The 1970s were a decade of great optimism about the role of nuclear power in meeting world and national demands for energy. Warnings about the declining reserves of coal, petroleum, and natural gas, along with concerns for the environmental hazards posed by power plants run on fossil fuels, fed the hope that nuclear power would soon have a growing role in energy production. Those expectations were suddenly and dramatically dashed on the morning of March 28, 1979.

An aerial view of Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

On that date, an unlikely sequence of events resulted in a disastrous accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) Nuclear Reactor at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As a result of the accident, radioactive water was released into the Susque-hanna River, radioactive steam escaped into the atmosphere, and a...