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Weather Vol. 57
September 2002
The meteorological setting of the `TMI-2’
nuclear accident on 28 March 1979
Reinhold Steinacker1 and Ignaz Vergeiner2
1
2
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Vienna
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Innsbruck
On 28 March 1979 at 0400 EST (EST = GMT
75 h), the Three Mile Island Unit 2 pressurised water reactor (TMI-2) began automatic
shutdown following a loss of feed water, initiating a cascade of equipment failures and operator errors which caused a loss of coolant water
and the destruction of the reactor core (Special
Inquiry Group 1980). Roughly half of the reactor core melted and significant amounts of
the fuel were vaporised. This was the most
severe accident, by far, within the `civilian’
nuclear industry up to that time. The first few
days were the critical ones. It appears that an
outright nuclear catastrophe on the scale of the
1986 Chernobyl disaster was avoided only
barely.
The quantity, composition and timing of the
releases of noble gases and other b-emitting
nuclides, iodines, activated particulates and
fuel into the environment are still in dispute, as
well as the consequences. There is an enormous discrepancy in the claimed radiation
exposures to the public between millirems and
hundreds of rems*:
(i)
(ii)
Low-dose engineering estimates by
official agencies rely on postulated low
emissions, on remote sensing by &20
thermo-luminescent dosimeters, and
on inferences drawn from Gaussian
plume modelling, where the Appalachian Hills are taken to force strong
diffusion.
High-dose biological estimates are
based on a spotty, but consistent, pattern of symptoms of acute radiation
poisoning of people, pets, trees and
plants, and on later medical tests and
* A more recent unit of radiation dose is 1 Sievert
(Sv) = 100 rems.
cancer statistics (Aamodt and Aamodt
1984, 1985; Wing et al. 1997).
All such biological direct evidence of locally
high exposures, despite being abundant and
available from many distant locations, as
opposed to the engineering-type dose reconstructions, has consistently been officially dismissed as `psychological stress’ . There can be
no doubt that the pertinent reports must have
been feared to be potentially ruinous to the
nuclear establishment.
In an attempt to help resolve the extraordinary discrepancy through a re-evalution of
the dispersion conditions, the synoptic setting
was investigated. Meteorological analysis of the
TMI case had been conspicuously non-existent
for 15 years. Weather conditions turned out to
be very complex. Accordingly, we offer a casestudy of two slowly moving warm fronts being
distorted by the Appalachian Hills. Whereas
resolution of all the issues is obviously far
beyond a single discipline, the present analysis
demonstrates extreme thermal stability with
weak and variable winds during the first critical
days of the accident, a combination which
makes the impaction of almost undiluted,
highly concentrated plumes or puffs of contaminated air on exposed hilltop sites up to
30 km away from TMI quite plausible.
The topography
The hilly relief surrounding the TMI reactor
site is highly contorted. Overall, the terrain
rises toward the west and south-west. The
reactor site is at an elevation of 100 m above
sea-level on an island in the broad Susquehanna River, which flows from the northern
Appalachians southward through the eastern
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Weather Vol. 57
Appalachian foothills, with a local orientation
from north-west to south-east, eventually
reaching Chesapeake Bay. There are various
ranges topping 200 to 300 m and valleys with a
general south-west to north-east orientation,
leading up to the Susquehanna River valley.
There are several gaps cut into these ranges.
The city of Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania
(population 200 000), located about 15 to
20 km north-west of TMI and 150 km north of
Washington, DC, is situated in a wide valley
running almost west± east, but parts of the city
itself are hilly terrain. The Blue Mountains,
reaching up to 450 m, frame this valley to the
north.
Meteorological data sources and
notation
We used National Meteorological Center
(NMC 1979) surface and 850 mbar weather
maps, and rawinsonde soundings from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, and
Albany, New York, from 0000 GMT on 28
March to 1200 GMT on 2 April 1979. Charts at
500 mbar from the National Weather Service
(NWS) were also available for inspection, as
well as published charts from the Deutscher
Wetterdienst (1979). Fortunately, the NMC
analyses contain the original observations,
otherwise a reanalysis could not have been
done.
In an attempt to secure all the available relevant regional weather information in the vicinity of the TMI plant, records of hourly surface
weather observations from more than two
dozen airports in Pennsylvania, Maryland and
Delaware between 27 March and 2 April 1979
were obtained from the NWS (US Department
of Commerce 1979).
The general weather situation
The general weather pattern during the last
days of March 1979 reflects the planetary circulation regime for the entire month of March,
as described by Taubensee (1979), and to
some extent continuing into April (Wagner
1979). The quasi-stationary upper ridge over
the northern Rocky Mountains was displaced
westward, forming a blocking structure
342
September 2002
together with an upper trough off California
and Mexico (see Fig. 1). Between that and a
trough over the western Atlantic linking up to a
massive closed low over the Canadian Arctic a
shorter wave pattern became established, consisting of a broad upper trough over the Great
Plains and a flat ridge of high pressure across
the Appalachians and the Atlantic seaboard.
This regime of general westerlies with some
shifts and rearrangements was largely responsible for the warmth of March experienced
across much of the USA, and some heavy precipitation in Midwestern states.
A surge of cold air had invaded the northern
USA between 23 and 26 March. Thereafter,
the broad frontal zone ahead of the Midwestern upper trough became stalled to the west of
the Appalachian upper ridge to cause massive
advection of warm and humid air from the
south-west towards the north-eastern states.
During the three days following 1900 EST on
27 March, the entire troposphere in the region
of concern, up to heights above 10 km,
warmed up continuously, the lower levels, up
to 800 mbar, by approximately 20 degC!
This general regime of warm-air advection
was responsible for heavy rains and flooding
across the south-east well into April. In and
around Pennsylvania lower temperatures
returned by 2 April, but the southerly regime
was not conclusively terminated until 5/6
April, when a severe storm swept across the
Great Lakes area.
At 1900 EST on 27 March 1979, nine hours
before the start of the accident, the surface
high pressure core was still west of the Appalachians (not shown). By 0400 EST on 28 March
the surface high had shifted right over the TMI
region. Surface winds veered from west-northwesterly to northerly, north-easterly, easterly
and south-easterly (see Fig. 2) by afternoon. At
1900 EST on 28 March 1979, the surface anticyclone had moved east of the Appalachians
(Fig. 1), and southerly winds prevailed in the
TMI area.
At this point we show two consecutive
soundings from Washington (Fig. 3). The first
one, from the late afternoon of the accident
day, has the cooler `old’ airmass still almost
well mixed up to about 1200 m by insolation
on this perfectly clear day. As it has become
Weather Vol. 57
September 2002
Fig. 1 Hemispheric chart for 1900 EST on 28 March 1979 showing sea-level pressure (mbar, solid lines) and 500 mbar
height (dam, dashed lines). Adapted from German Weather Service.
warmer already on the western and north-western plateau around Pittsburgh, this pool of
cool air, higher than the mountain crest height,
tends to flow westward, seeping across mountain passes and regions of lower terrain. This
configuration (Fig. 1) has a striking resemblance to the surface weather map accompanying the `shallow foÈhn’ across the European
Alps: cyclones tracking along the Bavarian
foreland (north-western plateau); cool air
forming a wedge of high pressure across the Po
valley (Pennsylvania and southern foreland
east of the Appalachian Mountains), draining
into the northern Alpine forelands across
mountain passes. Such foÈhn effects on the western slopes of the Alleghennies are apparent on
28 March. Figure 3 shows how warm-air
advection at and above the 850 mbar level has
put a `lid’ on the atmosphere.
The sounding 12 hours later has a very
strong frontal inversion near 400 m. Accordingly, the lower atmosphere upstream of TMI
had developed extreme stagnation beneath the
strong inversion during the night of 28/29
March. The sequence of hourly weather events
and winds at Harrisburg (Fig. 2) demonstrates
how on 29 and 30 March surface winds slackened and became very weak and variable, with
near calm conditions for many hours.
Warm-air advection finally penetrated to the
surface during 29 March, the grip of the inversion began to loosen across the middle Atlantic
states, and by 30 March record high temperatures were reported from there (Washington
and Baltimore). Winds, however, still remained
generally weak until 5 April.
Beyond the foregoing general description of
events, the analysis becomes demanding. The
structure of the frontal zone is quite complicated, as indicated by inconsistencies in the
various published surface analyses. Advances
of warm air from the south-west came in surges
space-wise and time-wise. The frontal zone lies
almost parallel to the upper-level flow. For a
complete analysis, boundary-layer effects must
be understood and taken into account, too.
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September 2002
Fig. 2 Time-series of hourly values of weather and winds at Harrisburg for 28, 29 and 30 March 1979. Measured
winds (m s-1 ) are shown from three locations for comparison: HAR = Harrisburg, Capital City Airport, west shore; MDT
= Middletown, present HAR International Airport, east shore; TMI = TMI meteorological tower, 30 m above ground level.
In this notation
indicates 2 m s-1 and visibility is in kilometres.
Surface 3-hourly and 850 mbar 12-hourly
charts were reanalysed in detail for that purpose.
Some comments on methods of synoptic
analysis
Regarding synoptic analysis, the concept and
344
positioning of fronts is one of the essential features. One basis for the idealised concept of a
`polar front’ was a homogeneous oceanic lower
boundary. Subsequently, it turned out that
boundary-layer effects, such as stable stratification and topographic relief, can confuse frontal
signals severely. Classic evidence of a boundary
layer decoupled from frontal behaviour aloft
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September 2002
Fig. 3 Washington, DC, tephigrams for 1900 EST on 28 March 1979 and 0700 EST on 29 March 1979. Temperatures
(8C) are heavy lines; dew points (8C) are dashed lines; wind direction and speed plotted to the left; height scale (mbar)
with approximate height (m above sea-level) added on the left. The upper troposphere with a fairly standard decrease of
temperature with height has been omitted. The soundings near the tropopause are shown again at the top of the figure.
was given by Browning and Monk (1982) and
cast into the concept of `split fronts’ .
Similar experiences prompted Scherhag
(1948) to concentrate on analysing airmass
boundaries at 850 mbar, removed from the disturbing boundary-layer influences. For this
purpose, potential temperature, y, or, preferably, equivalent potential temperature, ye, or
wet-bulb potential temperature, yw, remain as
the only useful frontal parameters.
The analysis of thermal gradients at
850 mbar can, in principle, easily be accomplished by objective procedures, and much
progress has been made in developing thermal
frontal parameters (TFPs) since Renard and
Clarke’s (1965) original work (Steinacker
1992; Hewson 1998). A TFP chart at 850
mbar, be it automated or drawn by a skilled
analyst, produces a clearer, smoother picture
than can be obtained from surface observations. With this picture it becomes easier to
return to the surface observations with all their
boundary-layer complexity and to look in a systematic way for corroborating additional information (e.g. precipitation), taking into account
the possible degree of decoupling. The idea is
to obtain a space- and time-consistent picture
by applying an older technique in reverse
(`Aufbaumethode’ ), where hydrostatic and
other consistency relations are used to trans345
Weather Vol. 57
port data coverage from the dense surface
observation network upward to higher levels
(Steinacker 1981).
The effect of complex topography on fronts
does not appear to have received the attention
it might deserve. There are a few classics on
the deformation of a cold front by the Alps
(Bergeron 1934; Cantu 1977; Steinacker
1982). To our knowledge, there is hardly any
published analysis on orographically modified
warm fronts save for some schematic illustrations by Bjerknes and Solberg (1921). This, we
believe, makes our present TMI analysis worthwhile in its own right, irrespective of the unusual accident background. Discussion of the
continuing conceptual arguments on fronts
and frontal analysis is beyond the scope of this
work. With all the progress in objective analysis
schemes, subjective experience and conceptual
models are still needed in the very complicated,
extremely stable synoptic setting surrounding
the TMI-2 accident.
Detailed synoptic analysis for 28 and 29
March
The evolution of temperatures, winds, weather
and atmospheric stability can be understood in
terms of two warm fronts progressing across
September 2002
the region of interest from the south-west, and
latterly becoming stalled. This double structure is apparent in the data; it is also very plausible as the overall temperature and humidity
contrast across the frontal zone, expressed in
ye, is an enormous 50 degC. The warm fronts
stretched over more than 1000 miles
(1600 km), with warm-air advection progressing in individual surges, partly because the
cold air being replaced offered more or less
resistance to the oncoming warm airmasses.
Warm air had a difficult time gradually eroding
the cold air from above, especially as that air
was dammed up and thereby protected by a
mountain range. In addition to this deformation of the warm fronts seen on the charts
(Figs. 4 and 5), the frontal zones became disfigured within the lowest 1 km or so above the
ground by the daily march of temperature.
Special analyses supporting our interpretation cannot be shown here for lack of space,
among them a ye chart at 850 mbar and three
time± height sections for Albany, Pittsburgh
and Washington on which the isentropes drawn
mesh the radiosondes’ high resolution in the
vertical with the high frequency (hourly) of surface observations.
A highly idealised picture of these two frontal zones would show three airmasses, which
Fig. 4 Isochrones of the first (dash-dotted) and second warm fronts at 850 mbar. Times in EST. See text. Shaded areas
are above 500 and above 1000 m above sea-level, respectively.
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September 2002
(a)
(b)
Fig. 5 Isochrones of (a) the first warm front and (b) the second warm front at the surface. Times in EST (see text).
Shaded areas are above 500 and above 1000 m above sea-level, respectively. In (a) the cold front/occlusion to the northwest is only indicated. In (b) not all dates are entered, as the front lines may be either too close to each other, masked by
nocturnal inversions or otherwise not identifiable. The cold front/occlusion to the north-west is entered fully, with an indication of where the first warm front joins it.
we call cold, moderate and warm. Typical daytime temperatures at the lower elevations
would be 5 to 10 8C, 15 8C, and 20 to 25 8C,
respectively, with an additional general warm-
ing of up to 5 degC by 29 and 30 March outside the Canadian cold core mass. Within each
airmass, horizontal temperature gradients were
relatively small; gradients became concen347
Weather Vol. 57
trated, however, within the frontal zones
between airmasses. The same is true in the vertical direction, where frontal inversions separate the airmasses.
The general sense of progression of the two
warm fronts from the south-west towards the
north-east should not be confused with wind
speeds, although the airflow happened to be
from south-easterly to south-westerly directions at low levels, as evidenced, for example,
by the TMI plume detected at Albany (Wahlen
et al. 1980).
From the 850 mbar pressure level upwards,
airflow was generally from the west. At any
fixed location, the frontal inversion progressively descended from higher levels, until
finally the surface front passed the station. This
means that inversion conditions at low levels,
with all their inhibiting effects on atmospheric
transport and dispersion, worsened during descent, to be relieved only if and when the surface
front actually passed through. A strong frontal
inversion would not easily be broken by the
sun’s heating alone.
We first present the results of detailed analyses of 12-hourly 850 mbar charts from
0700 EST on the 28th to 0700 EST on the 30th
and the respective 3-hourly surface charts in
distilled form in Figs. 4 and 5. The first warm
front was always `ahead’ of the second, and
each of the fronts was further ahead at
850 mbar than at the surface. The warm fronts
were part of the entire system of cold front,
warm fronts and occlusion winding up in the
cyclone centre north of the Great Lakes region
(Fig. 1). A cold front was approaching our
region of interest from the north-west as indicated by the short segments (for the sake of
clarity) in Fig. 5(a), and more fully in Fig. 5(b),
but, as it had no direct impact on the Pennsylvania region during the first three days, we
have refrained from visualising it in detail.
At 850 mbar (Fig. 4), the first warm front
had already crossed Pennsylvania by 1900 EST
on 28 March. The associated surface front
(Fig. 5(a)) had, however, barely reached the
south-west corner of Pennsylvania by the end
of the day. This first front had a stronger temperature contrast across it than the second one,
but hardly any conspicuous weather activity. A
pertinent signal, however, may have been the
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September 2002
sudden high cloud deck appearing between
1600 and 1900 EST (see Fig. 2), clearing up
completely before rain set in at midnight. The
second warm front at 850 mbar came in two
distinct tongues of warm air, of which the
northern one more closely resembled a warm
conveyor belt carrying warm, moist air
upwards.
The southern tongue moved across the
southernmost strip of Pennsylvania during the
night of 28/29 March. This tongue, due to conditional instability released by forced ascent,
gave rise to frequent rain showers, even some
thunderstorms, shifting from Indiana and Ohio
on the afternoon and evening of 28 March
across eastern Pennsylvania and on to the
Atlantic coast in the early morning hours of 29
March.
The northern warm tongue was even more
active in this respect. The shores of Lake Erie
and Lake Ontario, as well as parts of Illinois,
Indiana and Ohio, experienced rain showers
from the morning of 29 March until 31 March
when the cold front finally crossed Pennsylvania in the afternoon.
The two tongues were seen to be drifting
backwards toward the south at a later stage.
This was in response to the general southward
drift of the cold front/occlusion, pushing the
overrunning air ahead of it. Very significantly,
the two tongues missed a region between them,
which included part of Pennsylvania. We will
pursue this feature and its consequences on the
surface maps.
Investigating the displacement of the surface
warm fronts (Figs. 5(a) and (b)), a `steering’
action by the warm-air tongues described
above will be apparent, including even steering
of the first surface warm front by the second
warm frontal zone lying on top of it. Such
steering is an expression of the necessary
coupling between near-surface and upper-air
thermal and flow features.
Pursuing the first surface warm front (Fig.
5(a)), it appeared to leap forward at times, e.g.
between 1000 and 1300 EST. This is, of course,
mostly not kinematic propagation, but a reflection of the fact that a shallow nocturnal inversion, which had made the edge of the warmer
air at the surface stay far towards the southwest, was `burnt away’ by insolation. In such
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daytime conditions, the second surface warm
front almost caught up with the first, so that a
large temperature contrast could occur
between the cold and the very warm airmasses
across a small distance. For example, at 1900
EST, Huntington, West Virginia, reported
21 8C, but Cleveland, Ohio, only 8 8C. Similarly, Evansville, Indiana, had 21 8C and St.
Louis, Missouri, 23 8C, but Green Bay, Wisconsin, only 3 8C! The US surface analysis at
least showed a warm front between these stations, but the global surface map of the
German Weather Service for the same date
(Fig. 1), which had a selection of these and
similar stations plotted, showed them all in one
warm sector without a single front in between,
indicating the confusion of analyses. At
1000 EST on 29 March, Morgantown, West
Virginia, near the south-western corner of
Pennsylvania, reported 23 8C, but Penn State
College, a mere 200 km to the north-east,
reported 8 8C!
The first warm front pushed ahead towards
the south-west corner of Pennsylvania late in
the afternoon of 28 March, staying retarded
both to the west, over Illinois, Indiana and
Ohio, and to the east. Here, the surface high
September 2002
was centred right over the Harrisburg area at
0400 EST on the 28th (time zero), drifting off
towards the east-south-east thereafter, but the
relatively shallow cool air dome, which was
deeper further north, was still pushing southwards along the eastern slopes of the Appalachian mountain ranges across Virginia and
North Carolina until the early afternoon of 28
March, as shown by the rising pressure and by
the northerly surface winds.
Even after the first warm front had begun to
make some headway across North Carolina on
the afternoon of 28 March, isobars remained
tightly packed across the Appalachians (Fig.
6), and the cool air was sucked into the lower
pressure on the western side across gaps in the
terrain, in the manner of the `shallow foÈhn’ discussed earlier.
Later in the evening of 28 March, the warm
front briefly retreated southward and westward, pushed back across the mountain passes
by the cool air to the east. Both the steering by
the upper warm conveyor belts and the blocking effect of the Appalachian ranges, protecting
the cold airmass and deforming the warm front
accordingly, will be repeated by the second surface warm front.
Fig. 6 Detailed surface analysis for 1900 EST on 28 March 1979. Isobars drawn every 1 mbar; two surface warm fronts
entered. See text. Shaded areas are above 500 and above 1000 m above sea-level, respectively.
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Weather Vol. 57
Figure 6 brings out the tight packing of the
isobars across the Appalachians, their distinct
`bulge’ westward beyond north-western Pennsylvania, suggestive of both the above-mentioned `shallow foÈhn’ and a tendency for
stagnation west of Harrisburg, and the highly
characteristic deformation of both warm fronts.
On 29 March, the first warm front progressed along northern Ohio and Lake Erie
first, until the nocturnal surface-based inversion had been heated up east of the Appalachians. By 1000 EST, the front had achieved the
double structure reminiscent of the second
front at 850 mbar. Its northern surge brought
noticeable warming for Buffalo, Rochester and
even Toronto between 0700 and 1000 EST.
Its southern advance took the warm front to
within 50 km of Harrisburg by 1000 EST, and
just beyond Harrisburg by 1300 EST on 29
March, thereby alleviating the inversion condition. The cool air, however, tended to push the
surface warm front back slightly in the evening
hours of 29 March, when the pressure minimum was already to the south, and Harrisburg
remained a `borderline case’ until 30 March.
The second warm front did not quite reach
Harrisburg (Fig. 5(b)). Cities such as Williamsport, Wilkes-Barre and Albany did not experience the passage of either surface warm front,
remaining in the shallow cool air throughout.
In addition, any transport of air from the
Atlantic would bring cool air at this time of the
year. At upper levels, however, the warm air
did come through. Both warm fronts came
through at Pittsburgh and Washington.
The second warm front was, in most ways, a
repeat of the first. It brought a new feature,
however ± a warm-frontal wave, which carried
extremely warm subtropical air towards the
south-west corner of Pennsylvania by 1000 EST
on the 29th and even up to the shores of Lake
Erie by 1300 EST, propagating further east
thereafter. In its rear, Pittsburgh experienced
the striking return of moderately cooler air
from the west between 1300 and 1600 EST. At
this time of day, there is no mistaking the
cooler air and accompanying inversion for an
action of local night-time cooling, but in other
cases the distinction between a nocturnal inversion and a frontal inversion near the ground
may be difficult.
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September 2002
In summary, Harrisburg saw the moderately
warm surface air only in a rather brief
`window’ during the early afternoon hours of
29 March. The two warm fronts approached
each other closely in the course of the afternoon and became quasi-stationary across
south-eastern Pennsylvania, with pressure gradients vanishing almost completely. Although
only 150 km further south, Washington was
already in the very warm air from the late
morning of 29 March, and the inversion was
broken there. Thus, the Washington sounding
is not representative of the more stable lowest
atmospheric layers near Harrisburg, where the
conditions for the dispersion of TMI releases
remained unfavourable.
Looking at Fig. 5(b), the cold front/occlusion approached Pennsylvania from the northwest across the Great Lakes late on 29 March,
but it did not hit the state then because a wave
had formed along it. The ensuing `see-saw’ of
winds and temperatures, familiar by now, will
not be pursued in detail. Periods of extreme
stagnation across eastern Pennsylvania
occurred (cf. Fig. 2, 30 March), as well as temperatures approaching 25 8C at Harrisburg and
30 8C further south. The long regime of warmair advection, with its pronounced inversion
and stagnation conditions, was finally ended by
the passage of a cold front late on 5 April and
the main upper trough on 6 April.
Conclusion
The balmy wind and weather conditions
during the first few days of the TMI-2 accident
were highly unfavourable for plume dispersion.
Two successive warm fronts were slowed and
deformed by the Appalachian Mountains.
Locally very high exposures to radioactive
releases due to plume impingement on hill sites
are plausible.
In order to trace and understand the consequences of accidents like this one, careful
meteorological analysis and reasoning is
required. To outline the synoptic situation is an
important first step in visualising possible dispersion scenarios. Standard Gaussian procedures with built-in heavy averaging and strictly
abstract presentation, time and again applied
in official nuclear environmental impact stu-
Weather Vol. 57
dies, may miss the essential interplay of individual plumes with wind, weather and hilly terrain completely.
Acknowledgements
Deep gratitude is extended to Norman and
Marjorie Aamodt for sharing their knowledge
of the case and their superior critical judgement of scientific and other matters with us,
and for their persistent encouragement in
trying to keep track of all the available data and
facts. These two people and Nancy Laufer are
wistful reminders of the motto of our academic
teacher, H. Hoinkes, that a synoptic analysis
should ``mate truth with grace’’ . Thanks are
due to D. Whiteman and M. Staudinger for
competent advice, to N. Span for drafting most
of the figures, and to G. Mittermaier, C. Eller
and B. Rainer for typing various stages of the
manuscript.
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Correspondence to: Dr I. Vergeiner, Institut fuÈr
Meteorologie
und
Geophysik,
UniversitaÈt
Innsbruck, Innrain 52, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
e-mail: Ignaz.Vergeiner@uibk.ac.at
# Royal Meteorological Society, 2002.
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