Three Mile Island True Story: Biggest Things The Documentary Leaves Out
The Netflix documentary series Meltdown: Three Mile Island tells of the worst nuclear accident to happen in the United States, but it leaves out some details of the true story. Finding the whole truth about what happened at Three Mile Island is a tricky affair, seeing as much of the information surrounding the near-disaster was obscured from public knowledge. Combining archive footage, television broadcasts, and first-hand accounts, Meltdown dives deeper into the events of the Three Mile Island accident, but the docuseries is still missing some of the known facts.
Three Mile Island was once an operational nuclear power plant owned by Metropolitan Edison (Met-Ed) in Middletown, Pennsylvania. The complex, which sits on the Susquehanna River, provided nuclear power with its first reactor beginning in 1974. However, just 90 days after its second reactor was commissioned in 1978, a major problem occurred. A leaking relief valve allowed coolant to escape from the nuclear reactor, drastically increasing temperatures in the core and causing a partial meltdown in what is referred to as TMI-2. Though catastrophic damage was narrowly avoided, dangerously high temperatures and the presence of a hydrogen bubble inside the reactor almost turned it into a nuclear bomb that could have wiped out a portion of the east coast. A series of mistakes and failures by Met-Ed engineers further exacerbated the issue. The clean-up after the accident was found to be just as faulty, as whistleblower Rick Parks revealed that Three Mile Island was cutting corners with safety to save a few bucks in the process.
Related: Chernobyl True Story: What The HBO Miniseries Gets Right (& Changes)
The resulting media surrounding the accident at Three Mile Island
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