Thursday, March 29, 1979, front page: Radiation leak at Three Mile Island

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Pa. reactor leaks radiation

Public not believed periled by accident

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) ─ An accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant forced radioactive steam into the air at levels that could be measured 16 miles away but caused no damage to the reactor core, government investigators said late yesterday.

Charles Gallina, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigator who spent all day at the plant site, said radiation was being emitted from nuclear-charged water in an auxiliary building.

"We have a serious contamination problem on site. You might say from the breadth of the problem it's one of the more serious. The extent makes it serious, not the breadth," Gallina said at a news briefing.

"Nothing critical failed, but it's a dirty problem. It's going to take some time to clean up."

Officials said their readings indicated there was no immediate danger to the public, and there were no plans to evacuate the 15,000 people living within a mile of the plant.

Bob Fries, a member of the Department of Energy's emergency response team, said a specially equipped helicopter monitored small amounts of radiation 16 miles from the site.

The highest concentration of radiation was registered at the plant, where officials measured 70 millirems of radioactivity.

Americans are exposed to between 100 and 120 millirems per year from such things as the sun and X-rays. A chest X-ray could give a person up to 30 millirems.

"They are high but not yet critical . . . . It was not close to a catastrophe," said James Higgins, an NRC reactor inspector. He said the reactor was safe.

Higgins said radiation was still coming from an auxiliary building, which contains nuclear-charged water diverted there after the accident. The building was being ventilated last night. Other radiation was released earlier when plant officials intentionally sent steam into the air ─ not knowing it was contaminated, he said.

"It's fairly highly contaminated water that is releasing some gases," he said.