Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island is the location of a U.S. nuclear power plant that, on March 28, 1979, suffered a partial core meltdown. The Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station sits on the island in the Susquehanna River in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, of area 3.29 km² (814 acres).

The accident unfolded over the course of five tense days, as a number of agencies at the federal, state, and local level attempted to diagnose the problem (the full details of the accident were not discovered until much later), and decide whether or not the on-going accident required a full evacuation of the population. In the end, the reactor was brought under control. No identifiable injuries due to radiation occurred (a government report concluded that "the projected number of excess fatal cancers due to the accident ... is approximately one."), but the accident had serious economic and public relations consequences, and the cleanup process was slow and costly.

It also furthered a major decline in the public popularity of nuclear power, exemplifying for many the worst fears of nuclear technology, and until the Chernobyl accident seven years later was considered the world's worst civilian nuclear accident. No nuclear plant has been built in the United States since 1978.