TMI: The Fallout Continues

On Friday, February 3, Frances Skolnick received a phone call from a reporter; he was in search of a comment on the decision of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to allow the evaporation of 2.3 million gallons of radioactive water from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. It was a rather disturbing way to find out that the battle Skolnick has waged on behalf of central Pennsylvania's citizens for many long months (see "In the Valley of the Shadow," March 1989) had just taken a decisively negative turn. Skolnick didn't hear officially of the decision until the following Monday.

The water is the byproduct of the nation's worst commercial nuclear power accident, composed of both spillage from the disaster and water used subsequently in cleanup operations. For 10 years it has sat in storage tanks on the island, waiting for the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its licensing board to decide its fate. The highly radioactive and contaminated water presented a decade-long dilemma that wouldn't go away; but, if the nuclear industry has its way, the problem is about to evaporate into thin air.

Despite nuclear industry assurances to the contrary, many people in the area surrounding Three Mile Island are convinced that the plan to evaporate the water and release the radioactive gas into the air poses an unnecessary exposure to low-level radiation and a danger to their safety and health. The release of highly toxic, radioactive tritium is of particular concern.

The water is viewed by residents around TMI as the most visible symbol in a fight in which victories on their side are rare. According to Frances Skolnick, the state of Pennsylvania recently agreed to be a depository for low-level radioactive waste from three neighboring states. But written into the agreement is a prohibition against liquid waste, which poses particular difficulties for disposal.

Nuclear power plants all across the nation are facing cost overruns, problems with waste disposal, and increasing outside pressure to clean up their act. Some nuclear power plants evaporate, decontaminate, and recollect radioactive water in a closed system, according to Skolnick. But the extreme levels of radioactivity and contamination of the TMI water make reuse of the water impossible. Skolnick fears that the NRC decision to evaporate the water and vent the gas could be setting a dangerous precedent as a way to reduce the volume of liquid radioactive waste.

Skolnick was given 10 days in which to file an appeal to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board. But the appeal will have little meaning unless she can also win a stay of the proposed venting. As Sojourners went to press, she was preparing briefs for both the appeal and the stay.

Skolnick and the citizens she represents are advocating that the water be allowed to remain on the island until its radioactivity decays. She is not optimistic about halting the venting. "But," she says, "we need to keep on, because we're right. I feel so strongly that [the venting] is definitely the wrong thing to do, and somewhere along the line, someone will agree."

The decision has left many citizens around Three Mile Island feeling devastated and powerless. Living so close to the power plant "is kind of like living in a war zone emotionally," says Joyce Corradi of Concerned Mothers and Women. "We try so hard to get our concerns heard; we've jumped through all the hoops. But they [nuclear industry officials] are going to do what they want to do. We're always a second concern to money. People feel very hopeless."

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.