A TMI 25^th Anniversary Congressional & Media Briefing will be held on March 24^th in Washington DC. In March and April, TMI 25^th Anniversary media and educational events are being held in CA, CT, ID, IL, IN, MA, NC, NJ, NY, NV, OH, OR, PA, TX, VT, VA and WI. The Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS), Public Citizen and many other national, state and local organizations are calling on the Bush Administration and industry to protect peoples’ health and the environment from the dangers of nuclear reactors and radioactive waste by taking five precautionary actions. (See attached.) Based on the “first do no harm” approach of medicine, the precautionary approach shifts the questions we ask about environmental hazards from “what level of harm is acceptable?”

For more information, see attached Media Statements from national leaders, as well as a statement from Admiral Hyman Rickover’s daughter-in-law reporting he deeply regretted persuading President Carter to suppress “alarming” information that TMI was “infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public.” The BE SAFE initiative is coordinated by CHEJ and includes over 300 organizations. Over the next year, BE SAFE is gathering endorsements for the BE SAFE Precautionary Platform to present to the newly elected President in 2005. The Platform outlines the critical need for government and industry to institute a “better safe than sorry” approach motivated by caution and prevention to protect children from harmful toxic and radioactive exposures.

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TMI 25^th Anniversary National Media Statements

U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-MA): “The Three Mile Island accident was a wake-up call to the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the accident's immediate aftermath, the NRC did implement some safety reforms, but in the years since they have weakened some of those reforms at the behest of the nuclear industry. September 11, 2001 should also have been a wake up call to the nuclear industry and the NRC. Unfortunately, the inadequate steps the NRC has taken to improve security since then were developed behind closed doors with the nuclear industry. Twenty-five years since Three Mile Island and 2.5 years since the worst terrorist attack in the U.S., the NRC and the industry continue to shortchange safety and security at nuclear reactors." Senior Member of House Energy & Commerce Committee. Israel Klein, Press Spokesman, 202-225-2836.

Mary Osborn, TMI Witness: “Three Mile Island is an accident without end. We don't know how much radiation was actually released, but recent estimates now range between 40 million curies and 100 million curies; a significant increase over the original 13 to 20 million curies. Cancer cases have indeed increased ever since the accident. Health studies clearly show increases, but the authors say TMI did not do it; not enough radiation escaped. The fact is people exposed to the fallout were the true dosimeters. Many had symptoms such as metallic taste, skin burns, hair loss and diarrhea. To this day, government has never investigated these classic radiation symptoms. To this day, the nuclear industry prostitutes continue to deny that TMI caused harm to any living thing. If Three Mile Island did not do it - what did? Nothing else happened in Central Pennsylvania during those days, actually, nothing has ever happened to cause the effects experienced, except for the Three Mile Island nuclear accident!” Mary Osborn, Swatara, Pennsylvania. 717-939-2890.

Sierra Club Nuclear Waste Task Force: “Twenty-five years after the Three Mile Island Unit 2 accident, the still-radioactive reactor remains on an island in the Susquehanna River. It is a constant reminder that radioactive contamination lingers far beyond the event. TMI-2's fuel—half had melted—has been removed, but the plant has not been decommissioned. Perhaps the greatest significance of the accident is that it taught the world that severe nuclear power reactor accidents can—and will—occur, contrary to all safety assurances of the nuclear industry. As the intervening party in this reactor's original licensing, we were prohibited by the NRC Licensing Board from asking any questions whatsoever about the probability or consequences of any accidents more severe than the plant's safety systems had been designed to contain. Today, of all the ‘TMI Lessons Learned’ by the NRC, the most disturbing may be the NRC's curtailment of citizens' rights and ability to participate meaningfully in the regulation of this dangerous industry. Since TMI, we have learned that low-level radiation is more damaging to human health than existing standards recognize; that radioactive waste is more difficult to isolate than the government had believed; that nuclear power and its wastes are more costly than anticipated; and that our nation's nuclear facilities are far more vulnerable to terrorist attack than anyone imagined in 1979. Therefore, it is now time to revise the nation's nuclear energy policy so that our paramount objective is to protect the health and safety of people and their environment, to close the existing aging reactors and forego building new ones. Instead, a sound future U.S. energy policy must be based on conservation and efficiency to minimize wastefulness, and be based on development of safer renewable energy sources.” Dr. Judith Johnsrud, State College, PA, 814-237-3900.

Nuclear Information & Resource Service: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Bush Administration have to cover up the radiation burns and cancers suffered by the people around the Three Mile Island nuclear power meltdown—even now 25 years later—so that they can get away with new policies that will subject an unsuspecting public to more radiation. On this 25th anniversary of the TMI nuclear meltdown we are threatened with more radiation from new nuclear reactors to be built at taxpayer expense if the energy bill passes, increased risk of accidents as reactors age, routine radioactive shipments through our neighborhoods to leaking dumps and the deliberate mixing of nuclear power wastes with clean materials to manufacture contaminated products we use every day and night.” Diane D'Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director, Washington, DC, 202-328-0002.

Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy & Environmental Program: "As we look back on the last 25 years since the Three Mile Island disaster, geopolitical conditions have shifted away from security and stability, and toward a new kind of war where all citizens are soldiers and no targets are off-limits. At the same time, the dangers of nuclear power have only increased. The plants are aging, deregulated electricity markets encourage plants to push the limits of their production capacity, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has become more and more beholden to the nuclear industry. Let the 25th anniversary of Three Mile Island mark the final nail in the coffin for nuclear power in the United States." Wenonah Hauter, Director, Washington, DC, 202-454-5130.

Center for Health, Environment & Justice: “It is time for policymakers to heed the lessons learned from the Three Mile Island meltdown -- nuclear power is a dangerous technology that should be banned. We need to institute a BE SAFE precautionary approach to protect our children from harmful radioactive exposures and avoid illnesses. The precautionary approach shifts the questions we ask about environmental hazards from ‘what level of harm is acceptable?’ to ‘how can we prevent harm?’ We call on our policymakers to prevent harm by prohibiting nuclear power, stopping proposed high-level waste dumps and nuclear waste deregulation, and instituting cleanup policies that are protective of our children.” Lois Marie Gibbs, Executive Director, Falls Church, VA, 703-237-2249.

NAACP: “Twenty-five years after Three Mile Island, adequate safeguards for communities living near nuclear plants is still not a priority. Only six years after the accident, the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant began operations in a rural, impoverished, predominantly African American community of Claiborne County, Mississippi. At that time, Claiborne County lacked the infrastructure to support the Grand Gulf plant, which remains true today. With only 30% of its taxes paid to the local community, the Grand Gulf plant has directly undercut local safety and security protection. One fire station, a distant hospital, limited law enforcement, and an insufficient tax base has left the community without services necessary to host a nuclear plant, much less its emergencies or accidents. Instead of prioritizing these imminent safety and security deficiencies, Grand Gulf's priority is expansion due to recent federal incentives, or the "Nuclear Power 2010" program, which offers nuclear plants a streamlined permit approval process and tax subsidies to add nuclear reactors. A casualty of this program, Claiborne County and other communities living near nuclear plants will receive only increased safety and security risks if this program is successfully implemented - an ironic policy post 9/11.” Janette Wipper, Assistant General Counsel, NAACP, Baltimore, MD, 410-580-5787.

Indigenous Environmental Network: “For more that 50-years, the legacy of the U.S. nuclear chain, from exploration and processing of uranium, to weapons production and testing, to nuclear power and disposal of radioactive spent fuel rods has had devastating health and ecological affects on American Indian, Alaska Natives, Pacific Islanders and their traditional lands and waters. As communities that have experienced first hand exposures—we support the BE SAFE campaign that would move America beyond uncertainty in decision-making to a precautionary approach that would take protective measures when there is scientific evidence that an activity threatens wildlife, the environment, or human health—even in the absence of full scientific certainty. The future of America and Mother Earth depends on it.” Tom B.K. Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network, Bemidji, Minnesota, 218- 751-4967.

Three Mile Island 25^th Anniversary

Precautionary Actions

To Prevent Nuclear Hazards & Protect Our Children

1) Prohibit new nuclear power plants and license extensions; four U.S. sites are targeted for new reactors (Idaho, Illinois, Mississippi and Virginia) and dozens of older reactors are applying for 20-year license extensions, including TMI 1.

2) Require radioactive cleanups to be protective of children’s health and drinking water, with no exemptions for military or commercial sites.

3) Halt the deregulation of nuclear waste that would allow toys, toasters and other consumer products to be made of nuclear waste and contaminate landfills and drinking water supplies.

4) Stop the Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley high-level nuclear waste dumps and dangerous, large-scale radioactive waste transport schemes through forty-five states.

5) Halt the nuclear power industry’s “cradle to grave” assault on Native Americans and people of color from uranium mining and milling to waste dumping.

Admiral Rickover’s Daughter-In-Law
Reports He Deeply Regretted Persuading President Carter
To Suppress “Alarming” Information That TMI
Was “Infinitely More Dangerous Than Was Ever Made Public.”

“In May, 1983, my father-in-law, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, told me that at the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident a full report was commissioned by President Jimmy Carter. He (my father-in-law) said that the report, if published in its entirety, would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry, because the accident at Three Mile Island was infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public. He told me that he had used his enormous personal influence with President Carter to persuade him to publish the report only in a highly 'diluted' form. The President himself had originally wished the full report to be made public.

In November, 1985, my father-in-law told me that he had come to deeply regret his action in persuading President Carter to suppress the most alarming aspects of that report.”

NEWS RELEASE