I’ll never forget the sound of the siren–or the screams–coming through the long distance phone line from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on 28 March1979. My friend was in the Department of Education building. The governor had just ordered all the windows closed in government buildings and had sent children home from school. There was chaos as the many women in the building were worried about their children now on their way home.[1] My friend wanted to know what she should do. My first question was: “Which way is the wind blowing?”
I was teaching a class in solar energy in the physics department at West Texas State University. We quickly cleaned the library of all books on nuclear power. I briefly considered flying back to Harrisburg, but a colleague dissuaded me. The airport was closed.[2] Instead, I went to the movies and saw Jane Fonda in the recently released “China Syndrome.” I nearly leapt out of my seat when an official tells Michael Douglas’ character that an explosion at the plant “could render an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable”.[3]
An event like that leaves a lasting impression. I’d already dedicated my career to what was then called “alternative” energy.[4] Three Mile Island, or TMI as we called it, confirmed my choice.[5]
This is by way of a long introduction why I was so moved when my friend and colleague David Weisman sent me his calendar of sirens. The memories of the accident at TMI came rushing back. The unadorned sirens cheaply installed on wooden poles on his calendar are there to warn residents living near the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant.
Weisman’s calendar is a trenchant spoof on a annual calendar by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. that provides emergency information should there be a nuclear accident at the plant. The calendar then follows with beautiful landscape photos of the coastal community near San Luis Obispo, California.
So Weisman went PG&E one better. His landscapes featured the emergency sirens and his calendar called out the dates of nuclear accidents worldwide.
I’ve pulled out the dates of the various accidents and present them below ordered by month as Weisman had done in part for my own benefit. I’d forgotten many of these events or didn’t even know about them.
You can order your own copy of the calendar directly from Weisman for $25 plus $5 postage.
January
1/3/1961: SL-1 reactor explosion kills 3, Idaho
1/31/2012: San Onofre Unit 3 steam generator leaks, California
February
2/1/2014: WIPP waste site fire, 3 year closure, New Mexico.
2/5/2013: Crystal River Unit 3 closed due to crack in containment, Florida
2/16/2002: Davis-Besse reactor head corrosion starts 2 year outage, Ohio
March
3/11/2011: Fukushima disaster-tsunami induce meltdown in 3 units, Japan
3/22/1975: Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Unit 1 fire disables plant, Alabama
3/28/1979: Three Mile Island Unit 2 meltdown, Pennsylvania
April
4/26/1986: Chernobyl Unit 4 explosion, fire, and radiation release, Ukraine
May
5/21/1946: Plutonium core kill Louis Slotkin, Los Alamos Laboratory, New Mexico
6/25/1999: Steam leak damages controls at Waterford plant, Connecticut
June
6/6/1989: Referendum vote closes Rancho Seco reactors, California
6/7/2013: San Onofre reactors close permanently, California
6/10/1977: Hydrogen explosion shuts Millstone Unit 1, Connecticut
6/16/2011: Mississippi River floods Fort Calhoun Nuclear, Nebraska
July
7/17/2007: M6.8 quake shutters largest nuclear plant Kashiwazaki, Japan
7/26/1959: Sodium reactor experiment meltdown, California
August
8/9/2004: Mihana nuclear steam explosion kills four, Japan
8/21/2007: Vermont Yankee cooling tower collapses, Vermont
September
9/15/1984: Brown’s Ferry Unit 1, six year outage, Alabama
9/29/1957: Mayak reprocessing plant explosion, Soviet Union
9/30/1991: Takaimura reprocessing plant criticality event kills two, Japan
October
10/5/1966: Fermi Unit 1 breeder reactor fuel meltdown, Michigan
10/20/1957: Windscale graphite reactor fire, England
November
11/4/1995: Millstone Unit 1 shut by NRC for safety violations, Connecticut
11/29/1955: EBR-1 breeder reactor partial meltdown, Idaho
December
12/8/1995: Sodium fire closes Monju reactor, Japan
12/9/1986: Surry reactor steam pipe explosion kills 4, Virginia
12/26/1985: Rancho Seco overcooling incident causes 27 month shutdown, California
[1] This was nearly 50 years ago and my memory may be faulty—it often is. But these are the images that have stuck with me over the years. I’ve never determined whether the siren sounded because of the accident or because it was being tested as was common in Harrisburg at the time.
[2] Three Mile Island’s cooling towers were a visual aid for pilots flying into the airport and no one wanted a commercial airliner flying over the reactor.
[3] Three Mile Island accident.
[4] I’ve long argued that renewables are no longer an “alternative” source of energy. They are now mainstream. Wind and solar have both “come of age” and are now the “conventional” sources of energy.
[5] I spoke on the future of renewable energy at the one-year anniversary of the accident before a crowd of 10,000.
