A difference of opinion on TMI changes

Three Mile Island is replacing its two steam generators two decades late, contends nuclear industry critic Eric Epstein. Lots of people are waiting to glimpse the ponderous new machines. The generators will be slowly piggybacked through the county this month on their way from Port Deposit, Md., to the atomic power plant at Middletown. However, said Epstein, chairman of the 32-year-old Three Mile Island Alert watchdog group, "nobody's paid attention to why" they're needed in the first place. The current generators were damaged by a sulfur compound the plant's former owner introduced in the early 1980s, he said. Some of the metal generating tubes were weakened and subsequently repaired with sleeves or "plugged," which means they were taken out of operation. "We would have preferred if the generators had been replaced 20 years ago," Epstein said.

Lancaster Online