IWAS NINE YEARS oLD when the Three Mile Island accident occurred. I was living in Easton, PA, only about 100 miles from the reactor, I remember how worried people were about the
plant. They knew it was out there, and
they knew, theoretically, that something
could go wrong, but for the most part
they accepted the conventional wisdom
that the benefits of nuclear energy so far
outweighed the risks as to render those
risks negligible.
Then the plant had its accident, and
suddenly there were just as many people
in the Lehigh Valley wearing “No Nukes”
t-shirts after TMI as there were folks ignorant of the plant before its crisis. In other
words, there was a sharp swing of public
interest directly proportional to their ignorance of the issue. And as a result, once
the most acute dangers seemed to have
passed, people went on pretending that
there was never a risk in the first place.
The official story on TMI is that it released low amounts of radiation into the
immediate area, that nobody died from it,
and certainly you can’t peg any diseases
on it. one farmer, Mary Holokwa, lived
near TMI and saw the sky turn blue during
the accident (thanks to atmospheric ionization) and at one point nearly suffocated
as a cloud of vented gas (possibly krypton)
descended on her farm, displacing oxygen
levels to a dangerous low. Holokwa soon
developed thyroid cancer died from it.
And yet she is not listed as an official casualty of TMI. Neither are the higher levels
of infant mortality in the county in the year
following the accident.
Likewise, numerous farm animals in
the county started showing up with tu-
mors after the accident. Cancer in dogs,
in cats, in cows, in goats. Goats sometimes
get cancer, one area veterinarian said, but
he had never seen it until after TMI. There
were numerous accounts of stillborn live-
stock, livestock that would no longer pro-
duce milk, and other problems. Again,
none of it is officially attached to TMI. But
the folk of central Pennsylvania were not
a cadre of liars; they were mainly farmers
who lived in the shadow of something
they did not understand, and who would
have to bear its risks if something went
wrong. And it did.
once the most
acute dangers seemed
to have passed, people
went on pretending that
there was never a risk in
the first place.”
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