Three Mile Island: The Reactor Melted. Please Stay Calm.

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PENNSYLVANIA ALMOST BECAME A GLOWING TOURIST DESTINATION

On March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island Unit 2 experienced a combination of equipment malfunction, confusing instrumentation and operator mistakes that resulted in a partial meltdown of the reactor core.

Not “the reactor got a little hot.”

The fucking core partially melted.

The sequence started with a relatively ordinary equipment problem in the plant’s secondary cooling system. The reactor automatically shut down, pressure increased and a relief valve opened.

So far, nuclear reactor doing nuclear reactor things.

Then the valve failed to close.

Cooling water continued escaping while instrumentation led operators to believe the valve had closed. Conditions inside the reactor deteriorated, but the people in the control room weren’t getting a clear picture of what was actually happening.

Operators eventually reduced emergency cooling.

Which, with the benefit of hindsight and the comforting absence of a malfunctioning nuclear reactor immediately behind us, was not ideal.

Equipment failure met confusing controls.

Confusing controls met human decisions.

Human decisions met nuclear physics.

And suddenly America had itself a partial nuclear meltdown.

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THIS COULD HAVE BECOME AMERICA’S CHORNOBYL

The really interesting part of Three Mile Island isn’t that it became another Chornobyl.

It’s that it didn’t.

I’ve visited the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, walked through the abandoned city of Pripyat and explored the wider Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.

That’s what nuclear catastrophe looks like when the containment part of the program goes spectacularly off-script.

Cities emptied.

Homes abandoned.

Infrastructure left behind.

Entire areas removed from normal human existence.

Three Mile Island never reached that point.

The containment structure surrounding Unit 2 did what it was designed to do and prevented the overwhelming majority of radioactive material from escaping.

Small amounts of radioactive gases were released, but subsequent government and independent investigations concluded that radiation exposure to the surrounding population was low and produced no detectable health effects attributable to the accident.

Which is a remarkably positive ending to any story involving the phrase: “A significant portion of the nuclear reactor core melted.”

Had the sequence unfolded differently, this quiet stretch of Pennsylvania could have become one of America’s largest dark tourism destinations.

Instead, people continued living nearby.

Harrisburg remained Harrisburg.

The highways stayed open.

And decades later, idiots like me could drive up and stare at the place without signing radiation waivers.

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THE THREE MILE ISLAND VISITOR EXPERIENCE IS… LIMITED

I visited Three Mile Island in 2019.

And I’m using the word “visited” generously.

Because you don’t actually visit Three Mile Island.

You visit near Three Mile Island.

The island itself isn’t open for curious travelers wanting to wander around America’s most famous partially melted nuclear reactor.

PA-441 runs along the opposite side of the Susquehanna River, providing one of the easiest places to see the facility.

Thankfully, enough trees had been removed along the road that you could actually get a decent view across the water.

Otherwise this entire adventure would have consisted of driving several hours to photograph foliage concealing nuclear history.

Nearby is a Pennsylvania historical marker commemorating the accident.

There’s also the former visitor-center complex, later used as a training facility. During the plant’s operating years, this was essentially the corporate-friendly side of nuclear power, where the industry could explain how everything worked and presumably avoid dwelling excessively on that awkward moment when Unit 2 partially melted.

Some radiation-monitoring equipment is also visible around the publicly accessible areas.

Which provides a fun little interactive experience where you stare at numbers on scientific equipment you don’t understand and instinctively wonder: Is that… a good number?

And that’s basically the attraction.

Historical marker.

Training building.

Radiation detector.

Nuclear plant across river.

You’ve completed Three Mile Island.

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THEN TV DISCOVERED THREE MILE ISLAND

There’s an important timeline to my visit.

I came here in 2019.

This article was originally published in 2019 as well, three years before Netflix released Meltdown: Three Mile Island in 2022.

Netflix wasn’t what introduced me to the story.

That happened almost two decades earlier when I casually stumbled across Modern Marvels: Inviting Disaster – Three Mile Island.

I wasn’t researching nuclear accidents or planning some elaborate Pennsylvania dark-tourism expedition. I happened to see the episode, started watching and immediately found myself thinking: Wait. How the fuck did I not know more about this?

I was hooked.

The idea that America had experienced a partial nuclear meltdown outside Harrisburg and somehow the story had faded into the background compared with Chornobyl fascinated me.

So Three Mile Island quietly landed on my mental list of weird historical places I eventually wanted to see.

Years later, I did.

Then Netflix showed up.

And Meltdown: Three Mile Island took the relatively clinical story of equipment failures and reactor physics and turned the camera toward something arguably more interesting: the absolute shitshow surrounding it.

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NETFLIX TELLS A MUCH MESSIER STORY

The four-part series covers the original 1979 accident, but it spends considerably more time with the people who experienced it.

Residents hearing conflicting information.

Government officials attempting to explain what was happening.

Plant operators struggling to understand the condition of the reactor.

Regulators attempting to determine the severity of the situation.

And families living nearby wondering whether they should pack their shit and leave Pennsylvania.

That’s an important distinction.

Looking back decades later, we have reports, investigations, timelines and technical analyses explaining what happened.

People living around Three Mile Island in March 1979 had none of that.

They had television.

Radio.

Government announcements.

Rumors.

And a malfunctioning nuclear reactor down the road.

At one point, pregnant women and preschool-age children within five miles were advised to leave.

Which probably didn’t pair particularly well with repeated assurances that everything was under control.

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THE ACCIDENT ENDED. THE ARGUMENT DIDN’T.

Where Netflix gets considerably darker is the aftermath.

Meltdown focuses heavily on whistleblower Rick Parks and allegations involving the cleanup of Unit 2, including concerns about safety procedures, management decisions and plans for handling the damaged reactor.

This is where the official history and Netflix documentary start feeling like two different versions of the same movie.

The official version is comparatively straightforward.

The reactor suffered severe damage.

Containment prevented catastrophic radioactive release.

Radiation exposure to the public remained low.

No detectable health effects were officially attributed to the accident.

Unit 2 never operated again.

And the American nuclear industry implemented major regulatory and operational reforms afterward.

Netflix spends much more time asking uncomfortable questions.

What were residents being told?

What did workers actually know?

Were risks being adequately communicated?

Were financial pressures affecting decisions during the cleanup?

And exactly how much should everyone trust the organizations responsible for explaining whether everything was safe?

Those perspectives aren’t automatically mutually exclusive.

A nuclear reactor can suffer catastrophic internal damage while its containment structure successfully prevents a much larger environmental disaster.

Officials can communicate poorly without secretly poisoning Pennsylvania.

Residents can distrust government assurances even when later studies conclude their radiation exposure was low.

And workers can raise legitimate concerns about cleanup operations independent of what happened during the original accident.

Reality is irritatingly complicated like that.

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THREE MILE ISLAND CHANGED NUCLEAR POWER

The most important legacy of Three Mile Island isn’t sitting on the island.

It’s what happened everywhere else afterward.

The accident fundamentally changed American nuclear power.

Operator training improved.

Emergency preparedness changed.

Control-room design and human-factors engineering received considerably more attention.

Radiation protection procedures were strengthened.

Federal oversight increased.

The industry essentially studied everything that happened at Three Mile Island and concluded:

Okay. Let’s never fucking do that again.

Unit 2 never restarted.

Its damaged nuclear fuel was eventually removed, although decommissioning of the facility became a decades-long process.

Unit 1, meanwhile, returned to service and continued generating electricity until 2019.

So for decades, Three Mile Island existed as this wonderfully bizarre nuclear juxtaposition.

One reactor continued producing electricity.

The reactor next door sat permanently disabled because it had once tried to melt itself.

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THE BEST THING ABOUT THREE MILE ISLAND IS WHAT ISN’T HERE

As an actual travel destination?

Three Mile Island is pretty underwhelming.

You drive there.

You find the marker.

You stare across the river.

You take some pictures.

You suspiciously inspect radiation-monitoring equipment despite possessing absolutely no qualifications to interpret it.

Then you leave.

But after visiting Chornobyl, that underwhelming experience takes on a completely different meaning.

Three Mile Island isn’t fascinating because of what’s there.

It’s fascinating because of everything that isn’t.

There isn’t an abandoned city.

There aren’t apartment buildings filled with possessions left behind by families who never returned.

There isn’t a massive exclusion zone.

There aren’t checkpoints separating normal Pennsylvania from radioactive Pennsylvania.

There isn’t an American Pripyat.

Three Mile Island could have become an enormous dark tourism attraction.

Instead, it’s a historical marker beside a highway overlooking an industrial facility sitting quietly in the Susquehanna River.

And that’s the weirdly fascinating part.

This was a near miss.

A complicated sequence of mechanical problems, confusing information and human decisions severely damaged a nuclear reactor.

But the systems designed to prevent that accident from becoming something dramatically worse ultimately worked.

So today, Three Mile Island isn’t America’s Chornobyl.

It’s the place where you stand beside a highway and realize America came considerably closer to having one than most people remember.

The destination itself is boring as shit.

The fact that it gets to be boring is the entire point.