Harvey Wasserman on the Three Mile Island Accident

Harvey Franklin Wasserman (born December 31, 1945) is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy. He has been a strategist and organizer in the anti-nuclear movement in the United States for over 30 years. He has been a featured speaker on Today, Nightline, National Public Radio, CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight and other major media outlets. Wasserman is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an investigative reporter, and senior editor of The Columbus Free Press where his coverage, with Bob Fitrakis, has prompted Rev. Jesse Jackson to call them "the Woodward and Bernstein of the 2004 election."

On March 29, 1979, there was a cooling system malfunction that caused a partial melt-down of the reactor core. This loss of coolant accident resulted in the release of a significant amount of radioactivity, estimated at 43,000 curies (1.59 PBq) of radioactive krypton gas, but less than 20 curies (740 GBq) of the especially hazardous iodine-131, into the surrounding environment.

The nuclear power industry claims that there were no deaths, injuries or adverse health effects from the accident, but a peer-reviewed study by Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina found that lung cancer and leukemia rates were 2 to 10 times higher downwind of TMI than upwind, and also showed that there was plant and animal chromosomal damage, but without considering the effects of stress or improved screening. In addition, the Radiation and Public Health Project reported a spike in infant mortality in the downwind communities two years after the accident.

The incident was widely publicized nationally and internationally, and had far-reaching effects on public opinion, particularly in the United States. The China Syndrome, a movie about a nuclear meltdown which was released just 12 days before the disaster, became a blockbuster hit.

Following the accident, the plant was transferred under the ownership and operation of a new subsidiary company, GPU Nuclear (GPUN), in a bid to disassociate itself from itself. GPUN continued to operate TMI-1 until its 1999 sale to AmerGen Energy Corporation, a joint venture of Philadelphia Electric Company Energy, Inc. (PECO Energy) and British Energy Group Plc.

Exelon Corporation was created in October 2000 by the merger of PECO Energy Company and Unicom, of Philadelphia and Chicago respectively. Unicom owned Commonwealth Edison. The PECO share in AmerGen was acquired by Exelon during late 2000. Exelon acquired British Energy's share in AmerGen in 2003, and transferred the plant under the direct ownership and operation of its Exelon Nuclear business unit.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository (after closure of Germany's Repository for radioactive waste Morsleben and the Schacht Asse II Salt Mine) licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons. It is located approximately 26 miles (42 km) east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in eastern Eddy County.

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