ABSTRACT
Recently the author gave a seminar to a group of about 100 students, science majors at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, and asked for a show of hands from those who had not heard about Three Mile Island (TMI). When TMI released its radiation on February 28, 1979, many of the students had not yet been born, so perhaps not knowing is somewhat understandable. It is difficult to comprehend this lack of information. The university is situated in Lancaster County, an easy bicycle ride from the TMI power plant, situated on a small island in the Susquehanna River. The author went to work as a radiation monitor at the Rad Lab the Radiation Laboratory run by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on the University of California campus in Berkeley. A $19 million study to address the issue of high breast cancer rates on Long Island barely addresses chemical pollution and the radiation issue, not at all.
