Documents from the Three Mile Island Crisis
Written by PA Heritage Staff in the Our Documentary Heritage category and the Winter 2002 issue Topics in this article: Clifford L. Jones, Dick Thornburgh, Harold R. Denton, Jimmy Carter, Lucinda Denton, Pennsylvania Commission on Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, Pennsylvania Department of Health, Three Mile Island, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, William W. Scranton IIIIn late March 1979, the nation experienced its worst commercial nuclear accident as a result of technical malfunctions and operator error at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear generating station near Harrisburg. The crisis, which began on Wednesday, March 28, lasted for several days and prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents. The accident
and reaction to it are well documented in official government records maintained by federal and state agencies, including the National Archives and the Pennsylvania State Archives. Currently available for public use at the Pennsylvania State Archives are files of the Pennsylvania Commission on Three Mile Island, 1979-1980 (RG 25), chaired by Lieutenant Governor William W. Scranton III; the gubernatorial records of Governor Dick Thornburgh, 1979-1987 (MG 404); Public Utility Commission Investigation Docket Files (RG 37); and the Harold and Lucinda Denton Papers, 1978-1999 (MG 471).
Still awaiting eventual transfer to the Archives are the health and radiation related records compiled by the state Department of Health and the Department of Environmental Resources (DER), now the Department of Environmental Protection. Together these records provide a comprehensive view of state government’s role in handling a nuclear crisis that will be listed among the most important events in the twentieth-century history of the United States. They will, as noted by Clifford L. Jones, appointed DER secretary just weeks before the incident, bear witness to the dedication of governmental and power plant workers, who remained at their posts despite the threat to their personal safety.
They will be of immense interest to historians, environmentalists, sociologists, scientists, researchers, and members of the medical and health communities.
The personal papers donated in 1999 to the Pennsylvania State Archives by Harold R. Denton, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s personal envoy to the crippled nuclear power plant and the federal government’s chief spokesperson as Director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, include letters of thanks from numerous central Pennsylvania residents and provide ample expression of local reaction to events as they unfolded (see “From Chaos to Calm: Remembering the Three Mile Island Crisis, An Interview with Harold Denton” by Kenneth C. Wolensky, Spring 2000).
