Cooling towers at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown.
Matt Rourke / The Associated Press
End of an era for symbol of nuclear power
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Ed Mahon
Matt Rourke / The Associated Press
Cooling towers at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown.
John Baer, a more than 30 year veteran of covering Pennsylvania’s state government, on Thursday launched a weekly political column for PennLive. Baer most recently wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News before taking a buy-out, he writes. My favorite line in Baer’s re-introduction column is when he describes how former Gov. Ed Rendell “once publicly said if murder was legal, he’d boil me in oil.” Read Baer’s introductory column here. –Ed Mahon, PA Post reporter
TMI closure comes after state fails to enact subsidy
Ed Mahon / PA Post
A beer — seen on March 1, 2019 — at Tattered Flag Brewery & Still Works is named after the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. (Ed Mahon / PaPost.org)
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Today is scheduled to be Three Mile Island’s last day as a working nuclear power station, Charlie Thompson reports for PennLive. Thompson reports that it’s not clear how many of Three Mile Island’s roughly 650 employees will be laid off immediately. A spokesman said Exelon would release more details today.
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Thompson reports that Exelon’s decommissioning plan calls for taking the employment down to about 300 people by the end of the year. The site will still store spent fuel, and Exelon’s timeline calls for the cooling towers to remain in place for decades — until around 2075. (I’ll be in my 90s by then, but I’m volunteering now to cover the tearing down of those towers.)
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The plant, located about 15 miles from the state Capitol in Harrisburg, was home to the nation’s worst nuclear accident in 1979. That accident had a big influence on many things in American life, including The Simpsons.
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Efforts to offer a subsidy that would help Three Mile Island and other nuclear power stations stay open stalled in Harrisburg earlier this year. TMI is one of five nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania. Another one in western PA’s Beaver County is scheduled to close in 2021.
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Earlier this year, fellow PA Post reporter Emily Previti and I looked at the potential impact of a plant closure on the local community. I talked to a Dauphin County pizza shop owner and some other people near TMI. Emily traveled to Zion, Illinois, to see the ripple effect of a plant closure.
Best of the rest
Chip and Jackie Bieber with a photo of their daughter, Shawn Shatto, in WITF’s studios in Dauphin County earlier this year. They appeared as guests on the radio show Smart Talk. (File/Smart Talk)
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State Rep. Dawn Keefer, a York County Republican, is proposing increased penalties for anyone who encourages people under the age of 18 or with an intellectual disability to kill themselves. Keefer is calling the bill “Shawn’s Law,” named after Shawn Shatto, a 25-year-old York woman who killed herself in May. Her family says Shawn found instructions on a website.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Juliana Feliciano Reyes spent time with some of the nearly 46,000 GM workers on strike around the United States. “They said we on strike, they said we can’t work, they didn’t say we couldn’t party!” a picketer says in a video outside the Bucks County facility.
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U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited Harrisburg Catholic Elementary School in Harrisburg on Thursday. Ahead of the visit, CNN described the school as one “that subscribes to an anti-trans student policy.”
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The Morning Call’s Ford Turner looks at the looming impasse over efforts to ease the school property tax burden in Pennsylvania. An informal group of lawmakers plans to present a list of options to House and Senate leaders.
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Senate Democrats on Thursday released a report they commissioned on sexual misconduct allegations against Democratic state Sen. Daylin Leach of suburban Philadelphia. WITF’s Katie Meyer uploaded the report here. And Pennsylvania Democrats renewed their call for Leach to resign, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
