‘It’s deceitful’: Critics slam owners of TMI Unit 2 for not reporting fire at plant

Penn Live, By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com, May. 08, 2025

Accidents can happen.

But when they happen at a nuclear power plant, who gets told, and when?

That’s a question that some neighbors of the still-shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power stations are asking after recent disclosures about a small fire at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor building this winter.

The owners of Unit 2 – the scene of the notorious March 1979 partial meltdown – have received a “non-cited violation” from federal regulators for the fire that broke out at its reactor building on Feb. 11.

The fire got its first public disclosure through a May 2 posting on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s public library.

No one was hurt in the incident, in which a partition surrounding a worksite at the crippled plant’s ongoing deconstruction ignited.

And according to the NRC’s inspection report, there were no releases of radiation associated with it.

Overall, and importantly, the inspection report concludes, the incident itself was one of “very low safety significance.”

But the fact the fire was not publicly reported in real time is raising some alarm bells with some of the plant’s critics.

Neither plant owners TMI-2 Solutions nor federal or state regulators put out a real-time public notice about the incident.

It also wasn’t briefed at a March meeting of a community advisory panel established specifically “to enhance open communication, public involvement and education about the… decommissioning project,” according to two people who attended that session.

“It’s not only tone-deaf. It’s deceitful, because they know how the public feels about it,” said Joyce Corradi, a Lower Swatara Township resident who 45 years ago was a founding member of Concerned Mothers’ and Women, a grassroots group concerned about the accident.

To be clear, TMI-2 Solutions wasn’t exactly hiding the situation.

The company did make same-day courtesy calls to “appropriate stakeholders” including the NRC, the state Department of Environmental Protection …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Constellation Energy does not own Three Mile Island Unit 2, but anything that happens at Unit 1 can be influenced by accidents at Unit 2,” Stilp said.

“The best solution is not to restart Unit 1, so that there will never be a chance that a nuclear incident will occur there.”

And the lack of full public disclosure infuriated others.

“It undermines confidence in their ability to communicate during a (bigger) incident or accident,” said Eric Epstein, longtime leader of Three Mile Island Alert.

“This is how we had the (1979) accident in the first place,” said Corradi, who co-founded the women’s group after the partial meltdown. “A lack of checking out the details and doing things safely.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/05/its-deceitful-critics-slam-tmi-for-not-reporting-fire-at-plant.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawKKKKJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkE