Monday, May. 03, 2010
Three Mile Island
"Nuclear Nightmare," screamed the April 9, 1979, cover of TIME magazine. On March 28, the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near Harrisburg, Pa., partially melted down. Coming two weeks after the release of the Jane Fonda film The China Syndrome, the Three Mile Island incident became the natural outlet for fears about the nuclear-power industry. The ironic thing is that while it has become known as one of America's worst nuclear accidents, nothing much really happened. No one died, and the facility itself is still going strong. While the near meltdown is often cited as the reason no new nuclear plant has been built in America in the past 30 years, the industry had begun to slow down construction before Three Mile Island ever happened.