I was sitting in my 10 am Wednesday morning physics class at Elizabethtown College on March 28th, 1979 when we were interrupted by the announcement that there was a nuclear accident at TMI. The details were very vague, and this was the age before cell phones and the internet. Our class of about fifteen people and our professor decided to go outside with Geiger counters to see if there was any excess radiation beyond the usual background noise. There wasn’t any indication per those Geiger counters. We tuned into our radios for news while the Geiger counters were mostly silent.
There was talk of having TMI radiation parties and the mood was festive.
After physics class I had most of that morning off, so I strolled around campus to interesting sights such as people dressed in tin foil and umbrellas to “shield” themselves from the radiation. There was talk of having TMI radiation parties and the mood was festive. Some of my friends joked about getting an early spring “tan” from the radiation. News coverage was sketchy at best but seemed to indicate that the problem was minor and under control.
I went to my usual classes on Thursday the 29th and news reporting was vague but optimistic. TMI was the topic of most conversation which ranged from jokes to more serious dialogue about the dangers of radiation release.
On Friday March 30th, I headed to class early in the morning and by 10 am we were told to stay inside until further notice. In the early afternoon Elizabethtown College, which was within a 10 mile radius of TMI, announced that it was closing until further notice and all students were instructed to leave the campus and go home. The campus quickly cleared out and I drove to my hometown of Palmyra, which was about 15 miles away from TMI.
Thank God Harold Denton was here to save the day!
Once home, I tuned into radio and television for any updates. I phoned my older brother in Hummelstown who told me he and his pregnant wife were evacuating to the Scranton area. They left Friday night to beat the rush if there was a going to be a general evacuation. The remainder of my family had decided to wait out the situation from what we were told was a reasonably safe distance in Palmyra. We all stayed indoors and anxiously monitored the situation.
By Saturday morning March 31st, the situation seemed to have gotten worse and news of a hydrogen bubble forming were bothersome. I remember hearing news from Harold Denton who seemed to for the first time speak with confidence and experience about the situation at TMI. For the first time I remember thinking that this guy knew what he was doing and was not a political hack or a Met Ed stooge. My confidence in Governor Thornburg, President Carter and the Met Ed propaganda machine was at an all time low. Thank God Harold Denton was here to save the day! The situation on Saturday seemed to worsen and many residents were clogging the roads to evacuate. My family decided to stay since the roads were full and we thought we would watch and wait for another 24 hours.
Sunday morning April 1st was no April Fools day. We got up and went to church which had a slightly smaller congregation that morning. We rushed back home to stay tuned to the news. The hydrogen bubble was still a problem but was portrayed as a diminishing problem. Harold Denton spoke with honesty and confidence but still portrayed the possibility of issues with the bubble.
By April 2nd, the bubble seemed to be less of an issue and was resolving. Over the next week the situation stabilized and life returned to almost normal. Elizabethtown College remained closed the entire week and classes resumed on April 9, 1979.
When returning to campus, the seriousness of the situation was on everyone’s mind. There was much discussion about how close we got to a meltdown. There was discussion about the possible long-term sequelae of the radiation release. There was skepticism about the information that came from Met Ed and the state politicians. There remained a keen awareness about the inconsistent reporting and varying stories about actual radiation release. There was a consensus among students that Harold Denton had saved the day and directed an otherwise incompetent set of engineers through a near disaster. There was discussion about the The China Syndrome, which was released just before TMI occurred, and the similarities of the situations in the film and real life.
This was real life not a Petri dish.
In the summer of 1979, I worked with several of my biology professors for a consulting firm called Porter and Goertz. We were contracted by Met Ed to monitor the ongoing inert gas releases that continued over the spring and early summer. The company set up water, soil, and background radiation sampling collection sites around TMI. My job that summer involved transporting those daily samples to labs in New York and New Jersey for radiation analysis. I remember my professors commenting about the study methods and how it would never hold up to the rigors of a PhD doctoral dissertation committee. While I never asked them about the specifics of their concerns, I knew the number of samples I transported daily was very large and from varying distances from the ongoing TMI gas releases. Later in retrospect, this study was not a PhD “laboratory dissertation” but a real study involving human lives, the surrounding land, and the environment. This was real life not a Petri dish.
Later in reading the NRC reports, I was actually very satisfied with the reporting of the background radiation reports. As a physician, the studies I have reviewed seem to mostly support no significant increase in the incidence of thyroid and other cancers possibly related to TMI.