaster," insisted William Metzger, a maintenance man on Three Mile Island. "I'm not afraid. I think these plants are safe." Asked Co-Worker William Wilsbach: "Do you think I'd work here if I thought it was dangerous?" In Harrisburg, Secretary Margaret Duffy dismissed the whole fuss as "much ado about nothing." Mary Anne Koehler, who is seven months pregnant, said she would worry a lot more about damage to her unborn child "if I worked in a chemical plant...
...Harrisburg, Governor Thornburgh, who had carefully avoided any statements that might cause panic, even while remaining skeptical of the utility company's pacifying pronouncements, decided it was time to warn people living near Three Mile Island to take prudent precautions. First, he asked all residents within ten miles to remain inside their homes with their windows closed (though in fact that provides scant protection from radiation). Then he urged pregnant women and young children within a five-mile radius to move out, and closed schools. He also took the broader step of advising the four counties in the area, where...