MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — Note: The video is from the 40th anniversary of the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in March 2019.
Today marks the 44th anniversary of the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County.
Called “the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history" by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the near-meltdown at the power plant occurred on March 28, 1979, and resulted in the shutdown of one of the plant's two nuclear generating stations after a failure in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve in the primary system that allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape.
The plant's owner at the time, Metropolitan Edison, initially downplayed the crisis, claiming that no radiation had been detected off the premises. But those claims were proven to be incorrect by inspectors, who tracked increased levels of radiation and discovered a contaminated water leak in the aftermath of the incident.
The near-catastrophe led to increased concerns about the safety of nuclear power and a series of new regulatory measures.
It also generated long-term health concerns for some who lived near the power plant at the time of the near-meltdown. Every year on the anniversary of the near-disaster, at least a few dozen people show up for a candlelight vigil outside the plant.
The incident was the subject of a Netflix documentary last year.
The Three Mile Island nuclear plant was officially decommissioned in 2019 and is now closed, though cleanup efforts at Reactor No. 2 continue.