A slow comeback: The optimists have been disappointed in the rate of progress in cleanup, but the outlook for its defueling may be brightening

??We´ve made so little progress in the cleanup in five years that it is literally a national disgrace,?? Harold Denton, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission´s director of nuclear reactor regulation, told Spectrum. Such a strong statement from the head of the office charged with regulating the industry ?? and therefore the cleanup of the damaged Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pa. ?? may not be surprising. But even Herman Dieckamp, the president and chief operating officer of General Public Utilities Corp. of Parsippany, N.J., which owns the facility, conceded that ??in 1979, I probably thought that the bulk of the job would be done in five years.??