nuclear accident

The Three Mile Island accident is the most serious nuclear reactor disaster in U.S. history, a partial core meltdown at a Pennsylvania plant on March 28, 1979, that triggered a corporate cover-up prosecution.

On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, a 28-year-old laboratory technician at Kerr-McGee's nuclear facility in Oklahoma, died when her car veered off the highway near Crescent. She was driving to meet a New York Times journalist with evidence of safety violations. Five decades later, her death remains controversial.

On 26 April 1986, reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat in Soviet Ukraine exploded, releasing radioactive material across Europe and forcing the evacuation of 350,000 people. The disaster exposed systemic flaws in Soviet reactor design and safety culture that would reverberate for decades.