Vol. 38, No. 19
10/17/2022
Three Mile Island Revisited
Modern bias against nuclear power traces its origin to the partial meltdown of a reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979. Fallacies surrounding the event still cripple the industry today. ...
These days, “TMI” stands for “too much information,” a tweeted warning for friends who divulge uncomfortably personal news. But prior to the age of texting acronyms, TMI conjured images of atomic doom. It stood for Three Mile Island and referred to “the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history.”
That’s how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) remembers the 1979 partial meltdown of a reactor south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. At the time, media screeched of potential nuclear nightmare. The public was primed for panic from the release just 12 days earlier of The China Syndrome, Hollywood hyperbole about a nuclear meltdown that nearly renders southern California a ruined wasteland.
People feared TMI was a case of life imitating art. The accident “brought about sweeping changes” and “caused the NRC to tighten and heighten its regulatory oversight.” Today, the International Atomic Energy Agency rates TMI as a five out of seven on its radiological event scale, comparable to the Richter scale for earthquakes.
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