Memories of a Near Meltdown

Rising 372 ft. into the clear wintry air, the cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant dominate the skyline just southeast of the Pennsylvania state capital at Harrisburg. Interstate motorists can spot them as they speed across the Susquehanna River on the Pennsylvania Turnpike; local drivers cannot help seeing them when they reach the top of a long hill on Route 283 and head southeast toward Swatara. Three Mile Island also dominates the thoughts of people who live in the area's small towns and rolling farm lands. "I can't look at those things without remembering what happened five years ago," says Joan Start, who fled with her two small children from Middletown, Pa., to Ohio when the plant came close to a meltdown in March 1979.

The accident was a financial and public relations disaster for Metropolitan Edison, the utility that operated Three Mile Island. In 1981 its corporate parent, New Jersey-based General Public Utilities (GPU), set up a new subsidiary, called GPU Nuclear Corp., to clean up the mess left by the accident and reassure the public that T.M.I. Unit 2 is safe. The company is making progress at the first task but has been less successful with the second one.

Last summer it decontaminated the last of the nearly 1 million gal. of radioactive water that had spilled into the plant's reactor and other buildings. The water was passed through filters to remove radioactive material, which was then loaded into stainless-steel casks and trucked away for testing at an Energy Department facility near Richland, Wash. In August, the company plans to lift the cover off the Unit 2 reactor and remove the destroyed core and the remaining fuel rods. Once it has done that, it will be able to complete the process of decontaminating the reactor building and either decommissioning the reactor or repairing it. The company admits that the cleanup, which is more than a year behind schedule, will cost over $900 million, or nearly double the $500 million that had initially been projected.

The campaign to win back official and public trust for Three Mile Island is even further behind schedule. Investigators for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have raised questions about safety procedures being followed by some of the cleanup crews. A federal grand jury has charged Metropolitan Edison with criminal misconduct in connection with its operation of the plant in the months preceding the accident. Among other things, the company is accused of having manipulated and falsified tests relating to leaks and then concealing the problem from the NEC.

The indictments, allegations and public distrust have hindered GPU's efforts to restart T.M.I. Unit 1, which was shut down for routine refueling at the time of the accident at its sister nuclear reactor. The company has been trying for two years to get permission to restart the reactor, but has run into opposition from people living near the plant and from state officials. GPU claims it is crucial to its financial survival to get Unit 1 going again. The NRC presented the company with a list of some 60 questions about management and other procedures that it wanted answered before it would approve the startup. Two weeks ago, the NRC took a step toward approval. It voted not to await the outcome of the criminal trial involving Metropolitan Edison before deciding whether or not Unit 1 can be put on line again. That decision may come as early as June. The president of GPU, Herman Dieckamp, welcomed the NRC's move, saying that his utility has "fully cooperated with all the investigations, and we think it is timely for the process to come to a conclusion." But some local residents differed. Said William O'Brien, who can see the plant's towers from his window: "The longer that plant stays shut, the safer I'll feel."