Closing Three Mile Island nuclear plant won't eliminate hazards | News | witf.org

Closing Three Mile Island nuclear plant won't eliminate hazards | News | witf.org: Exelon says it will close Three Mile Island's Unit One reactor in September 2019. (Photo by Joe Ulrich/WITF) Will TMI be more or less dangerous after it closes? Depends who you ask. One thing is for sure: The risks won't go away entirely. (Middletown) -- When Three Mile Island partially melted down on March 28, 1979, the danger was immediate and came from within the plant. A failure -- either mechanical or electrical -- led to the 1979 disaster, the highest-profile nuclear power scare in American history. If the plant closes, as it's currently slated to in 2019, that exact scenario won't happen again. But without a federal plan to remove nuclear waste from the site, danger will continue to lurk at TMI for years, decades or centuries. That's why some have speculated that a nuclear incident could actually be more likely after plants like TMI close, which is...