Pandemic. Nightline starts right now with byron pitts. Good evening. Thank you for joining us. Tonight the frustration across the u. S. Nearly 20 million unemployed americans waiting for stimulus checks, but the covid19 relief is leaving some drowning in a sea of paperwork and procedures and wondering if the government is doing enough. Milk, bread and eggs. What else . Maybe some tortillas. It could be any home in america. The grocery list negotiation. Juice. We cant afford it right now. And like millions of homes across the country right now, you can see the burden nick shouldering. With four children in a home north of San Francisco theres just not enough money coming in. Where are you going, honey . How are you guys holding up . Barely, getting by. Its exhausting. Its stressful. Try being ing to stay positi the kids, but theres definitely tears at night sometimes. I dont know when the next payments going to come in from his unemployment. Right now, nick is like more than 16 million
And his new book is an exceptionally clear and broad overview of the state of American Economic life. The actual conditions we face, that trends over recent decades, how those related to some of the dark stories that we hear in our politics about the conditions americans have experienced and also what our prospects are. I think its fair to say he finds think so much better than the mood of our politics and the critics of the market economy would sometime suggest but that we do face risks and that maybe that mood and those critics are among the most important of those risks. Its a controversial thesis. I do say as a im resistant to being told everything is fine. But it is a very powerfully argued thesis and as you will see and hear tonight, a very thoroughly supported thesis in the book. Richard reeves, one of the spar social analysts and policy thinkers in washington, richard is a whitehead chair and senior fellow atn economic status of te brookings institution. Hes director of the bro
And government officials and a breakdown atomic power plant in pennsylvania today is probably the worst Nuclear Reactor accident today. There was no apparent serious contamination of workers. And Nuclear Safety group said that radiation inside the plant is it eight times the deadly level, so strong that after passing through a three put thick concrete wall, it can be measured awhile away. We report from harrisburg the accident occurred here at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant a dozen miles south of harrisburg. At about 4 00 this morning two water pumps that helped cool reactor number two shut down. Officials say some 50 to 60,000 gallons of radioactive water escaped into the reactor building and that the radioactivity penetrated the plants walls. Steam escaped into the atmosphere and radiation was detected as far as a mile away. At least 50 workers and perhaps twice that number were at the plant when the accident occurred. A spokesman admitted that some were exposed to radioac
Eight times the deadly level. So strong that after passing through a three foot thick concrete wall it can be measured a while away. Gary shepherd reports from harrisburg. The accident occurred here at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant a dozen miles south of harrisburg. At 4 00 this morning, two water pumps that helped cool reactor number two shut down. Officials say some 50,000 to 60,000 gallons of water escaped into the reactor building and that the radioactivity penetrated the plant walls. Steam escaped into the atmosphere and radiation was detected as far as as a mile away. At least 50 workers and perhaps twice that number were at the plant when the accident occurred. A spokesman admitted some were exposed to radioactivity and may have been contaminated. But he claimed no one was injured. All workers were given extensive checkwi checks as they left the plant. This is what reactor 2s control room looked like last september. It went into commercial Service Three months ago. C
2, at the facility in dolphin county, pooh. It occurred 40 years ago. The incident rated a 5 on the 7 Point International Nuclear Event scale. Heres how ed bradley of cbs news covered it. This time no evacuation. Please stay inside. Middletown at this time is evacuation. Please stay indoors with your windows closed. This is not a community that scares easily. Major floods and hurricane agnes have come here and the town has survived. But for almost a week last month, the people of middletown, pennsylvania, lived in fear of an enemy they couldnt see, hear, or feel. Cbs news, of course that fear was radiation following the partial meltdown at tmi, the Nuclear Generating station considered the most Serious Nuclear power accident in the history of the u. S. For the next 90 minutes, well look back at the events that occurred. Eric epstein is joining us live. Hes the chair of the three mile island alert which is what . Three mile island aslert a safe energy organization. We were founded in 19