Radiation Nation

by Natasha Zaretsky

  109. Televised address of Richard Thornburgh, April 6, 1979, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 10, DT Papers, UPSC.

  110. “Neighbors Find TMI A Strain,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 8, 1982; “TMI Still Frightens Neighbors,” Pittsburgh Press, March 28, 1982; “Fears Caused by Three Mile Island Endure,” New York Times, November 11, 1982.

  111. “TMI: Anxiety, Apathy Live Side by Side at Middletown,” Pittsburgh Press, March 25, 1984.

  112. Quoted in Edward J. Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows: Citizen Mobilization in the Wake of the Accident at Three Mile Island (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 39.

  113. Ibid., 47.

  114. Quoted in Walker, Three Mile Island, 205. On the findings of radiation monitoring, see Walker, Three Mile Island, 204–208; Press release of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, April 20, 1979, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 1, DT Papers, UPSC; White House press release, April 6, 1979, Box 194, Folder 1, DT Papers, UPSC; press release, Governor Thornburgh’s office, April 3, 1979, 9:30 PM, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 7, DT Papers, UPSC; “Social and Economic Effects of the TMI Accident”; “Summary of TMI Nuclear Accident,” Bureau of Food and Chemistry, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 16, DT Papers, UPSC; “Population Dose and Health Impact of the Accident at TMI Nuclear Station,” Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 19, DT Papers, UPSC.

  115. Walker, Three Mile Island, 207.

  116. Ibid., 84.

  117. Ibid., 207.

  118. Evelyn Bromet et al., “Three Mile Island: Mental Health Findings,” the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Mental Health and the Disaster Assistance and Emergency Mental Health Section, October 1980, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 8: Office of Policy Development, Three Mile Island, Box 218, Folder 12, DT Papers, UPSC.

  119. Interview with College Administrator #5, July 10, 1979, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000187.

  120. Transcript, National Nuclear Debate, the Pennsylvania State University Capitol Complex, DT Papers, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 197, Folder 5, UPSC. My italics.

  121. See Washington Post Special Report, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 200, Folder 1, DT Papers, UPSC.

  122. CBS morning news transcript, March 30, 1979, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 3, DT Papers, UPSC.

  123. See, for example, Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation: Volume I, Joint Hearing, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, April 19, 1979 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1979), 243.

  124. “Radioactive Ignorance,” reprinted by permission, Washington Post, 1979, in “Radiation in Medicine and Industry,” Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 197, Folder 2, DT Papers, UPSC.

  125. Three Mile Island Revisited, October 1982, Interview by Aileen Smith and Mitsuru Katagiri of Becky Mease, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 5, Folder 6, TMIC, DCASC.

  126. Transcript, National Nuclear Debate, the Pennsylvania State University Capitol Complex, DT Papers, Box 197, Folder 5, UPSC. See also Mary Meredith, “TMI Coalition: Prospectus for a Three Mile Island Legal Fund and a Public Interest Resource Center,” February 29, 1980, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 2, Folder 1, TMIC, DCASC.

  127. Letter from C. Pfeffer to President Carter, York Haven, PA, received July 18, 1979, Records of the Office of the Staff Secretary, Box 38, Folder: Nuclear Issues and TMI, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (hereafter referred to as JCPL).

  128. Quoted in Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows, 55.

  129. Public Hearing, Personal Health Effects of the Three Mile Island Accident, Penn State Capitol Campus, Middletown, PA, RG 220, Central Files, May 22, 1979, Box 9, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  130. “Pennsylvania’s Governor Says Area Is Now Safe for Pregnant Women,” New York Times, April 10, 1979; on Three Mile Island Action Alert, see public hearing statement of Michael Klinger, May 24, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 307, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II. See also Interview with Physician #1, October 4, 1979, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000177.

  131. Interview with Obstetrician-Gynecologist, September 25, 1979, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000125.

  132. Press Release from American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologist, April 13, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 7, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  133. Interview with College Administrator #10, May 6, 1979, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000278.

  134. Department of Health News Release, “Health Department Discounts TMI as Connected to Infant Deaths,” May 19, 1980, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 194, Folder 21, DT Papers, UPSC.

  135. Testimony of Ms. Dominoski, Public Hearing, Health Resource Planning and Development, May 24, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 307, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  136. Letter from Mitchell Rogovin, Director, NRC/TMI Special Inquiry Group to NRC Chairman Hendrie, Gilinsky, Kennedy, Bradford, Ahearne, November 15, 1979, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 200, DT Papers, Folder 10, UPSC.

  137. Testimony of Jane Lee, Health Resources Planning and Development, Public Hearings: Personal Health Effects of the Three Mile Island Accident, Sheraton-Harrisburg Inn, New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, May 24, 1979, 7–15, RG 220, Central Files, Box 307, unfiled, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II. Jane Lee is also interviewed in Del Tredici, The People of Three Mile Island, 87–88.

  138. J. Robert Heckman, PhD, Elizabethtown College, “Low Level Radiation and Genetic Mutations,” Prepared for House Select Committee on TMI, Public Hearing, Bainbridge, PA, May 31, 1979, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 5, Folder 5, TMIC, DCASC.

  139. Both of these testimonies come from Health Resource Planning and Development, Public Hearing, Middletown, PA, May 24, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 307, unfiled, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  140. Quoted in Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows, 39.

  141. See, for example, letters to commission from Nikki Naumann and Mary M. Wertman, RG 220, Central Files, Box 307, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  142. “TMI Mothers Anxiety Still Above Normal,” Harrisburg Evening News, November 12, 1982.

  143. “Three Years Later: Middletown Remembers,” Harrisburg Evening News, April 2, 1982.

  144. “TMI: For Many, Legacy of Fear Lives,” Harrisburg Patriot, March 25, 1984.

  145. Letter from Charlotte Drennen to NRC, May 24, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 307, unfiled, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  146. On Nilsson, see Eric Goldscheider, “Fetal Positions,” Boston Globe, August 10, 2003. The publication of the series in Life was timed to come out around the time of Nillson’s book A Child I
s Born. The fetuses he photographed were actually corpses. See Sara Dubow, Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). See also Luc Boltanski, The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion (London: Polity, 2013).

  147. “The Weighty Responsibility of Drinking for Two,” New York Times, November 29, 2006.

  148. Laury Oaks, “Smoke Filled Wombs and Fragile Fetuses: The Social Politics of Fetal Representation,” Signs 26, no. 1 (Autumn 2000): 63–108.

  149. Mary Segers and Timothy Byrnes, Abortion Politics in American States (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).

  150. See Planned Parenthood Association of Pennsylvania, Money, Power, and the Radical Right in Pennsylvania (Darby, PA: Diane, 1996).

  151. Quoted in Faye Ginsburg, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 104.

  152. I did not find many direct references to abortion politics in my primary sources on the accident, which frankly surprised me. However, this may have been a tactical decision on the part of local women who might not have wanted to call attention to the tension between their nominal opposition to abortion rights and the fact that some of them apparently considered the procedure after the accident. But this is only a hypothesis on my part. The sources do not offer much in the way of clues.

  153. PANE newsletter (undated), Folder 2, PANE Newsletter Collection (unprocessed), TMIC, DCASC. See also “TMI: Anxiety, Apathy Live Side by Side at Middletown,” Pittsburgh Press, March 25, 1984.

  154. Ginsburg, Contested Lives, 9.

  155. “No Evidence of Increases of Cancer Near TMI Plant,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 6, 1985.

  156. Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Moreton argues that the rise of the conservative Christian Right was haunted by the nightmare of “vulnerable human life tossed out as refuse.” Jerry Falwell recalled his awakening to a prolife position, Moreton writes, by invoking “a dumpster in Los Angeles overflowing with the dismembered remains of 1,700 fetal bodies and a trash incinerator in Wichita sending up hundreds more in smoke, like the victims of Auschwitz” (120).

  157. “Helen Caldicott’s Many Lives: Pediatrician, Mother, Activist,” New York Times, May 25, 1979.

  158. Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows, 58.

  159. Letter to commission from Mary Wertman, May 20, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 7, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  160. Public Hearing, Middletown, Pennsylvania, May 22, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 9, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  161. Letter from Carolyn Walborn to Barb Jorgensen, June 14, 1979, RG 220, Central Files, Box 7, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  3. CREATING A COMMUNITY OF FATE AT THREE MILE ISLAND

  1. “TMI Protester Tells Court of Radiation Effects in ‘79,” Harrisburg Patriot, August 9, 1984; and “Defendant Alleges TMI Radiation,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 1984.

  2. For a helpful analysis of this term, see Peter Baehr, “Social Extremity, Communities of Fate, and the Sociology of SARS,” European Journal of Sociology 46, no. 2 (2005): 179–211.

  3. Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the US and Beyond (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 31; and Ursula Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  4. On the restart, see J. Samuel Walker, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 232–234.

  5. Quoted in Edward J. Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows: Citizen Mobilization in the Wake of the Accident at Three Mile Island (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 162.

  6. TMIA Timeline, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 8: Office of Policy Development, Three Mile Island, Box 223, Folder 4, Dick Thornburgh Papers (hereafter referred to as DT Papers), University of Pittsburgh Special Collections (hereafter referred to as UPSC).

  7. On these litigation efforts, see Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows.

  8. Ibid.

  9. “Middletown Remains Concerned by TMI,” Harrisburg Patriot, February 8, 1985, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 8: Office of Policy Development, Three Mile Island, Box 218, Folder 12, DT Papers, UPSC.

  10. Transcript, National Nuclear Debate, the Pennsylvania State University Capitol Complex, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 197, Folder 5, DT Papers, UPSC.

  11. Letter from Patricia Longnecker to Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes, April 21, 1980, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 1, Folder 2, Three Mile Island Collection (hereafter referred to TMIC), Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections (hereafter referred to as DCASC).

  12. Susan Stranahan, Susquehanna, River of Dreams (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 207–208.

  13. “Middletown Remains Concerned by TMI.”

  14. Robert Del Tredici, The People of Three Mile Island (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1980), 48.

  15. Ibid., 48–49.

  16. Interview with College Administrator No. 8, August 7, 1979, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000222.

  17. Interview with business employee and spouse, August 20, 1979, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000222.

  18. Interview with Teacher No. 2, undated, LMOHI, TMIC, DCASC. Resource Center of threemileisland.org, www.threemileisland.org/resource/item_detail.php?item_id=00000231.

  19. “TMI Coalition: Prospectus for a Three Mile Island Legal Fund,” February 29, 1980, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 2, Folder 1, TMIC, DCASC.

  20. “Thoughts on Stress,” Faye Forwood, Susquehanna Valley Alliance Newsletter (hereafter referred to as SVA Newsletter), March 1980, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 1, Folder 12, TMIC, DCASC.

  21. “The Fears Over TMI Cannot Be Smokescreened,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 1980.

  22. Leaflet: Stop the Restart at Three Mile Island, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 7: Three Mile Island, Box 196, Folder 8, DT Papers, UPSC.

  23. John Kemeny, Accident at Three Mile Island: The Need for Change, the Legacy of TMI (Oxford: Pergamon, 1979), 13, 138.

  24. See Transcript of William Scranton, February 26, 1970, Box 196, Folder 7, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, DT Papers, UPSC; additional materials about the restart and cleanup can be found in Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 13: Office of General Counsel, Box 354, Folder 9, DT Papers, UPSC.

  25. On race, class, and toxic waste, see Andrew Szasz, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); and Julie Sze, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice (Boston: MIT Press, 2006).

  26. SVA Newsletter, November 1980, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 1, Folder 12, TMIC, DCASC.

  27. On venting, see Walker, Three Mile Island, 225–232.

  28. Ibid., 226.

  29. “Candle Vigil Flares to Verbal Clenched Fists,” Harrisburg Evening News, March 28, 1980, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 8: Office of Policy Development, Three Mile Island, Box 210, Folder 14, DT Papers, UPSC.

  30. Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows, 113.

  31. Letter from State Representative Steven Reed to President Jimmy Carter, March 20, 1980, Records of the Office of the Staff Secretary, Box 156, Folder 3/27/80, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (hereafter referred to as JCPL).

  32. Del Tredici, The People of Three Mile Island, 47–48.
On the meeting on March 19, 1980, see Walker, Three Mile Island, 226–227. The meeting was also covered at length in the Philadelphia Bulletin (March 21–23, 1980) and the Philadelphia Inquirer (March 22–23, 1980).

  33. Transcription, William Scranton, February 26, 1980, Box 196, Folder 7, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, DT Papers, UPSC.

  34. Deposition of Richard Thornburgh, 88–89, RG 220, Central Series, Box 30, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  35. “What Have We Learned from TMI Over the Last Year?,” Statement of Susan Shetrom, Etters, Pennsylvania, Beverly Hess Papers, Box 6, Folder 3, TMIC, DCASC.

  36. Letter from Carl Morton to Ivan Smith, March 4, 1981, Edwin Charles Collection, Box 1, Folder 18, TMIC, DCASC.

  37. PANE Newsletter, August 1983, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 8: Office of Policy Development, Three Mile Island, Box 217, Folder 18, DT Papers, UPSC.

  38. Quoted in “We Don’t Want to Live with TMI,” Philadelphia Daily News, May 23, 1985.

  39. Letter from Concerned Mothers and Women to Linda Chavez, the White House, September 8, 1985, Box 201, Folder 12, Series XI: Governor of Pennsylvania, 1979–1987, Subseries 8: Office of Policy Development, Three Mile Island, DT Papers, UPSC.

  40. For example, see Walsh, Democracy in the Shadows, 66.

  41. Letter from Mary Wertman to Cara Marrett, May 20, 1979, RG 220, Central Series, Box 7, unnamed folder, Papers of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, NA II.

  42. Letter from Joan Hamme to Ivan Smith, NRC, March 24, 1981, Edwin Charles Collection, Box 1, Folder 21, TMIC, DCASC.

  43. “What’s Venting at TMI Is Frustration and Fear,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 1980.

  44. “68% in Poll Say Danger of Radiation Is Great,” New York Times, April 5, 1979; “Polls Show Sharp Rise Since ‘77 in Opposition to Nuclear Plants,” New York Times, April 10, 1979.