Legacy off Three Mile Island

A year after the accident, the memories--and the scars--remain

One of the first correspondents to arrive on the scene of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island last March, TIME New York Bureau Chief Peter Staler spent the best part of the next six weeks in Middletown, Pa., covering the near disaster and its aftermath. On the eve of the accident's anniversary, Staler returned to Middletown to see how the community had been affected. His report:

The region just southeast of Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital, looks no different than it did a year ago. The four huge cooling towers that mark the location of Metropolitan Edison's Three Mile Island nuclear plant still loom 372 ft. above the surface of the Susquehanna and catch the eye of every motorist topping the hill at Swatara and heading south on Route 283. The fields surrounding the neat farmhouses on either side of the road are as brown as they always are in March and covered with a stubble that suggests a two-day growth of beard. Middletown, a community of 11,000 whose residents farm, work at the Fruehauf factory, or teach at the local state university campus, looks as scrubbed and businesslike as ever.

With nothing more lasting than a sort of perverse pride, Middletown survives the floods that have sent the Susquehanna into more than a few local living rooms. But a year after the nuclear plant accident that transformed Three Mile Island's cooling towers from local landmarks into symbols of the atomic age's worst nightmare, Middletown carries its scars. "You don't go through what we did and emerge unscathed," said Mrs. Joan Metz, 33, who lives seven miles from T.M.I. "The kids didn't understand what was happening. But we did. And we'll remember."

Just after 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, there was a minor pump failure in T.M.I.'s 880-megawatt Unit 2, and the ensuing combination of mechanical malfunctions and operator errors turned what should have been a harmless incident into a potential disaster. The memory lingers, although the main evidence of the accident is hidden. People driving past the plant, which occupies a low island just downstream from Middletown, cannot see the trailers and temporary structures that have turned the site into something resembling a gypsy camp. Nor can the transient get much idea of the activity under way on the island as a work force that occasionally numbers several hundred proceeds with the painstaking task of clearing away the mess left behind by the accident.

The repair work, which Met-Ed officials estimate will cost nearly $400 million, is already several months behind schedule. The recovery crews have removed and decontaminated about a quarter of the 425,000 gal. of radioactive water that spilled into one of Unit 2's auxiliary buildings. Construction workers are building a dump--actually a collection of huge vats set in concrete and covered with concrete slabs--to store these wastes on the island until a permanent disposal site can be found.

Last week company workers took the first step toward decontaminating Unit 2's containment building, where some 600,000 gal. of radioactive water cover the floor to a depth of 7 ft. Right after the accident, the radiation level there was a searing 30,000 rems per hour. It has since dropped to a merely dangerous 200 rems just above the surface of the water. Covered from head to toe in radiation-resistant protective clothing, three engineers entered an air lock, though not the containment building itself, and during the course of a 20-min. stay took radiation readings that will help determine how soon technicians can get in and see the damaged reactor. "It's a long, slow process," admitted Met-Ed Vice President Robert Arnold. "We haven't made as much progress as we had hoped."

And not just in cleaning up what had happened in Unit 2. Arnold concedes Met-Ed still has a long way to go to regain the public confidence it lost because of the accident. During the crisis, Met-Ed was severely criticized by local and state officials for not forthrightly admitting the scope of the problem. A series of investigations of what went wrong in Unit 2 has shaken confidence even more. A special presidential commission found that during the accident plant personnel misinterpreted their instrument readings, overrode automatic safety systems and shut off the reactor's emergency core-cooling system too early. A report sponsored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission delivered another blow by suggesting that Unit 2 came closer to melting down than anyone--even the Met-Ed officials in charge on the scene--realized at the time. Nor has Met-Ed helped its own cause. An increase in the incidence of thyroid problems in babies born in the area around the plant since the accident was quickly dismissed; medical authorities found nonnuclear explanations for most of the cases. But when the company twice released small quantities of radioactive krypton gas from the damaged reactor in February, people in the area were angry. Though neither of the releases was large enough to require reporting under federal regulations, local officials and citizens thought they should have been told. "Public attitudes are improving," said Arnold, "but we still have some image problems." Economically, Middletown appears to be in good condition. There was no mass exodus of frightened families. The local real estate market is about what it was and, reported an agent, would probably be a lot better if mortgage money were more readily available. Retail business in the community has actually improved, at least in part because of the influx of well-paid plant cleanup crews. "Sales have never been better," said Jack Baker, manager of a Middletown haberdashery. "There are a lot of people with $50 bills around town."

The souvenir business is booming.

Baker's store carries an assortment of T shirts bearing legends like "Happiness is a cool reactor" and "Hell no, we won't glow" that are selling well. Joyce Yinger has an even bigger stock of nuclear memorabilia. In addition to T shirts, she has ceramic lamps shaped like cooling towers, T.M.I. belt buckles, and even a gag T.M.I. vasectomy kit. "Business was just great last summer," she said. "It'll pick up again when the tourists start coming." And once the weather starts to clear, visitors should be descending upon the area, if what happened last year is any indication. They will stare at the power plant from Met-Ed's observation center, a modernistic facility for tourists built before the accident on a knoll across from the installation.

A year ago, Mayor Robert Reid received high praise from the residents for coolly doing what he could to cope with the emergency. Today he is worried about what has happened to his town. Said he: "This used to be a pretty unified community. Now it's divided between pro-nuke and antinuke. There's a tension here you can cut with a knife."

The evidence of the split is abundant. Gone are the nuclear doomsayers who stood on street corners a year ago and, like the Ancient Mariner, stopped one out of three people with their harangues.

But no one needs such direct reminders. At the time of the accident, Governor Richard Thornburgh recommended the precaution of evacuating pregnant women and pre-school age children from within five miles of the crippled plant, and thousands of people heeded his advice. "It was awful," said Mrs. Clare Wright, 30, who took her daughter Amy, then 3, to a refugee center set up in a hockey arena in nearby Hershey. Mrs. Wright carried along some clean clothes and a couple of blankets stuffed into a duffel bag, and left behind on the kitchen table a note to let her truckdriver husband know where to find her. She recalled: "We spent three days at that place and two weeks with relatives before we decided that it was safe to return. I'm still not sure that it is."

Others are sure that they are not safe.

"I think that thing is a menace," declared Jeanne Start, gesturing toward the towers from the doorstep of her house. "It ought to be shut down before it kills somebody."

But some residents are equally vociferous in support of nuclear power. "Cowards making a big deal over a little accident," is how a burly fellow who identified himself only as Pete described the antinuclear people. Pete reinforced his views by removing his jacket; on his bright red T shirt was a representation of the famous cooling towers and the words "T.M.I. Staff --We Stayed BEHIND . . . to save yours."

Similar opinions are held by some of the patrons of Mat's Wine-ing Wench Pub, a friendly saloon with a pool table, pinball machines and a clientele that consists almost entirely of ironworkers employed at T.M.I. "Much ado about nothing," said Charles Hummel, a foreman, as he discussed people's worries about radiation. "The situation was never as bad as the press claimed it was," said a tall, mustachioed man whose T shirt bore an indelicate reference to Iran. "Nobody was killed. Nobody was even hurt."

He and his friends believe that nuclear power still has a future, and even many antinuclear people in the area acknowledge that they are probably correct. To be sure, there is stubborn opposition to reopening the disabled and discredited Unit 2 when the cleanup is over. Met-Ed estimates it will take at least three years (federal authorities put the figure closer to five). But Middletowners are resigned to the fact that the company will probably start up the nuclear reactor in Unit 1 some time around the end of the year. Unit 1, which was undamaged by the accident in its sister installation, was shut down for routine refueling at the time of the mishap. The company has asked the NRC for permission to put it into operation.

A few residents say they are actually less worried about nuclear power now than they were before the accident. Both Met-Ed and the NRC have tightened their procedures and improved their machinery in an effort to prevent a recurrence. Middletowners have learned even more. At the time of the accident last year, the town had neither the instruments to monitor radiation levels nor a plan for moving its inhabitants out of danger. Since then, the town has installed radiation detectors on the roof of the borough hall and put together an 80-page program that provides for the evacuation of the town by road, rail, river and even, if it becomes necessary, snowmobile. Said Mayor Reid: "We can empty the town completely in 24 hours. All the folks out at T.M.I. have to do is keep the lid on for that long."

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