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Anniversaries: U.S. Recalls Two Historic Disasters During the last week of March, 1999, the U.S. looked back on the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster of 20 years ago, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster ten years ago.  By Michael Lindemann Start Date: 3/25/99 During the last week of March, 1999, the United States looked back upon two of the greatest industrial and environmental disasters in the nation's history. The first, a partial melt-down at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant, marked the beginning of a downturn in public support for nuclear energy which has been felt around the world. The second, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, devastated a large expanse of coastal Alaska and sent shock waves through the global oil industry. Twenty years ago, at about 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, sirens sounded at Three Mile Island's Unit-2 nuclear reactor when a relief valve stuck, releasing radioactive water as steam. Plant operators then mistakenly shut off cooling water for the 150-ton radioactive core, causing a partial meltdown which required the emergency evacuation of about 140,000 people from the area of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The plant spewed radioactive gas into the air for days. In the aftermath, thousands of lawsuits were filed alleging a variety of personal injuries and lasting medical and environmental effects of radiation exposure. One of the few people to reach a settlement with TMI's parent company GPU Inc. was Debbie Baker, whose son was born with Down's syndrome nine months after the nuclear disaster. But more than 2,000 other cases were dismissed in 1996 for lack of evidence. Some cases are still being appealed. On March 25, 1999, the State of Pennsylvania unveiled its official historical marker for the site along the Susquehanna River just south of Harrisburg, where two of the plant's four 350-foot cooling towers still belch steam into the atmosphere. TMI's undamaged Unit-1 reactor was permitted to reopen in 1985 over massive public protest. Since Three Mile Island, the costs of building and operating nuclear power plants in the United States have risen so dramatically that many analysts now regard the nuclear power industry as essentially dead. Following the even greater Chernobyl disaster of 1986, enthusiasm for nuclear energy has declined worldwide. The amount of electric power produced worldwide by nuclear plants is expected to fall by half during the next 20 years. The biggest oil disaster in U.S. history occurred ten years ago, on March 24, 1989, when the super-tanker Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Prince William Sound, southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. Officially, about 11 million gallons of crude oil gushed from the breached hull of the grounded ship, although some watch-dog environmental groups now say that the real volume of oil might have been more than double the official tally. Either way, the devastation to Alaskan wildlife and shorelines was horrific. The Exxon Valdez disaster began with a serious error at the ship's helm, but it was grossly compounded by the fact that emergency procedures for handling a major spill simply did not work. Containment equipment that was to have been ready at all times for such an event was found to be completely inadequate, even missing entirely, when word of the spill was announced. Every effort to contain the spreading oil slick proved to be too little, too late. It took several days for the oil to reach the shore, but when it inevitably did, there was nothing anyone could do to mitigate to damage. An estimated 1,300 miles of Alaskan shoreline, much of it crucial habitat for eagles, otters, seals, shorebirds and many other creatures, was fouled with oil. The deathtoll was horrendous. According to the federally appointed trustees charged with overseeing the recovery of the area, about 250,000 seabirds, 2,650 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 400 loons and more than 1,000 cormorants were killed. Of the 23 species hurt, the trustees have declared only two -- bald eagles and river otters -- fully recovered. Sockeye salmon, pink salmon, mussels and the common murre, a small seabird, are still recovering. Harbor seals, killer whales and some sea otters show no signs of recovery, the trustees say. In the years since, costs to Exxon have been estimated at over five billion dollars. Costs to the people of Alaska continue. The local fishing industry, a mainstay of the region's economy, was nearly destroyed and still has not fully recovered. There are lingering effects to the shoreline environment as well. "I was just out there a month ago and within five minutes of landing on the beach I'm able to find Exxon Valdez oil, so it's still there, but it's subtle," said Dr. Stanley Rice, a toxicologist at the Auke Bay Laboratory of the National Marine Fisheries in Juneau. The Exxon Valdez spill resulted in many new regulations designed to prevent such spills and, if necessary, handle them more successfully. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., operator of the trans-Alaska pipeline and its Valdez terminal, now maintains an armada of sophisticated escort tugs and rescue vessels that accompany tankers through the entire Prince William Sound passage. The U.S. Coast Guard monitors tanker traffic over an area eight times bigger than before, and spill-response equipment is pre-positioned at critical sites along tanker routes. The U.S. Congress also mandated that all super-tankers in U.S. waters must have double hulls by the year 2015. The Exxon Valdez, built in 1986, was a single-hulled ship. But oil spills continue. Almost 940 million gallons of oil have spilled worldwide in the decade since the Valdez spill, including 10 spills of more than 11 million gallons, according to the Oil Spill Intelligence Report.
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