A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH NUCLEAR POWER
I became aware of Arnie Gundersen (http://www.fairewinds.org) just after the accident at TMI here in Pennsylvania. On the morning of March 28, a problem in the Number 2 Reactor at TMI triggered a series of mishaps that led eventually to the meltdown of half of the uranium fuel and sparked uncontrolled releases of radiation that were literally "off the charts" of monitoring devices.
Working as a teacher within the 50 mile radius of the accident, I was blithely traveling to school on the morning of the March 28th TMI event when I happened to roll down the windows of my bright orange VW Beetle on that warm March morning. What I encountered as the windows opened was unlike anything I had experienced in my life. I had the unmistakable sensation "sweet metallic particles" landing in my nasal passage and throat. The best description I could articulate at the time was it was as if "sweet metallic powdered sugar" had been landing in my nose and throat.
Only later did I learn that there had been incident at Three Mile Island. Of course, we were getting only bits and pieces of what was actually happening there. Everyone, of course, was beyond frustration with the pallid assurances that TMI posed no threat.
We had teachers secretly keeping radios on throughout the teaching day to eke out any updates on the changing condition of the reactor and TMI site. Our science teacher immediately sent his pregnant wife as far as possible from the 50 mile radius where we taught our students each day. Each morning I would pack my car before going to school with clothes and food in preparation of a possible evacuation in the event of a total meltdown. Going to and from work I checked the roadways for any sign of police that might suggest organization for such an evacuation. When pressed by staff about whether to even send our district's elementary students out to recess, the Superindent responded that the kids "needed fresh air" more than any hidden threat of the evolving TMI incident.
Often when I would go outdoors, I would become aware of a dull ache in my thyroid area and my heart would begin to skip beats. In addition, there were numerous reports of animal anomalies following the accident, some of which are recorded in the book Three Mile Island: The People's Testament, which is based on interviews with 250 area residents done between 1979 and 1988 by Katagiri Mitsuru and Aileen M. Smith. Additional overview here: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/04/03/startling-revelations-about-three-mile-island-nuclear-disaster . Fortunately, folks like Arnie Gundersen (now at fairewinds.org) were working to document first-hand experiences and make sense of the science and mathematics of the runaway reactor.
Having stood teaching in front of my guileless students under the minute-by-minute threat of a possible meltdown and evacuation of the entire region within 50 miles of TMI, I can only ask the question, "Who in their right mind ever thought this technology should have been developed?"
How many more sites like Chernobyl, nuclear waste facilities, and nuclear power plants will sit like menacing monsters threatening life for the next 3000 years?
= new reply since forum marked as read
My experience parallels information in this article and I was told by a friend in the nuclear industry that there was no doubt about my experiencing radiation that morning. (p.s. The Lorax is my favorite children's book for everyone! 
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But robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt.
The public was told there was no danger of an explosion.
But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode.
The public was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area.
But Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which was showered with fallout.
In fact, the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard wisdom in the health physics community that---due in part to the extreme vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the weaknesses of old age---there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found.
The public was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the health impacts of the accident.
In fact, the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.
The federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's residents.
In fact, the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and much more.
A study by Columbia University claimed there were no significant health impacts, but its data by some interpretations points in the opposite direction. Investigations by epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina, and others, led Wing to warn that the official studies on the health impacts of the accident suffered from "logical and methodological problems." Studies by Wing and by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry official, being announced this week at Harrisburg, significantly challenge official pronouncements on both radiation releases and health impacts.
Gundersen, a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says: "When I correctly interpreted the containment pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked. This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify decreases in emergency planning and containment design."
Data unearthed by radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh, and statisticians Jay Gould (now deceased) and Joe Mangano of New York have led to strong assertions of major public health impacts. On-going work by Sternglass and Mangano clearly indicates that "normal" reactor radiation releases of far less magnitude that those at TMI continue to have catastrophic impacts on local populations.
Anecdotal evidence among the local human population has been devastating. Large numbers of central Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and who were exposed to nuclear tests in the south Pacific and Nevada.
A series of interviews conducted by Robbie Leppzer and compiled in a "a two-hour public radio documentary VOICES FROM THREE MILE ISLAND (www.turningtide.com) give some indication of the horrors experienced by the people of central Pennsylvania.
People Died at Three Mile Island
by Harvey Wasserman
