Throughout Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday, county emergency preparedness offices were deluged with telephone calls from citizens concerned by the conflicting reports about the hydrogen bubble. But the flow of useful information from the state to the local level had essentially ceased after Denton's arrival. The Governor's office focused attention on the federal effort -- Denton and officials from several U.S. emergency agencies. Oran Henderson, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, was no longer invited to the Governor's briefings and press conferences, and he did not attend after Friday night. Thus PEMA -- although it continued to receive status reports from the Bureau of Radiation Protection -- was isolated from information wanted at the local level.

In Dauphin County, frustration ran high. Shortly before midnight on Saturday, State Sen. George Gekas called the Governor in an attempt to obtain accurate information. Gekas was told the Governor was too busy to talk. Then Gekas called Scranton, and got the same response. At that point, Gekas told a Scranton aide that unless more cooperation and information were forthcoming, Dauphin County would order an evacuation at 9:00 a.m. Sunday. Scranton called the county's emergency center at 2:00 a.m. and agreed to meet officials there later in the morning. The Lieutenant Governor arrived at 10:00 a.m., preceded by Henderson, who complained of his own inability to obtain information. Scranton listened to Molloy and his colleagues. "I think he was just totally shocked by what was transpiring at our level; how busy we were; how much work we were doing; how complicated it was," Molloy said in his deposition.₁₁₅

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Sunday, Mattson and several other NRC staffers met with NRC Commissioners Hendrie, Victor Gilinsky, and Richard Kennedy. Their purpose was to reach a judgment, based on the estimates and information available, about the true potential for a hydrogen explosion inside the reactor. According to Mattson's deposition, the group agreed:

 5 percent oxygen was a realistic flammability limit, 11 percent oxygen was a realistic detonation limit, that there could be no spontaneous combustion below 900°F, that the oxygen production rate was approximately one percent per day, and that the present oxygen concentration in the bubble was 5 percent.₁₁₆

After the meeting, Hendrie and Mattson drove to TMI to meet with Denton.

Stello talked with Denton Sunday morning and outlined his arguments against any danger of a hydrogen explosion inside the reactor. Pressurized water reactors, the type used at TMI-2, normally operate with some free hydrogen in the reactor coolant. This hydrogen joins with the oxygen freed by radiolysis to form another water molecule, which prevents the build-up of oxygen to a quantity that would allow an explosion to take place. Stello told Denton that the process was the same now, and there was no danger of explosion.

Hendrie and Mattson met with Denton and Stello in a hangar at Harrisburg International Airport minutes before President Carter's 1:00 p.m. arrival. Mattson and Stello had not talked to each other since Friday morning. Mattson outlined the conclusions reached at NRC headquarters about the bubble and the reasoning behind them. In an interview with the Commission staff, Mattson described what happened next:

And Stello tells me I am crazy, that he doesn't believe it, that he thinks we've made an error in the rate of calculation . . . . Stello says we're nuts and poor Harold is there, he's got to meet with the President in 5 minutes and tell it like it is. And here he is. His two experts are not together. One comes armed to the teeth with all these national laboratories and Navy reactor people and high faluting PhDs around the country, saying this is what it is and this is his best summary. And his other [the operating reactors division] director, saying, "I don't believe it. I can't prove it yet, but I don't believe it. I think it's wrong."₁₁₇

Upon the President's arrival, Denton briefed the Chief Executive on the status of the plant and the uncertainty regarding its infamous bubble.

The President was driven to TMI, put on protective yellow plastic shoecovers, and toured the facility with Mrs. Carter, Governor Thornburgh, and Denton. Stello, Hendrie, and Mattson went to the temporary NRC offices. During the afternoon, experts -- including those at Westinghouse and General Electric -- were canvassed by phone. "By three o'clock, we're convinced we've got it," Mattson said in his interview. "It's not going to go boom."₁₁₈

NRC scientists in Bethesda eventually reached the same conclusion, but later in the day. Shortly before 4:00 p.m., NRC Commissioners Richard Kennedy, Peter Bradford, and John Ahearne met. They expressed concern over the differing estimates presented by the NRC staff and decided there might be a need to consider evacuation.

Kennedy telephoned Hendrie at TMI and told him the three NRC Commissioners thought Governor Thornburgh should advise a precautionary evacuation within 2 miles of the plant, unless experts on-site had better technical information than that available in Bethesda.₁₁₉  Hendrie assured Kennedy that the free hydrogen inside the reactor would capture any oxygen generated and that no problem existed.

In midafternoon, new measurements showed the large bubble in the reactor was diminishing. The gases still existed, but they were distributed throughout the system in smaller bubbles that made eliminating the predominantly hydrogen mixture easier. Why this occurred, no one knows. But it was not because of any intentional manipulation by Met Ed or NRC engineers.

By late Sunday afternoon, NRC -- which was responsible for the concern that the bubble might explode "- knew there was no danger of a blast and that the bubble appeared to be diminishing. It was good news, but good news unshared with the public. Throughout Sunday, the NRC made no announcement that it had erred in its calculations or that no threat of an explosion existed. Governor Thornburgh was not told of the NRC miscalculation either. Nor did the NRC reveal the bubble was disappearing that day, partly because the NRC experts themselves were not absolutely certain.