Three Mile Island 30 Years Later
Thirty years ago Saturday, people central Pennsylvania awoke to an alarming bulletin. A malfunction had occurred in the reactor's cooling system in Unit 2. Radiation — an alarming word — was reportedly leaking.
Host Scott Simon reflects on the 30th anniversary of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. He also checks in with Alan McDonald, nuclear analyst for the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Dan Reicher, Google's director of climate change and energy initiative, about the current and future use of nuclear energy in the U.S.
Correction March 30, 2009
We said, "And things really did go downhill in 1986 when the Chernobyl reactor core caught on fire in Russia." Chernobyl is in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union in 1986.