Meltdown at Three Mile Island

*6.5

Status

Released

Production

PBS American Experience

Aired

1999-02-22

Meltdown at Three Mile Island

In the predawn hours of March 28, 1979, a reactor of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, began to overheat. The lives of half a million people soon hung in the balance, as human error and mechanical failure combined to create the worst nuclear accident in American history.