Thirty-four years ago today, the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history shook the nation to its core.
The drama began at 4 a.m. on Three Mile Island, located in the middle of Susquehanna River, near Harrisburg, Pa..
The island is home to two nuclear reactors. One of them continues to function and deliver power. The second one has not been run again since March 28, 1979, when a few malfunctions and a series of human errors resulted in a partial nuclear meltdown.
About 20 tons of radioactive uranium spilled out of the reactor core and almost burned through the five-inch thick steel floor.
It was not as bad as the disasters at Fukushima or Chernobyl, but a tremendous nuclear catastrophe was narrowly avoided.
The event triggered a public backlash against nuclear energy, and fueled the popularity of a movie called "The China Syndrome."
Here is the story of what happened on that particularly dark day in our nation's history.
The nuclear plant known as Three Mile Island was built on an island of the same name in the middle of the Susquehanna River, about five miles south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The island had two installations on it. TMI-1 was finished 1974, and it has run ever since with little incident. But TMI-2 was another story.
Unit 2 was newer, but in the words of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report, had been "bedeviled by a series of mishaps-mostly minor, but troublesome" since it opened.
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