Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident

Strap in, because this week on Historically High, we’re heading back pre-Chernobyl, to 1979 to unpack the absolute disaster that was the Three Mile Island meltdown. When a routine cooling malfunction collided with a stuck valve, a blizzard of confusing control-room alarms, and operators making fatal guesswork, roughly half of Unit 2's uranium core melted down into radioactive sludge right in the middle of Pennsylvania. While the reactor was actively cooking itself from the inside out, Metropolitan Edison’s PR team kicked into full corporate gaslighting mode, frantically downplaying radiation leaks and insisting everything was fine while local residents ran for their lives. To top it all off, when the NRC finally touched down to survey the smoking atomic wreckage, the utility company immediately tried to push through shady safety shortcuts just to get the surviving reactor back online. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.