Happy TMI Day, everybody! On this day in history 44 years ago, an accident at the nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River (10 miles downstream from Harrisburg) led to a radiation release that made it the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry. A full blow-by-blow account from History.com is here. A previous post focusing on environmental health impacts of radiation exposure is here. And for those of you keeping score at home: “The reactor had come within less than an hour of a complete meltdown.”
Today’s bonus quiz concerns the name “Three Mile Island.” If TMI is located ten miles from the state capitol, then what is it three miles from? A plethora of good vibes – and perhaps even a valuable prize? – await the first person with the correct answer in the comments section. Good luck!
I’ll post an extended comment tomorrow explaining all the gory details of the name’s origin. For what it’s worth, it isn’t as simple as you might at first think. And for those of you who can’t bear to wait, you can read it for yourself right now, right here.
Exelon says “TMI is so named because it is located three miles from Harrisburg International Airport.” The airport is in Londonderry Township, along the Susquehanna just upriver from Middletown.
So the current answer to the question seems to be that TMI is three miles downriver from Middletown or the airport or somewhere around there. But that answer is wrong, according to someone who actually knows how the island was named.
Following the accident 40 years ago, the Scribbler consulted Louis M. Waddell, then staff historian for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission at Harrisburg.
Waddell said the source of the name was a geological survey made by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1963 from an aerial survey made two years earlier. Someone apparently believed the island was about 3 miles long and people began calling it “Three Mile Island.”
That designation is inaccurate, Waddell explained, because the island’s maximum length is 2.2 miles. You could add another .3 miles for two little islands just north of the main island.
Not only is the name inaccurate, but it is arbitrary. The island was called Musser’s in the middle of the 19th century. Later it became Conewago Island, Elliot’s Island and Duffy’s Island, mostly depending on who owned it. So, following that logic, it might have been called Met Ed’s Island for Metropolitan Edison, TMI’s owner at the time of the accident.
That’s probably more than you wanted to know about the naming of TMI. Now you can go back to worrying about the more important questions.