Location

(4)

The Site

Three Mile Island (TMI) lies ten miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital.  The Susquehanna River flows around several large islands, and TMI is located less than 900 feet from the east bank and 1.5 miles from the west.  Before the General Public Utilities Corporation (G.P.U.) announced in 1966 that it would use the site for a commercial nuclear power station, TMI was a fertile 400-acre leased plot of farmland.   

(5)

Ironically, TMI’s energy would be superfluous in the heart of coal country, but its easy access to water, centralized distribution location, firm bedrock, and inexpensive local labor made it an potential site. (1)

G.P.U. had planned to add a second unit to its Oyster Creek, New Jersey facility, but local labor problems necessitated that the second unit be added to the new construction at TMI as Unit 2.  The plant at TMI would be operated by G.P.U.’s subsidiary, Metropolitan Edison (Met-Ed).  The Atomic Energy Commission (A.E.C.) approved permits for the construction of both units by the end of 1969 with minimal oversight over this “self-regulating” company; the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 made the A.E.C.’s function not only regulation, but also promotion of the new nuclear energy industry. (2)  The TMI location would be just one of several Babcock & Wilson designed nuclear steam-driven plants.

“Good Enough” (3)

Unit 1 was complete in 1974 and began operating under an A.E.C license, despite the A.E.C.’s discovery of honeycombs (or air bubbles) that had formed in the foundations.  By the time Unit 2 was completed in 1978, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who had flagged 14 “open safety items” during its license inspection of Unit 2, had replaced the A.E.C.  One of these flagged concerns dealt with the ability for the plant to control small loss-of-coolant (LOS) accidents, which could be caused by a stuck-open relief valve. 

However, Unit 2 was declared operational and commercially viable by December 30, 1978, just in time for a tax credit.  As a cost cutting measure (and a wide-spread tactic), the majority of the reactor’s operators would not be trained nuclear scientists, but rather trained employees with a single expert overseer.

They were probably still better employees than Homer Simpson

Citations:

(1)  William Keisling, Three Mile Island: Turning Point (Redmond, Washington: Express Publications, 1980), 54.

(2) Daniel F. Ford, Three Mile Island: Thirty Minutes to Meltdown (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 35-36.

(3) Keisling, Turning Point, 83.

(4) Ibid, 18.
(5) Robert Del Tredici, The People of Three Mile Island (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980), 84.