Stepping back from the precipice: When April Fool’s day rolls around, people across central Pennsylvania aren’t in much of a joking mood. The crisis at TMI threatens to turn into a full-scale disaster. But, a visit from President Jimmy Carter and some good fortune appear to turn the tide.
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By mid-afternoon on March 28, 1979, people who live near the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant aren’t getting much information as they wonder if they’ve been exposed to too much radiation. Many find themselves facing a difficult decision: Wait out the crisis or evacuate.
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At 7:24 a.m., on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, something goes terribly wrong at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Dauphin County. What unfolds over the next few hours is chaos and confusion as people are confronted with a partial meltdown in TMI’s Unit 2 reactor.
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This week, state lawmakers waded into a fraught, long-anticipated debate over whether to prop up two of the commonwealth’s five nuclear power plants.
One is the Beaver Valley plant near Pittsburgh. The other is Dauphin County’s Three Mile Island, which—you may have heard—partially melted down in 1979 and helped instill a lasting wariness toward nuclear energy in generations of Americans.
The bill to save the plants is being championed by Republican Representative Thomas Mehaffie, of Dauphin County, and it is already getting a boatload of pushback from people across the ideological spectrum.
To help explain the situation, StateImpact Pennsylvania reporter Marie Cusick joins us in the studio.
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Harrisburg has been the seat of Pennsylvania’s government since 1812, and the current Capitol building has been in use since 1906.
In the first couple decades of the 20th century, the complex and its grounds were being expanded into what we know today. And as that was happening, there was a casualty. An entire city ward—populated largely by immigrants and African Americans—was wiped out.
Reporter Elizabeth Hardison, with the Penn Capital Star, recently looked into why the ward was demolished. She joins us this week to explain what happened, and what was lost. We’ll also hear from activist Lenwood Sloan, who is leading a charge to commemorate the long-destroyed ward with a monument on Capitol grounds.
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State lawmakers are in the middle of a long series of hearings on the budgets for Pennsylvania’s many agencies.
It’s a time for them to grill secretaries on what’s working, what’s not, and how money is being spent. And it gives agency heads a chance to lobby for more funding.
So this week, we’re recapping some of the biggest issues that have come up (repeatedly) thus far: the minimum wage, the debt-ridden turnpike, and what the commonwealth should require of people receiving public benefits.
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