Three Mile Island
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, a whoops edition. That's right. You know it's not a whoops, though. Oh, I can guess where this is going. stuff at Sea Voyage. That's right. It's the most deliberate voyage ever created. That's completely unaccidental. That's right. Five-night, adults-only sailing trip, it says. And we're going to be doing our live podcast from New York City to Bermuda, not the whole way, just like one time. Right. Yeah, there's going to be other stuff, too. We're going to be meeting and greeting. And I'm guessing there'll be other opportunities to hang out with us, maybe, rather than just the one meet and greet.
Yeah, for sure. This all goes down October 2nd through 7th of this year aboard the Valiant Lady. And you can go check everything out at virginvoyages.com slash stuff. Very nice, Chuck. Let's see. So you want to start talking about Three Mile Island? Yeah, the nuclear, I guess it's still the worst nuclear disaster in American history, right? Yeah, I can't think of anything worse. I mean, as far as actual disasters go, it wasn't that bad. But how close it came to being like Chernobyl level is kind of breathtaking, actually. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And this all went down when I had just turned eight years old on March 28th, 1979. Yeah, and really interestingly, just 12 days before this accident happened at Three Mile Island, a movie called The China Syndrome came out.
Yeah. Starring Michael Douglas. Crazy timing. Yeah, and Jane Fonda, which makes it even weirder. Because The China Syndrome, if you've never seen it, it's a pretty good movie. I would say go watch it. It... It was basically this. It was essentially what happened. What happened to the movie China Syndrome happened at Three Mile Island 12 days later. It's really bizarre. Yeah. And the term China Syndrome comes from, I don't know if it's a term they still use, but I guess it was a term back then for a reactor melting down and melting all the way through to China. Yeah. Pretty folksy term for something as horrific as that. Yeah, because, you know, when you grew up in the 70s, everyone knows if you dig deep enough, you will reach China.
Sure. I tried a couple of times and gave up after a few hours. Yeah, that was on the playground, at least. But, yeah, this happened March 28, 79. When you said it wasn't as bad as it could have been, you're dead right, because that means there were no casualties, and they did avert that complete and total meltdown. But there's a lot of sort of... I guess skepticism still that like, hey, it was fine. There was the air spine and everything around there is just fine. And nobody ever got sick because of this. Yeah, and one reason that it does pay to be skeptical of that, and you can't really blame people who are, especially people who live in the area, like in Middletown, Pennsylvania, is that at the time, the atomic energy industry, including the businesses that ran the place, the businesses that built these places, the agencies that regulated it, all of them had nothing but Pollyanna-ish optimistic views about
of all of the amazing things that nuclear power could do and how safe it was. Like, they were deluded as a group about the safety of nuclear power. And even throughout this whole accident, as it was unfolding, they were just like, no, it's not that bad.
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