Ol' Dirty Basement: True Crime and Vintage Movie Reviews
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Ol' Dirty Basement: True Crime and Vintage Movie Reviews
Three Mile Island: The Near-Catastrophe that Changed America's Nuclear Landscape
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Growing up just miles from the infamous Three Mile Island, We have always felt a deep connection to the events of March 28, 1979. The incident that forever changed America's perception of nuclear energy is both a personal story and a historical milestone. From misconceptions about the number of cooling towers to the incident's portrayal in pop culture (yes, it even made a cameo in a Wolverine movie!), we untangle the complex legacy that this near-catastrophe left behind. We'll share our own reflections and generational shifts in understanding what really happened during those chaotic days.
Imagine a car engine running without enough oil—that's how we describe the technical malfunction at Three Mile Island. The confusion didn't stop there; miscommunication between plant operators, emergency responders, and government officials turned a bad situation into a public nightmare. Drawing comparisons to the early confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore how invisible threats can baffle and paralyze public response. It's a story of mixed messages, delayed evacuations, and the sheer anxiety that gripped the nation.
But what happened after the crisis was contained? We delve into the astronomical costs and Herculean effort required to clean up Three Mile Island. From Bruce Springsteen's song "Roulette" to President Jimmy Carter's visit, the cultural and historical repercussions are fascinating. Discover the island's surprising history as a melon farm and the logistical challenge of decontaminating Unit Two. Through it all, we offer a unique and personal perspective, speaking to those who lived through the event and reflecting on the broader implications for the nuclear power industry.
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Thanks for tuning in to the old dirty basement on this week's episode. We're covering three mile Island.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was March 28th 1979. An accident occurred that would forever alter the perception of nuclear energy in the United States.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if you're listening to us here, it's something that all three of us went through with with our family and friends, and it was very close, within like five, 10 miles of all of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. If you are, leave us that 5 star rating on Spotify and Apple a 5 star rating and a written review and sit back, relax and enjoy Three Mile Island this is the old, dirty basement home to debauchery, madness, murder and mayhem.
Speaker 4:A terror-filled train ride deep into the depths of the devil's den.
Speaker 1:With a little bit of humor.
Speaker 2:History and copious consciousness.
Speaker 4:I'm your announcer, shallow Throat. Your hosts are Dave, matt and Zap.
Speaker 3:I love you, matthew McConaughey All right, all right, all right hey this is Dave, Matt and Zap, and welcome to the Old Dirty Basement.
Speaker 1:Where every week we cover a true crime murder or compelling story so sit back, relax and comprehend.
Speaker 3:Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another edition of the old, dirty basement. I am matt. With me always is dave and zap, gentlemen hello hello everybody. Yes, how's everybody doing out there in radio land or podcast land?
Speaker 1:Podcast land.
Speaker 3:Whatever land.
Speaker 2:I hope they're all doing well. I for one am doing fairly well, dave, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing good and I'm excited about this one.
Speaker 2:I too am excited.
Speaker 1:Close to home.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was very close to home, right down the street, I can see it from well when I grew up, from the top of my uh, my street going to my house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's right there so we're talking about three mile island, the disaster that happened there should we call it a disaster uh, I'd call it an incident or an accident.
Speaker 3:Incident or accident, I wouldn't call it a disaster I think, I think the government calls it an accident there's the no fatalities.
Speaker 2:I'd call it an accident.
Speaker 3:As we know of to this day.
Speaker 1:So it's about 10 miles from where we're at here in Harrisburg.
Speaker 3:Oh, I thought you were going to say the Three Mile Island was 10 miles long.
Speaker 1:It's 10 miles long. I was like why?
Speaker 3:do they call it Three Mile Island?
Speaker 1:Because it lies like guys do.
Speaker 3:Do you think it's really three miles or is it like two miles?
Speaker 1:and I never ran it.
Speaker 3:I know right.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you can do that.
Speaker 3:They should call it like 5K Island, but it's not.
Speaker 1:I think it's bigger than what you actually visually can see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the towers throw you off, like you think the towers are the only thing on that island. But I mean, dude, there's a lot of people parking there.
Speaker 3:There's a lot more than just those towers, the towers. I don't think we is there four. Was there four towers? No, there were two towers.
Speaker 2:On Three Mile Island there were two towers.
Speaker 1:No, there's four towers. I thought there was more than two, Maybe two that are active or were active.
Speaker 3:I think there was four that were active, two shut down.
Speaker 1:Well, there weren't four active. I think they only had the two.
Speaker 3:That were out, two at a time.
Speaker 1:The other two were under construction.
Speaker 3:So there was four, I believe. So, yeah, okay, yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the other two are just more for visual. They're not actually operational If you look at the bottom of them, because I was actually in there on business. Wait what?
Speaker 2:On business.
Speaker 1:On business. Damn, the bottom of them were. It was like the frame. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're on like st it is. So, yeah, and as a matter of correction, indeed, two functioning towers, two functioning, two other ones are like on standby.
Speaker 1:They just quit, they're the B team. The stunt tower? Yeah, they're like. Hey, man check that out.
Speaker 3:Wait, what they're big. You know they were in the Wolverine movie too.
Speaker 1:The Wolverine movie too, through my island. Yeah, yeah, what they filmed it there. You didn't know that. I did not know that.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, that's a very cool part of the movie. You better call somebody.
Speaker 1:Better check that out, Come on.
Speaker 3:Dave Vintage cinema.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah right, speaking of vintage, so this happened in 79, so why don't?
Speaker 3:we get into it.
Speaker 2:Yes, we were breathing outside of the wombs. Yep, indeed, it was the early hours of march 28th 1979 when the unimaginable happened to the three mile island nuclear power plant near middletown, pennsylvania. An accident occurred that would forever alter the perception of nuclear energy in the united states. Yep, it's true though. So when we were growing up, which you know was happening while this was happening, but I mean what you know once you're growing up and you know things and you can talk about things. So, as early as I can remember, I mean tmi was joked about, right it was a people laughed about.
Speaker 2:You know it's after the fact. People are making jokes and talking about whatever talking about you know radiation, it was warm with six fingers, yeah there was all kinds of crazy ass stories, but it's amazing, as we get through this, how I don't know, in my opinion, like propaganda, misinformation, whatever is just going to make things look so outrageously horrible about the nuclear industry.
Speaker 3:I think we found this funny because we had no idea of what nuclear power entailed. I think our parents thought of it differently.
Speaker 1:Going on you know us being babies 1979, of what happened with maybe you know in japan and things like that hiroshima, they kind of knew that nuclear power wasn't a good thing to mess with I didn't really know about any of this but I guess, like disney and other people put out like, uh, they did like a little public service ad, like disney did like our friend the atom or whatever, and it was all like to kind of promote.
Speaker 3:I thought that was Jurassic park, for sure.
Speaker 1:It was much like that video. Sure Dave is not wrong?
Speaker 2:Dave is definitely not wrong. There was this time in. So, after we dropped both bombs, the, the atomic age came to be. And as the atomic age came to be, and as the atomic age came to be, there of course needed to be this promotion and look it's, it's great, it's, it's safe, it's awesome amount of power. And so there was even afterwards. Then there was this.
Speaker 3:You know, this is you're going into the future well, this is america, tony stark type, but the american way of looking at it was it's cheap power, and that's that's all we thought about. It's like oh, it's less expensive than what you would have to pay for the power that we have. So they called nuclear energy cheap power. Then, all of a sudden, I was like, oh, let's check out this nuclear energy shit. You say cheap and everybody's like oh yeah, I'm on board, oh yeah, I'm for it. I mean, you're talking like you know where we grew up. There are you know medium wage jobs.
Speaker 1:It's you know hard-working people yeah, just to explain to the listeners what, like Middletown, that area down there, like you guys. Well, you grew up down there. So explain it to the listeners. Like what? What is Middletown? Just so they get an idea.
Speaker 3:Middletown is a lot of people like working in railroads, factories, a lot of like. Um, a lot of people lived or worked in Steelton uh steel mills it was. Uh my dad had a federal government job as like a maintenance employee a lot of blue collar, yeah very, very blue collar area. There wasn't like many people working. We did have a neighbor I know when we grew up that did work at med ed, which we'll talk about later, so I know he had a very good job.
Speaker 1:It was um, just hard, hard working blue collar people gotcha and that's the surrounding area is pretty much the same. Zap high spireire. Yeah, so for sure, next town over my mom worked at Middletown at some point.
Speaker 2:So she worked downtown Harrisburg Press and Journal In my earliest of early years and then after that she worked at the Press and Journal. She was both a bookkeeper and a proofreader there.
Speaker 1:So to visualize, and I grew up in Harrisburg, so you got Harrisburg down the river a little more High Spire and then Middletown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we were pretty connected.
Speaker 2:Right. The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, located on a small island in the Susquehanna River, consisted of two reactors named Unit 1 and Unit 2. Construction of the plant began in the 1960s. Unit 1 went online in April 1974, and Unit 2 went online in February of 1978. At the time, the plant was considered state-of-the-art, equipped with cutting-edge technology and automated systems designed to ensure safety and efficiency. However, the complex interplay of machinery and human operators created opportunities for error.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one thing that's crazy to me is that how soon after this was open that they had issues, because you know I could see if it would have been 10, 20 years down the line. Stuff starts failing or you know you would have an issue, but this is like brand new almost you know what. I mean Just open, and they're having.
Speaker 2:So Unit 1 went down on or went down, came up in April 1974. So if the bad stuff went down in March of 79, that was five years later, however. So it should be under warranty, you would think, but then Unit 2 had only been completed a year and a month before the badness went down.
Speaker 1:And that's the one that had the issues correct. Yeah, badness went down. And that's the one that had the issues correct. Yeah, so the other one that was actually functioning and, I think, still working up until not too long ago, so that one ran perfectly shit, yeah, but this one here is like almost brand new.
Speaker 3:Almost brand new, and if uh, any listeners have ever seen episodes of the simpsons. When they look at that nuclear power plant, the control panels and stuff, if you look at like any documentaries or anything on tmi looked very similar to like what they would have set up in the simpsons for sure. So it was kind of a mess. I think their technology at the time wasn't able to keep up with what the nuclear power plant was actually doing or a lot of buttons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the people, the people weren't able to push that many buttons. I mean, if homer simpsons running the exactly the control panel, there might be a problem that was my next On the Simpsons.
Speaker 1:Is Homer. Does he have an important job there? What are the caliber? He's the safety inspector. Oh my God. So that's what I was going to say. What are the caliber of employees at his, where they kind of jab, making fun of nuclear plants, based on the people that are working there?
Speaker 2:So all of Homer's coworkers have either their masters or their doctorates? Yes, all of Homer's coworkers have either their masters or their doctorates. Yes, and Homer barely got out of high school.
Speaker 1:And he's safety inspector.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he lived in High Spire or.
Speaker 3:Middletown or Middletown? Yeah, don't forget about us, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or Allison Hill for that matter.
Speaker 2:It's funny, the Berg. It's funny, matt, I know the street on which you live in. I know the name of it. It's called riverview or the street you lived on when you were coming up. Yes, riverview drive, but it's amazing from where that's at, you don't see a damn bit of the river, just tmi towers you see, is the tmi towers, which at least tells you okay, down there, yeah, the river's down that way you see a good view of the town.
Speaker 3:They should have called it like tower view, tower view. That would have been more cool. But people wouldn't have bought it right away. They were like, oh, it's going to be called River View Drive. You'd be like, ooh.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, the night of March 27th 1979 began like any other, with the systems functioning normally. But in the early hours of March 28th 1979, a minor malfunction in the secondary cooling circuit occurred, leading to an increase in temperature within the reactor. The automatic safety systems attempted to cool the reactor down, but due to a stuck valve, things went from bad to worse. The main feed water pumps, which supplied coolant to the reactor, shut down due to the increased temperature. Operators opened valves manually to alleviate pressure, but the stuck valve continued to leak coolant. Without the main feed water pumps, the reactor's core began to overheat. The pressure within the reactor increased, causing more coolant to escape through the stuck valve. The control room was filled with alarms and the operators, unsure of the exact problem, struggled to keep up. So this what there was, this three something. In the morning it was like four, I think four in the morning you're talking to night shift guys too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking about this. So, like I, I tend to start my day like early and to me, I think early is like six o'clock in the morning, six, six, 30. Like I'm, I'm working.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I'm at work at six in the morning, so we're up at, like you know, four, 45, five o'clock.
Speaker 2:So our day started these guys weren't the first ones there.
Speaker 3:This was again like Matt you had said to start their shift 11 to what?
Speaker 1:11 to 7?. These are the guys that go out to the bar right after the shift ends. Yeah, they would go to.
Speaker 2:if they were in Middletown, they'd go to the Blue Room at the time, which was certainly catered to the third shifters, I mean the Blue Room. You could get in there, Shit.
Speaker 3:But usually any job in a warehouse, you're time in, so they have the worst shift. They have no experience, they have the worst shift. So these guys, they start hearing buttons. They're like I'm not, I'm not qualified for this.
Speaker 1:I don't know what's going on right now, and I think that's where the trouble started building yeah, and think about, like for most things, if you have an issue, unplug it or whatever, like there's usually like a quick fix or dump some water on it or whatever. But with a nuclear reactor, I mean, this is like a whole different ball games but, like for most people think about like their living room, kitchen, dining room area.
Speaker 3:Maybe even it expanded farther than that, but it was just about what, five or six feet high full of buttons coming down on an angle it looked like war games yeah yeah, pretty much. It looked like something like out of star trek that they would just put up. That you would see in the ship if anybody's ever seen star trek?
Speaker 3:I would hope so, but that I don't think. People like there's manuals and manuals and manuals of learning to see what you would have to do, and when this is occurring of something not normal, there's a lot of people like I don't know what the hell to do, dude I'm just, I still keep going back to thinking about these poor third shifters like the first thing.
Speaker 2:But the first thing I would think of is whoa, wait a second. Is you know? Is somebody april fooling me here? Because it's just april 1st is right around the corner. Somebody's just, you know, fucking with me.
Speaker 3:It is that what's happening here, because this doesn't happen, these sorts of things doesn't happen, and that thing was lit up like yes, yes, it was just going things everywhere, and they're probably if somebody reacted more quickly or like well, I don't know, the rod was stuck, though, right?
Speaker 1:I think the valve. It was like a valve or something right Stuck open.
Speaker 3:Well, no, I think they hit the valve, the valve got stuck. So then it was like atoms just bouncing everywhere inside this tower, making the heat up like three times of the sun.
Speaker 1:Well, I'd imagine too it's not something you visually can see the problem, like you're going off meters and light, and you know what I mean. You'd have to physically walk down and analyze the problem, and I'm sure each person has a specialty there. I also wonder about how far along these guys were, or girls, whoever's working there in their training on this, because if this reactor it's pretty new yeah.
Speaker 1:If this particular reactor just opened, is it the same crew that was working on one? Is all the equipment the same? Like there's a lot of questions, I guess.
Speaker 2:So there wasn't the, if I understand correctly, the reaction kept on going. Like that was the problem the, the reaction kept going, but the cooling and the, the whatever and the releasing of the steam and all that shit, that wasn't doing anything. That stopped yeah and because that stopped and because the reaction kept going. The reaction is just simply, whatever they're doing with nuclear stuff and rods and shit that creates atoms to bounce around, and you're doing, you know, fusion or whatever the hell's happening down there.
Speaker 1:But it all has to do with cooling right, it's got to.
Speaker 2:that's why they put it next to the river for the water supply You're generating heat through this reaction, a shit ton of heat, and then that heat is cooled with water, and then the steam from the cooling. You're doing all this basically just to create steam, that steam. Then all this basically just to create steam, that steam, then the steam just runs. It turns turbines which generate electricity, which powerhouses for cheap.
Speaker 1:And think of that steam, how hot like I make ramen noodles.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of steam there and how hot that is.
Speaker 1:I couldn't imagine like the temperatures in there. Yeah, like I wonder what the number is on that.
Speaker 3:I don't like water in my ramen. I like to drain the water out of my ramen and put the packet in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I do. I think.
Speaker 3:I think you're the one that taught me that I did. Yeah, you used to do that in high school.
Speaker 1:Crack an egg in there too.
Speaker 3:Stir that up like a stir fry.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I like the broth, do you? Oh, I do too. Oh, no, I don't like the broth. I dig that broth, whatever.
Speaker 3:Look, I don't have time for that, it's all dehydrated noodles, and I know, I agree, msg. That's what I think these guys are like. They just want to, like you know, make some ramen noodles, I'm sure? Yeah, they weren't ready for for buttons?
Speaker 2:yeah, the ramen would have flowed that day for sure. All right, many blame the machinery itself, but human error and miscommunication played crucial roles. The operators, though trained for emergencies, were overwhelmed by the cascading failures and the sheer number of alarms. They misinterpreted the conditions incorrectly, believing the reactor was overfilled with coolant. In reality, it was losing coolant rapidly. One of the most critical errors was the decision to reduce the amount of coolant being pumped into the reactor. This decision was based on a misunderstanding of the reactor's state and resulted in the reactor's core being exposed. The exposed core led to a partial not full, but partial meltdown, releasing radioactive gases into the plant and, eventually, traces of it into the atmosphere. Throughout the morning, as radiation levels increased, plant officials and government authorities struggled to understand the severity of the situation.
Speaker 1:That's what I noticed in a lot of the news, like the old newsreels and stuff. There was a lot of like back and forth. People were obviously scared. So there there's like press conferences and these guys are getting like grilled. Like well they, they found what like iodine levels in Goldsboro, like the town right across the yep and uh, like people were shocked. The one guy that was up there was like I didn't know about that, like he was just finding out in this press conference and like everybody. It was just like chaos.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. I liken this to basically like a car engine. So you can in fact you can mess your engine up if you put in too much oil. Things aren't going to. You're not going to get the right amount of friction necessary, right Like things do have to touch and things do have to make friction in order for pieces to move. Too much oil in that and you're going to screw shit up. In this case, they thought that was essentially the equivalent of too much oil. In reality, another way to jack up your engine is to not have enough oil, and that's what had happened. So I mean, they went from one. You know what was actually happened was not enough to what they thought happened was way too much.
Speaker 2:Miscommunications between plant operators, emergency responders and government officials further delayed an appropriate response. Despite the growing crisis, it took days for officials to decide on evacuation measures. President Jimmy Carter and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were involved in assessing the situation. On March 30th, pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburg recommended a voluntary evacuation for pregnant women and young children who lived within 5-mile radius of the plant. By the end of that day, the radius had been expanded to 20 miles. Lack of clear communication and conflicting reports on radiation levels caused confusion and anxiety amongst the public, leading many residents to evacuate on their own, while others remained unsure of what to do.
Speaker 2:So this really harkens back to what you were saying earlier, dave, about it took them a while to figure things out Because I mean, I remember doing research on this and looking into this and reading up on it and see what was going down. I mean, you had the med ed officials, that's the Metropolitan Edison Power Company company. Med ed officials saying one thing, saying like look, man, it's cool, it's all right, don't sweat it. Then you had the, the government people, saying well, maybe, well, maybe not, we'll see, we're not sure, maybe you know. Better safe than sorry. Med ed's like look, we don't want to cause a panic, you definitely don't want to cause a panic, it's okay, man, I promise it's all right. We're working this out again, of course, on the government side. Well, we're not sure, let's be safe, better be safe than sorry. So it really was fighting back and forth and it's like the, it's like wagging the dog yeah, I mean that.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. That's the thing I noticed watching the footage, and we were too young to know yeah, we, we had no clue. Yeah, but um, that's crazy to go from a five mile right to a 20 mile radius. I would just feel like if you were anywhere in the proximity, you were probably questioning whether to stick around or not.
Speaker 3:Um, but there again, I don't know how, like the people that were old enough to know what the hell's going on, like the public, if they even understood, like, the danger, or you know, if they were in any kind of immediate danger or what the thoughts were but hearkening back to what we were discussing where we grew up our towns, like you said, blue collar workers, I don't think many people understood and and getting conflicting stories, also from the government telling you one thing, uh, you know, local politicians are saying another and then I don't think anybody really knew what happened or what is you know what is going to happen if something bad did happen because people just didn't know?
Speaker 1:people don't, I don't, yeah, I don't think there wasn't an explosion.
Speaker 3:There wasn't. You weren't smelling anything, tasting anything, there wasn't, like you know, weird things in the sky. You just were like, well, what's going on?
Speaker 2:I don't know, and that goes back to, I think, matt, I see where you're going with that. That's just radiation in and of itself. You can't smell it.
Speaker 1:You can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't feel it. This very much reminds me of, like the COVID thing. Yeah, like it's different in a lot of ways, but in some ways it's the same.
Speaker 3:I don't think you to call it.
Speaker 1:It's cold now it's, this is a cold, it's the flu, but the flu. When that initially the news was hitting and everything, there was a lot of like you'd hear one thing from one source, one thing from another source. Um, you couldn't see it. You couldn't. You know what I mean. Covet, what is it? Early on, like if you didn't know anybody that had it. You're like do you know anybody? I don't know anybody, did you? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3:you really weren't worried about it until you started hearing about people dying.
Speaker 1:They're saying they died from covid and you're like huh but I wonder if then it like hits home I wonder, but also back then there wasn't social media, there wasn't 24 hour no, nobody, yeah, nobody knew anything so I don't, but there was radio and I don't know how how much these people were getting pounded with uh yeah, welcome to one over three right the edge in between the bgs, yeah, and whatever else they're hearing about this you feel like they're thinking about the do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, something like that to warn people. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:There has been a meltdown at Fremont Island.
Speaker 1:Well, I do know that we went to Altoona, my family, we left, so I do know that much, but I was too young to really remember much about this.
Speaker 2:Do you know when you left Like? Was it like from the gate, like as soon as the news came out? So if the news came out on whatever day, the 28th, was it like that day, as soon as it was spread, or did you wait a couple of days?
Speaker 1:No, it was. I think it was either that day or the next day. It was pretty early on, but it was. I think it was my mom, my grandmother on my mom's side, that made the call, kind of like hey, and everybody was kind of out of here, like we're leaving, we're going out, and we had family in Altoona. So it was, it was perfect.
Speaker 3:We were able to go out there's almost like a mini vacation, sure yeah. Um. The major arc was like get out here now.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean I don't. I have like one memory from that. Um, I remember the t-shirts that they had and I remember having Gatorade for the first time. For some reason I remember, during this whole ordeal, being on the road and stopping at like a convenience store. That's awesome, yeah, but that's about it. But being an adult, like I couldn't imagine, or being old enough to comprehend what was going on, I couldn't imagine.
Speaker 2:I mean you got to be certainly there's got to be some kind of element of being, you know, scared. You have to be scared because it's a fear of the unknown. It's like matt had said earlier with with the covid like covid was hyped up to be so goddamn scary and people didn't die of covid. People died of resultant effects of covid. Like people don't die of, you know, the aids.
Speaker 1:People die of something that results from having aids like you're getting pneumonia or something correct, or people with like breathing problems, would get covid and then die of problems. Suffocation, yeah right well, I remember early on in like covid, like we were wiping down groceries, like you know what I mean like wild stuff. It was like it was nuts. I was out working in it so I was leaving the house every day, going to work my job.
Speaker 3:It didn't stop I'm the same with you, dave. Yeah, we had to go to work, I was I had clients.
Speaker 2:I look, not for nothing. I didn't want to be at home. I tried that and look after a week there were, there were soon to be murders. I I cannot work in the same house as my wife, at least not our current house.
Speaker 1:It's just not big enough not big enough but I know that like my perspective, being out on the road, out like around, seeing different places compared to what my wife thought of what was going on being at home, like she thought it was like walking dead, yeah you know what I?
Speaker 1:mean like apocalypse. I'm like that's really not what you're thinking. Like I went to the grocery store. I mean it was a little different, but so I mean the perspective was different. I guess, yeah, if you're out in it or if you're at home and closing yourself in and just watching the news all day. So I guess back then it was probably very similar, very well, I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I don't think. I don't think it was similar to covid because, like you said, david, the social media and things like that, I think people really didn't know. So there was people that just stayed home. There was people, like I got to get to work. There was people that, like I got to go get you know, groceries my kids are hungry like a lot of people didn't think of it as something bad. They were just like, well, they don't really know what's going on. Yep, I'm not that concerned about it I was gonna say matt's absolutely right.
Speaker 2:There were people that said, look, this is not that big of a deal.
Speaker 3:Again, like the number of evacuees were x, there was a hell of a lot more people that stuck around than people that left yeah, plus, you got like the, the governor, hanging out in town, like even it goes to the point I don't know if we'll get to it, but the president comes in, you know. But they're hanging out here, so they're like it can't be all that horrible and the other difference was this was regional versus the covet was everywhere. Yeah, except florida. Worldwide there was a place. Florida didn't exist.
Speaker 2:There was a, there was a place to which you could escape for this tmi thing. Right, it was a place to which you could escape as long as you're beyond this area you can get out yeah, it's like you know, if you were just on the edge of nagasaki, you'd be all right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah you, you'd survive. Great film, by the way, albenheimer, if you want to learn more about I have it.
Speaker 1:I didn't watch it yet. I still have you have to watch it good flick.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it certainly is. Uh, it is interesting that people are just I don't know. They don't know what to do. They were getting conflicting reports. Well, it's a shame, but it worked out. As news of the incident broke, the media descended upon the Harrisburg area. Initial reports were chaotic and often contradictory, feeding public fear and speculation. Journalists from around the world covered the story and the incident quickly became front-page news, thanks in no small part to the sensationalist reporting. Public reaction was resultantlyantly, one of fear and outrage. Resultantly I like to say that again, resultantly, I like that word many felt that they were not being told the full extent of the danger, and rumors about the plant's condition and the potential for a catastrophic explosion spread rapidly. Anti-nuclear activists like Matt seized on the incident to highlight the risk of nuclear power, leading to protests and calls for a re-evaluation of nuclear energy policies. The term nuclear meltdown became etched into the collective consciousness.
Speaker 3:Now not for naught, but there was a nuclear meltdown a few years after, uh, three mile island in chernobyl, you don't know?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, yeah, who cares about the sneaky fucking?
Speaker 3:russians, but that that was no circus yeah who cares about the russians?
Speaker 2:I'm just saying I don't. Well, good, that's what they get, for you know what? Here's what? Here's what the russians do the same thing as the chinese do. They take the, something that was engineered and made, and made great in america, and they try to reverse engineer it. They spy, they get almost all the pieces and they figure out as much as they can, and then they pull a couple scientists in to piece the the puzzle together and then they get a shoddy, terrible nuclear power plant out of it. So good for them. Make your own shit.
Speaker 1:Like a Yugo Correct Yugoslavian.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing. They took a car and they said let's make it shittier and cheaper.
Speaker 3:But I think to the point of where TMI was at, the way that it didn't get to that point. If there would have been a nuclear explosion is a whole other story, and I was just saying Chernobyl for people that are listening, if they don't know much about it or they heard of it and didn't research. It check out Chernobyl today and what's there like I'll watch that documentary yeah. It's a. It's a wasteland.
Speaker 1:But, matt, what you said there, like you said, nuclear explosion, without knowing, you would just think, oh, a nuclear plant could explode. But I guess that's a little different, because they consider it a meltdown so much like the movie we'll probably end up talking about, it'll actually melt down into the earth.
Speaker 3:Into the earth.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not actually like a bomb.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is indeed a meltdown, and it's so hot that it just keeps on burning. It's burning through dirt, it burns through. So hot that it just keeps on burning.
Speaker 1:It's burning through dirt, it just won't stop rock, it just doesn't stop so that would in fact cook a lot of ramen noodles and put off a ton of radiation, but it wasn't to that point too.
Speaker 3:But if it would, if it would have melted down, which we don't even know, the full story behind if there was a slight meltdown or not could be the sneaky government hiding that stuff. But if it did melt down, I mean mean it's right next to the river, that's right there, it would have you know, affected our water supply.
Speaker 1:Chesapeake.
Speaker 3:Bay. Indeed Our river runs through it. Yes, who was that? Who's?
Speaker 2:in that that's a movie, I think. Yes, I know Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt, yeah, wasn't he like fly fishing?
Speaker 1:It was something.
Speaker 3:He was fishing for nuclear rods, nuclear rods.
Speaker 1:He found cooling rods. He had a nuclear rod, but talking about that, like the Russians and stuff, after we dropped the bombs they were talking about when they were testing. It was the largest one ever tested to this day. I think it was called Tsar 1 or something. I forget what the name of the bomb was. And when they dropped it they said the area, area around it.
Speaker 1:if you were within 60 miles you would have got third degree burns sure this is off a thermonuclear bomb, so this is different than a nuclear meltdown, which would just be radiation. Yes, they said there were windows that were 500 miles away, that shattered dang from the explosion, from the shock waves, from the shock waves yeah, there was. I think it was in norway or finland had windows like that, uh well, that doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 3:They have shoddy glass, yeah but uh, that's another thing for people to check on on youtube, the way that a nuclear explosion does work, like with you, I think people, you know, they think they liken it to like seeing the cloud mushroom cloud, yeah, but the like, the impact, or the how that energy spreads, it's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1:Well, they said they detonated at 13,000 miles above the earth and when it hit the ground? So they detonated at 13,000 feet, but when it hit the ground it caused an earthquake, or it caused equivalent to like a 5.5 earthquake, and it was detonated 13,000 feet in the air. This is the Russians. This is the Russian thermonuclear missile that they were testing Just in. This is the Russian thermonuclear missile that they were testing. Just in comparison. People were probably comparing TMI to if that bomb would go off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what we were talking about.
Speaker 1:Whereas the TMI meltdown would be if there was radiation leaked.
Speaker 2:It would be slowly over time, affecting people. It's a whole different way of harnessing the power. Right whole different way of harnessing the power. Right there's a man. There would not be any kind of explosion, would not be a nuclear explosion at tmi or even at chernobyl right, it's different it's.
Speaker 2:It is something attached to it, like maybe hydrogen or oxygen or something else. That's the shit that blows up. That's the actual explosion. Otherwise, at a nuclear plant, you're just getting a meltdown. Just a lot of heat, just a lot of heat and it just keeps burning some radiation.
Speaker 3:But the radiation is what would be released into the atmosphere, into the ground, into drinking water, into um, your plants, your crops, for the next 100 years long time, long time, long time. Two-headed toads for everybody long time. Who was that? Two live crew, two live crew.
Speaker 2:It was a good jam, that's right. Actually that was a quote from a full metal jacket metal jacket which they sampled into oh, he told me cool, that's right.
Speaker 3:That means large in vietnamese.
Speaker 1:Is that what it is?
Speaker 3:yes, my dad told me they would know, thanks to the bombs we dropped.
Speaker 2:Oh wait, wait. No, that was.
Speaker 3:I'm sure we did drop a lot of bombs in Vietnam.
Speaker 2:That was Japan. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:They won that one.
Speaker 2:By April 1st, cooling measures had been in place and operators realized there was no likelihood of explosion or leak. April fools yeah.
Speaker 3:Fooled you, he fooled you man, you fell for the oldest trick in the book I can't believe you fell for that man wow, that is funny. I mean, you can't wow, by april 1st.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what four days later? Hey, man don't worry about it, dude, nothing happened, yeah, four later, with everything now deemed safe, hydrogen that accumulated within the cooling unit was vented and reduced, and the threat of meltdown or a serious radiation leak was brought under control. That same day, in hopes of alleviating public fear, President Jimmy Carter visited Three Mile Island and toured the control room In an unnecessary panic that took no more than five days to calm. The public's outlook on nuclear energy would forever be tarnished. Thanks a lot, yeah.
Speaker 3:I thought, you were going to say Joe Biden.
Speaker 2:I was going to say Joe Biden, he did this, he did this, he did this.
Speaker 3:Jimmy was cool, though I like Jimmy Carter, he was great with peanuts. Yeah, he did this, he did this.
Speaker 2:Jimmy was cool, though I like Jimmy Carter, he was great with peanuts. Yeah, he had a farm, so refresh all of our memory. Matt, I know you're the head Democrat. What was Jimmy Carter's claim to fame relative to nuclear energy?
Speaker 3:His brother with Billy Beer, and he was a peanut farmer.
Speaker 1:No, no, but radiation.
Speaker 3:When it's something that he with with nuclear energy and or nuclear he was. He was a navy um nuclear submarine. That's what it was.
Speaker 2:There we are in the navy village people, yes, in the navy but yeah, he was also a?
Speaker 3:uh, he was a graduate from the naval academy and a peanut farmer and a peanut farmer and his uh brother, billy, and they had billy beer. Actually, my dad had a can of billy beer at our bar. That's what. I never even knew what it was until he explained it to me one day.
Speaker 2:So wait a second. I remember seeing that can. So that's Jimmy Carter's brother.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was his like.
Speaker 1:His brew.
Speaker 3:No, it wasn't his brewery, but it was his, like his namesake. But I guess some I think it was Coors or whatever some brewery caught on to it and was like we're going to call this Billy beer.
Speaker 1:Put it out.
Speaker 2:So if I started making beer and called it malted Matt, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I'd be like a malt beer kind of you, yeah who, you yeah Like, like a malted Matt. Yeah, like a Matty ice, maybe, matty ice.
Speaker 2:There you go. So what? Let's get back on track here. So what are we five days later? This all started, you know, late night the 27th, wee, wee, wee hours of the uh, the 28th, by april 1st. Everything's under control, so much under control, in fact, that the president of the united states visited and was touring the plant. So if the secret service and whatever safety measures are letting the president of the united states visit a would-have-been nuclear meltdown catastrophe, it's gotta be okay, either that or he took iodine pills.
Speaker 1:Maybe you know what I mean. Or they took safety measures.
Speaker 3:He was drinking bleach at the time. He was the first president to decide that drinking bleach would cure all I I think. I think that I mean no conspiracy here, but I think the government does shit like that just to be like, hey, everything's cool. Like, check out, check out the president. He's not even worried, maybe it's.
Speaker 1:I would agree that Jimmy Carter is, you know, expendable well, maybe it was a clone, maybe it wasn't even him, you know what I mean. Maybe it was like an actor that they sent in the. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:You never know but I think it was really him.
Speaker 1:I don't know if they pulled that off back in the day, but you never know attack of the clones, I think killer tomato the killer tomatoes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure they definitely did that, obviously to get the public to go with the president's heirs yeah, yeah, the government has been known to do things like that, to to calm tensions or to to, you know, bring, bring the boiling point down a little bit, be like, hey, everything's fine, like look, look, we're, we're cool I had heard about that.
Speaker 2:Uh, the that clone stuff like a like a stunt double or some shit. So way, way, way back in the day, like there's, you know, hollywood makeup, yeah, so there's stuff like, if you see, like a mission impossible movie or something like that, like you see, these crazy ass disguises these guys are able to pull off, like digitally or like just pull this little thing off of their, this thin sheet off of their face and it's. It's a completely different person. So the always you always have, like military technology or government technology that's decades ahead of current. Yes, I got to believe that for damn sure. They have had for decades the ability to have stunt double presidents, yeah, and I'm sure the same as like in star.
Speaker 3:Wars, like you don't always put like the queen out there, you don't always put, like you know somebody that has some sort of oh amidala, I see what you did there. Yeah, natalie portman, natalie portman. She had her little buddy. But then you're like is that her little buddy or is that natalie portman? I don't know. They look a lot alike. You don't even know, but if they're similar and they're out there and they're in the public eye, nobody really knows what that person looks like really up close I mean they see tv yes, yes, oh like.
Speaker 3:Oh, I saw, you know, jimmy carter there. He looks a little different in person he was on his iphone and how many times have you guys said that were you like? Oh, I saw this famous star and you're saying that guy looks different in person? Yeah, no, people say that like, oh, he looked different. Or you see a band that you like, oh, they looked a lot different in person are you sure that was elizabeth's shoe you ran into?
Speaker 2:yes, I don't know now, you don't even know, you don't know it could have been a stunt double.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you, though, that mic, that uh, makeup stuff, that's a thing, dude right, well, that's what I'm saying with, uh, you know, with the president they could have. I mean I'm not saying that that's what happened, or if that you know.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm sure he was really there look, I'm, I'm saying there could have been precautions taken, like I know they say if you, if you, if they were given out iodine pills? Yeah, because supposedly if you take these iodine pills it's supposed to block the radiation from going into your thyroid. Yeah, where's where the first place that it'll absorb? I guess?
Speaker 2:You know, I take an iodine supplement every day. I do, really I do because I don't eat iodized salt oh can you snort that? The salt or the iodine?
Speaker 3:the iodine maybe I'll do a line of iodine if I if I crush the pill up, I'm sure I could. That'd be cool. It'd be like smarties in like sixth grade yeah yeah, but no, I I think, I think that is. That is a thing. I think. When you see these dignitaries or like these heads of state or presidents going to like these countries in wartime, I'm like that camp.
Speaker 2:No, you're not doing that. Yep, Look, it's the same thing with with Trump at the recent rally. He didn't get shot. That was a catch up packet. We all know it.
Speaker 3:It's true. No, it wasn't a catch up packet. It was, I think, when the secret ear oh oh, it's that we talked about this yes it's the razor that like wrestlers.
Speaker 2:Razor the wrestlers razor before they go into a fight to make it to enable the bleeding when they get hit. All he had to do was he sliced his ear, that he slapped his head and that's what cracked it over can I talk like this?
Speaker 3:this is actually kind of funny, it made me laugh. But like the pillow thing that trump if you have like good doctors, once you have like a nice little band-aid or something there it looks like remember when you get hurt in t-ball, like they would come and put like that stuff on you. It looks like they just like ripped that thing open in the packet, just put it on his ear the big gauze yeah, I was like come on man he's missing a piece of his ear.
Speaker 2:Maybe, just maybe, they had to do a skin graft and they're growing it back.
Speaker 3:Just maybe you think they took it off like a rat or a mouse?
Speaker 2:You know they're doing that now. I don't know the extent of of president Trump's injuries, but I hope for his swift and speedy recovery.
Speaker 3:And I cannot speculate on his injury. I, I, I mean, you seen, you seen the footage, but was it even Trump now Like we're talking? Was he? Was he at that rally?
Speaker 2:Who knows? You don't even know, I don't know man.
Speaker 3:We just dug deep here in the basement. That's a deep dive, that's a whole deep dive episode.
Speaker 2:The weeks following the incident at Three Mile Island were as much challenging as they were chaotic. Immediate efforts focused on stabilizing the reactor and preventing further release of radiation. The cleanup process began shortly after, but it proved to be incredibly complex and costly. One of the first steps was to remove the damaged nuclear fuel from the reactor, a task that required specialized equipment and careful planning. Workers had to contend with high radiation levels and the need to prevent any further contamination. The task was further complicated by the need to ensure the safety of the workers and the surrounding community. Could you just imagine that?
Speaker 1:Well, I know I saw a lot of footage of them constantly getting hosed down every time they're in and out because of the radiation. It's all over their clothes, their bodies, everything yeah, like so contaminated.
Speaker 2:This isn't carl going into the pool after they find the baby ruth in there oh yeah, sweeping out the caddyshack.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, I got it right, this is like bad stuff. It's cool, there's nothing wrong yeah, this is.
Speaker 2:This is something far different than that. You're just not sweeping out a pool here, man. This is some serious, serious shit. They got to go in and shift. They can only be in there for X number of minutes.
Speaker 3:That had to have been a contracted company. I could see nobody that was in nuclear power being like yeah, I'll do that.
Speaker 1:Well, don't quote me on this, it's going to be too. I have to bring it up on another episode. A guy at work who's a little older he's probably close to 60, lived in Middletown and told me that him and like his brothers, they would like hire people to go down there to help clean this stuff up.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm saying. It had to be contracted out. It was like good money.
Speaker 1:But they would go down and help clean everything up and they were told like, oh, you'll be fine, yeah, it was good money.
Speaker 3:Cause it's like here's $30 in, like 1979. Right, and it'd be like oh, because then you don't have to worry about insurance, you're not paying for any days off, because they were like trucking it out slowly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean Over over a long.
Speaker 2:He'd actually be a cool person to call for like yeah, yeah, I think they store that shit in, uh, idaho. As I already put it, I do. I I'm pretty sure they. There is our I can't say specifically to tmi stuff, but I know that there's a lot of nuclear waste that is kept in idaho I thought they put it on cargo ships and just dumped it in the ocean, which is fine it could be. I mean, the ocean is vast, is it really gonna hurt yeah is it really gonna hurt anything?
Speaker 1:china put it in the mariana trench yeah, yeah, I know a guy. I know a guy that knows all about mariana. But yeah, I mean they had to put it somewhere, you know, get rid of it and get it out of there, I guess. So they slowly were like moving up. But I gotta talk to that guy and find out.
Speaker 3:But I could swear that he told me he was like in his teens, then late teens, early 20s yeah, not for for this episode if we can't get him, in which we might not be able to, but for him to call in one day would be interesting I'd like to hear about that like I said, I knew they were had to been contracted out.
Speaker 3:There was nobody in their right mind dealing with nuclear power, being like, yeah, I'm gonna go in there and clean it out for you guys so what you're saying let me see if I got you straight here, matt so somebody who's in the biz?
Speaker 2:you're saying, like the master's degrees and doctor's degrees we were talking about earlier, that work with Homer Simpson?
Speaker 3:Those guys would say hell, no, that's not my job, I'm not going in there to clean that up. They're like well, you guys are the experts you wouldn't know. No, that's. And now. No, I'm expert enough to stay the hell out of there. Yes, I've researched this. I know what this stuff can do. I'm good, and that's why Dave said like I'm sure they ask for people or put out a job. Hey, we need guys to come in here. We're paying $35 an hour.
Speaker 2:Like I said, it's like the Amish they're expendable, it's fine. Look, it's just some quick and easy money for some quick and easy work. So what if you get like a sixth finger on the one hand?
Speaker 3:Yeah, bobby Smith from Middletown and his brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They're coming in there to do this because it's easy money.
Speaker 2:Dude, Look at. I mean, you could come out like a circus freak. It worked for a Franklin teeny.
Speaker 1:Well, there's people that pay people to like taste their food. You know, make eat their food before they. You know what I mean. There's somebody that's doing that job, so I'm sure with this job they're just like what do you do I?
Speaker 2:I take food for the king or whatever, you know what I mean somebody's got to do it we were talking earlier about who went where. So, dave, you went to altuna, correct, bona fortuna. Uh, matt, where did you go?
Speaker 1:real quick shout out to my cousin scott too. He listens to every episode up there he's working at state State College. He's from Altoona so I know he's probably listening to this. It was actually his family that I stayed with. We were out there. He was younger than me, so he was I mean, he might not even been born yet for his sister, but his mom and dad and grandmother. That's where we went, so shout out to Scott.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Scott, hey, scott. Every time I hear the name Scott anymore, I think of Frau Farbisna from Austin Powers, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Scott. Correct.
Speaker 2:I wish I could do it. I would do it a definite injustice. But yeah, shout out to Scott in Frau Farbisna's voice.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Matt, where'd you go?
Speaker 3:I think Minersville. I think that's what my mom said Marysville, Minersville.
Speaker 2:I don't know that's on the way to Mount Carmel where I went.
Speaker 3:Yes, you were up there. I was up at Mount Carmel, mount Carmel, yeah, so I guess, Matt.
Speaker 2:so let's see, There'll be some interesting facts on that, I guess. Yeah, you're talking about like an hour and change away Mount Carmel is an hour and a half, no more than two hours away, depending on how slowly you drive. So I got to wonder hours away, depending on how slowly you drive, so I I gotta wonder is that far enough?
Speaker 3:would that have been far enough should there have been?
Speaker 2:a oh, I think our parents took.
Speaker 3:What scary meltdown I think our parents took what was given to them as in you know 20 miles. If you're within uh 20 mile, just get outside of the 20 mile radius, which is cool, which I think all of our parents did, and you, you were at where? Mount carmel, just outside of outside of mount carmel, what's the town?
Speaker 2:so the town I was in is wilberton, and in fact wilberton is basically smack dab halfway in between mount carmel and centralia oh, yeah, our loyal listeners may recall our awesome, awesome podcast on centralia and this is before gps and all that.
Speaker 1:So you think about when you're traveling and like I don't know about you guys, my fam, like my family, like they, they think it's like oh, I'm going out of town if I'm going to grantville, which is like 15 minutes from you know, what I mean like in their mind. That's like way out there.
Speaker 3:So it's well put. Though, dave, what you're getting into, I mean I'm gonna cut you off real quick, but um, yeah, you, you know how to get there, just by directions. I guess I don't know. It's crazy, take 22 and just keep driving, or whatever you know.
Speaker 1:So in their mind they're just like they know how to get to Altoona obviously my family, because we have family out there. But you're reading a big-ass paper map. You're probably putting it out like, oh, we got to go here and you got to, like, try to plot it out. And it's different. Now you could just put it in your GPS and go wherever you know what I mean. So 50 miles probably seemed like across the country back then, Dude.
Speaker 2:so we all grew up on the East Shore and for anyone who's not aware where we are, there's this river called the Susquehanna River which divides the East Shore and the West Shore of that river. On the East Shore is the Harrisburg side, the state capital and anything that we've talked about, like Middletown, high Spire, stilton, you name it. On the West Shore are things like Camp Hill, mechanicsburg. Even deeper, you have Carlisle. That's not even West Shore, like you're going deep. There are people on the East Shore of the Susquehanna that live on the Eastern side of the Susquehanna River and the X number of towns in that 717 area code side that has still to this day have never crossed the river.
Speaker 3:That if you tell them you're crossing the river, they think you're driving to maryland yes, you might as well be driving to maryland I remember as a kid that was a big thing if we had to go onto the west shore. And even even in high school I remember, like uh sean, he had friends that lived in New Cumberland, which I was like, oh, we're going to New Cumberland. Yeah.
Speaker 3:He's like yeah, we got a friend. We used to play Mortal Kombat over this one guy's house he had I remember like we were still pretty young, but the guy had his like own place, had like three roommates. Oh yeah, do you know what I'm talking about? Have you ever been?
Speaker 1:over.
Speaker 3:I think he had like a glass eye.
Speaker 1:It's funny.
Speaker 2:No, seriously. It's funny though, matt. I see what you're saying Like. Back then you think of New Cumberland. You ask like, well, do I need to pack a lunch?
Speaker 1:Yeah, do I need to take a day off. It seemed far away yeah.
Speaker 2:For damn sure far away.
Speaker 1:Sounds like we got type cars you got to get out in front and crank them up.
Speaker 2:You know horses on the way right all right.
Speaker 2:Well, after all that unit one went back online in 1985. Good job, unit one, unit one, you know. So unit one was not the one that was damaged. Unit one was just fine. Unit two was the one that was damaged. So they just shut it down just to make. They had to, I guess, to do the cleanup. Like, look, shut it all down, we got to make sure everything's good. We're going to revamp this. We got to rebuild the engine. We got to to make sure everything's good. We're going to revamp this. We got to rebuild the engine. We got to do whatever we got to do, but we're going to make sure this is right. So that unit one, the one that was not damaged, was still offline for six years. Repairs man, I guess, repairs replacements. It wasn't until 1993 that the decontamination process at unit two was officially declared complete.
Speaker 2:Jeez, 14 years Though the unit did remain inoperable. Tmi's unit one functioned perfectly until it was shut down at noon on September 19th 2019. And the plant has remained closed since. Oh, what a sad ending. That's a sad ending for nuclear excellence in.
Speaker 1:Middletown, pennsylvania. Yeah, and that was the last plant right in the United States.
Speaker 2:That was the last plant built in the United States there are still existing and running nuclear plants in the United States.
Speaker 3:There's another big one right here in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:Peach Bottom yeah.
Speaker 3:It's not the size of Three Mile Island, it's like one or two maybe reactors, which again has four towers, but only two of them function. Ohio has one.
Speaker 2:Um.
Speaker 3:I think there's one going up North.
Speaker 1:I've heard that the power that TMI was generating, a lot of it was sent to New Jersey, new York. So we didn't even really reap the benefits here, other than the jobs and the you know that part of it med ed is a big.
Speaker 2:They have a big footprint. I mean, for damn sure, a sizable footprint. So yeah, they're gonna do what they're gonna do to get their power to where it needs to go right, but what I'm saying is that did you guys hear that too?
Speaker 1:have you ever heard that that we didn't really tmi, never really powered anything around here? Is that true? I?
Speaker 2:had heard the same. Okay, now, that could have been a tale told by old wives, or, uh, old tale told by wives.
Speaker 3:Right, I would figure that would have to be a large project. I guess they would run the lines what under the water and through the ground?
Speaker 1:Oh no, you can see them going out through the fields and stuff. I don't think anything goes underwater.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:I mean they clear out up over the mountains and everywhere.
Speaker 2:It's all above ground. Oh, those big towers man with the big lines that run along that cause cancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you have a house by you, you just hear yeah.
Speaker 3:The whole time, kids walking around with their hair standing on edge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. Well, I golf right through it over there. What's that? Golf course, parline.
Speaker 3:Parline. Yep, in Middletown we call it Parline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you, I thought that was Sun sets down very near TMI, but then if you go out, Sunset overlooks TMI in the airport.
Speaker 3:Par line is right, the first tee.
Speaker 1:Par line is on Route 230 on the way to E-Town, and those power lines go right through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:So you tee off like Matt said, hole number one.
Speaker 3:Hole number one yeah, if you hit it you can move it. I think club's length outside of the yeah. Nice number one. Yeah, if you hit it you can like move it, I think, club's length outside of the. Yeah, nice, but you do right when you go underneath it. Dave's right.
Speaker 1:You just hear this like the humming and stuff like that yeah, can't be healthy, man can't be healthy.
Speaker 2:A buddy of mine lives under and has lived for decades underneath one of those towers. There's he's got a tower running through his backyard. I thought they made that illegal. You couldn't pay me enough to live in a house that has a tower running through the back, with those lines running through my backyard, but no, goddamned way I thought there had to be like a certain amount of space, space between those lines. Now I mean you live at your own risk, bro.
Speaker 3:I guess you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's power company has. I mean there's easements that they have running through the, the yards and stuff, so they'll trim the bushes, they'll trim the verge, anything that's growing up, and doing whatever that's going to. You know, mess with their power lines, but otherwise, yeah, man, you live anywhere at your own risk I think it'd be a cool band name, like for in the 80s, like power line power line, yeah, like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be a good name, but I wonder if they're like, when they run those power lines, if it's um like to say to decide to run new ones yeah and I'm sure maybe from time to time they have to Can they come through your property? That's eminent domain man.
Speaker 3:They can do whatever the hell they want.
Speaker 2:So I know the roads work that way, I think with the power companies. Anymore they don't run anything above ground just because it's too risky. Yeah, like our neighborhood is all below ground wiring. And by risky I mean it's risky to them to the extent that repairs maintenance bullshit Thunderstorms Hass them to the extent that repairs maintenance bullshit thunderstorm hassles like it is just so much more cost effective to spend that money.
Speaker 2:Dig that hole, run those lines in the ground. You again. You don't have to worry about storms. You don't have to worry about busted ass poles. You don't have to worry about stupid ass kids messing on the poles falling down off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes you have to worry about squirrels crawling up there and getting shot yeah, but as that was, that was saying like a lot of the new neighborhoods, now everything is underground, underground that's how our neighborhood is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds laid down.
Speaker 2:That's where the sound is laid down.
Speaker 3:That's right yeah, um, fun, fun fact on this uh, before we, I guess you know, finish up or whatever, yeah, um, where I grew, grew up, uh, in Middletown, a lady that helped raise me, cause my mom and dad both worked. So we went to a lady called aunt Joyce. We call her aunt Joyce because she's raised us since we were like tiny, but I think three months old, I started going there. But, um, she was uh an advocate against nuclear power and there's documentaries on Netflix and there's actually another, another movie out I think it's about the moms of tmi, that there's a little little mats on there, there's a little picture a little bit nice.
Speaker 3:Three of the people in her family got cancer. I don't know if it's anything like you can directly relate, but uh, they also did a lot of um farming. They would go around the area of tmi years after and they would find like uh, mushrooms and different type of things and stuff was growing oddly. It was just odd. So there was had to have been some nuclear whatever released into the reaction or something that's going to do.
Speaker 1:Here's some here's some fun, fun facts on on the whole story here. So the total cost for the plant was estimated to be around 700 million that's kind of cheap to build it um in 60s and 70s money. Yeah, that's that's big money. But they're making a lot of money, I'm sure, off the power they're generating, but the accident caused an estimated 2.4 billion with a b in cleanup, yeah car does go like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah so, but you figure, so that was not worth the squeeze that no, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that's probably why they closed, you know, because they were probably never above above water.
Speaker 2:They, I did no pun intended in 20 in 2019, when they closed, it was because they were still trying to work off an operating deficit and they just couldn't make it happen yeah, one of the artists that was inspired prince now prince, I don't know he might have.
Speaker 1:He might have wrote a song about it, but Bruce Springsteen, who lived less than 100 miles from Three Mile Island, wrote a song called Roulette, or Roulette, I don't know how to pronounce it probably Roulette. Roulette.
Speaker 3:Yeah, about the incident and got my woman pregnant and she couldn't work.
Speaker 1:yeah, so, and she couldn't work, yeah, so Springsteen talks about that One of the lines and it opens with the lyrics I've got a house full of things that I can't touch. We left the toys out in the yard. I took my wife and kids and I left my house unguarded. We packed what we could into the car. No one knows how it started. He recorded in 1979 and it remained unreleased. Not one of his big hits, no, but although it was available, um, through bootlegging and stuff like that. That's great, so, but yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Fun fact yeah, he's a hippie you know what a fun fact on bruce is. You know a lot of the songs he sings about. You think of him as like a hard working. He's not. Yes, all his songs are just made up songs yep, he's trying to yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all fake. Now, look, I've seen him in concert and it's a, it's a great concert yeah, I dig that. I would like to see him because he's bruce, he's a powerful musician, but I he can keep his hippie lyrics and whatever the hell else. He's shit. He's peddling. Fun fact about peddling that's a paddling. Do you have another? Do you have any more one?
Speaker 1:other thing, uh, on the cleanup effort, reactor two, it was like 100 tons of radioactive fuel. That they had to remove out of there, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:That's what they shipped to Idaho.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I promise you, that's what they shipped to Idaho.
Speaker 3:What did they put it in? Like one of those underground bunker type things? Put them in 50-gallon drums or 100-gallon drums and bury that shit. We'll get back to that later.
Speaker 2:About TMI. Tmi at one point was a farm. The TMI at one point was a farm. Yes, they farmed. So way, way, way back in the day TMI was I mean it's TMI. Three Mile Island was and remains an island and on that island the owners of the island at the time farmed melons. They ended up selling that island to a local power company.
Speaker 1:Robert Plant or Richard Palmer, not Robert.
Speaker 2:Plant.
Speaker 3:Robert, was that Richard Palmer, Not not Robert Palmer?
Speaker 2:They did not sell it to the band uh, power, power. Instead, they sold it to a power company. After a winter Um, there's ice that flows down that river when you know, get cold, whatever. Uh, the ice had just destroyed the barn. Oh shit, took the melons down to. Yeah, destroyed the barn. Instead of rebuilding and doing whatever this is you know what? We'll sell this to the power company, take our losses and go there have a great farming land.
Speaker 3:I mean water everywhere, water everywhere it's instant irrigation now. It's interesting that you said I didn't. I didn't know that story. That's the first time I heard it. But who are the people that walk or like? Who are these people that are Like? Your job is to go around looking for a good place for a for a nuclear power?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for a power plant.
Speaker 2:Surveyors yeah, they start with a map right.
Speaker 3:Look at this, look at this piece of little land here in in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2:Yeah they're. They're looking for something that's it's gotta be surrounded by a shit flowing water, so no matter what a river is required to start, yeah, and then from there. All right, let's find a spot like this looks good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2:Those farmers made out, though I bet you I bet you, you know it's interesting as we we go through this. You know we were only. You know as we talked about this. We're only like a year or two old when this was going down tiny it would be good for us to, I don't know. I wish we could talk to somebody who you know was there, who really, like, knew about it, who could, you know, tell us what went down.
Speaker 1:I think you're hitting at something I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, we're not. Our parents were like, alive and with us at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And they? Why don't we? I don't know. Here's the thought. Why don't we talk to our moms about it? Why don't?
Speaker 1:we do that, I think our moms would like that.
Speaker 3:It'd be like a nice get together. We'll get some like crimpets. Yeah Well, tea.
Speaker 2:It'd be like the golden girls without the golden girls. Do TMI without. Blanche the whore. This would be a a real ODB origin truly be an odb origin story the women who saved our lives yeah, yeah, I think that's a great idea, guys.
Speaker 3:We'll have to try to make that happen. It'd be a hard thing to do, but we can try to make that.
Speaker 1:Make it happen hey guys, can you wrap?
Speaker 3:it up?
Speaker 2:oh sure thing I'm glad we got that in in time yeah yeah, that's, uh, we should look into that man. Let's uh, let's see if we can't get the moms in here and, uh, have a nice little lively conversation, get their inputs and everything that went down way back in the day, good idea I was thinking, if we were teenagers are gonna be like yeah, I got your mom's number.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're too old for that. It's not as funny anymore. It's not gonna work now because we have it like an emergency listings, yeah but uh, would have been funnier back in the day, but it still holds, holds water. I'm still laughing. I think it'd be a good idea, though, because it would give us perspective on people that were there and kind of knew what was going on. But I think it'd be interesting. But we better wrap this up before she has a meltdown.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we don't need Mrs Dave going nuclear on us.
Speaker 1:Right, I guess that's. That's it, so don't forget to find us on Facebook and Instagram at old dirty basement on tech talk, at old dirty basement podcast. Don't forget to leave us that written review on Apple and Spotify. You can leave that five star rating or wherever you're at, and I guess that's it for now, so we'll catch you where on the flip side, if we don't see you sooner, we'll see you later.
Speaker 3:Peace. Thanks for hanging out in the old, dirty basement. If you dig our theme music, like we do, check out the tsunami experiment, find them on Facebook. Their music is available streaming on Spotify and Apple and where great music is available.
Speaker 1:You can find us at old dirty basement on Facebook and Instagram and at old dirty basement podcast on Tik TOK Peace, we outtie 5,000.