Today in History

March 28, 1979

The Three Mile Island accident

The infamous Three Mile Island accident occurred near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when main feedwater pumps in a secondary cooling system of a nuclear power plant failed at exactly 4:00 a.m. EST on March 28, 1979. Three weeks before, the movie "The China Syndrome", starring Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda, had depicted a fictional near-meltdown at a nuclear power plant. Now the country was watching reality imitate art.

Because water was no longer flowing through the secondary loop, heat began to build up in the reactor, which automatically shut down. Cooling water poured out of a compartment with a faulty valve causing the core of the reactor to overheat as a series of human and mechanical errors lead to massive confusion in the control room of the plant. The water level in the reactor dropped and the core of the reactor was exposed. Crews worked through the night trying to understand the problem and at 7:24 a.m. the incident was upgraded to a "General Emergency" which is the Nuclear Regulatory Agency's highest warning level. The public was alerted via radio and television announcements.

It was later determined that the core had begun to melt as a result of the malfunction. Radioactive gasses were vented directly into the atmosphere. The cleanup of the disaster area started in August 1979 and ended in December 1993, at an approximate cost of $980 million.

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