As a Journeyman Wireman and retired member of the IBEW, I spent nearly half of my 40 year career building, repairing and updating nuclear power plants in three states. As all of us who have worked in the industry know, happened at TMI was entirely human error. The proof of this is that the automatic systems eventually shut TMI Unit 2 down when the operators quit trying to override the system. American Nuclear plants are the safest in the world because they are continuously being serviced and upgraded. There are six nuclear power plants with a total of nine reactors in my state of Illinois with the oldest facility, Dresden NPS first commissioned in 1953, still operating. While we are gradually changing over to renewable power sources (wind and solar), nuclear power still provides more power to our state than all other sources combined.

Sorry, there have been NO deaths attributed to the radioactive gas release from TMI (either during or after the event) reported by reliable sources. There have been a couple of doomsday rabid anti-nuclear blogs (one in particular) that have stated that there were deaths after the event, but they are not credible unless you believe in conspiracy theories. If one doesn’t trust the NRC or want to wade through the govt. documents, Wiki has a good section on both US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States) and worldwide (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents) that is informative and comprehensive. You’ll find that there have been a handful of exposures and deaths in the US and Europe from research reactors and nuclear research, but none from a commercial power plants. What’s worth noting in both the TMI and Brown’s Ferry incidents is that the inherent safety of water moderated reactor designs and the extensive safety features worked. The plants were safely (and automatically) shut down, without injury or death.


It’s also worth noting that although tens of thousands died in the Japanese tsunami, not a single person has died from radiation from the meltdown of the Fukushima plants. Chernobyl is a different story entirely. The Russian use a different graphite moderated reactor design than other countries (which use water as a moderator). It is cheaper to build, but unlike water moderated designs, inherently unstable. That, combined with the Russian lack of a containment building (such as used in US reactors), really egregious operator error while running a test on the reactor, and initial underreporting of the accident by the Russian government led to the many past (and potentially future deaths). The Russians have a history of nuclear accidents involving their nuclear submarines as well. With respect to nuclear plant design and safety, they are an outlier in the world, and not in a good way.

Regardless of whether we want it or not, lacking some breakthrough in power production, there are probably more nuclear plants in our future. Despite advances in solar and wind power, we will still need the base generating capacity, and there is a finite limit to the amount of fossil fuel available on earth. Waste storage is certainly an issue, but can be addressed by finally opening the national nuclear waste depository.

I wonder if he at any time served with my nephew. Captain Eric Jabs retired from the Navy a few years ago after a 27 year career. He was aboard submarines for the first six years but went into administration after that and was base commander for reserve units in NH and VA. After retiring he went back to the Navy as a consultant on the repair of Naval ships. He travels to different parts of the globe and works with getting the supplies and parts needed for repair of ships in foreign ports. His degree was mechanical engineer but went to the Nuclear training school in Idaho where he did extremely well. I didn't think to ask him but he might know as well. By the way, his wife also retired as a Captain from the Navy and graduated from the Naval Academy. Maybe he knew her. Her name at that time would have been Kathleen Toomy.