Early in the morning, March 28, 1979, equipment failures and a stuck-open relief valve

prevented the removal of heat from the 3-mile island unit-2 nuclear reactors core,

an essential function that prevents reactor damage. And within hours, it seemed like things were

on the brink of a catastrophic nuclear crisis. Nobody, or almost nobody, there were people very

opposed to nuclear power in general before the meltdown, thought that 3-mile island would be

the site of a major nuclear disaster. The plant had been built in 1974 on a sand bar on

Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River, just 10 miles downstream from the state capital in Harrisburg.

In 1978, a second state-of-the-art reactor began operating on the 3-mile island,

which was flooded for generating affordable and reliable energy in a time of an American energy

crisis. But soon, unit-2 would become a crisis of its own. In the days following March 28,

panic ensued as people wondered whether or not to evacuate, trying to figure out what was going

on for the plant's limited press releases and the government's confusing messages.

Journalists stoked the fires of paranoia, implying that the conflicting information, given by

different sources, many of whom didn't know what was going on yet, amounted to some kind of

conspiracy. Dun, dun, duh! Though the crisis would quickly be over, on April 10, 1979, the effects

were long lasting. All in all, experts determined that the approximately 2 million people in the nearby

area during the accident were exposed to very small amounts of radiation. The estimated average

radiation dose was about 1 mRM above the area's natural background of about 100 to 125 mRM's per year.

To put this into further context, exposure from a chest x-ray is about 6 to 10 mRM's.

Doesn't sound as scary when you put it in perspective, right? The accident's exposure had no

detectable health effects on the plant workers or the surrounding public officially. But did it

really? And it totally, there have been numerous claims. Jean Trimmer, a 54-year-old farmer,

...