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Mistakes That Helped Shape U.S. into What it Is Today

Khalid Elhassan October 16, 2019 34 min

35. Three Mile Island Stopped the Growth of American Nuclear Energy

Anti-nuclear protesters near Three Mile Island, one year after the meltdown. Getty Images

The Three Mile Island meltdown was alarming. Cleanup lasted until 1993, cost over a billion dollars, and residents nearby were worried about the exposure’s impact on their health. However, various studies in and around the area since the meltdown only found a statistically insignificant small increase in cancer rates, and no causal connection between the accident and those cancers.

The greatest impact was turning the American public against nuclear energy. In some Developed Countries, such as France, nuclear energy accounts for over 70% of electricity, and other European countries get 25% to 55% of their energy from nuclear plants. In the US, that figure today is about 19%. Before the Three Mile Island meltdown, we were on track to get a steadily growing share of energy from nuclear, but the meltdown halted that growth.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.