# Younger Dopers: Ever heard of Three Mile Island? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 19, 2011, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956 "2011-04-19T14:21:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/21 "2011-04-19T16:04:52Z")
23, and yes I’ve heard about it. I wrote a paper about it my freshman year of high school, but I remember knowing about it before that. But yeah, everybody who didn’t probably knows about it now. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/22 "2011-04-19T16:08:46Z")
I think this whole thread is TMI. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/23 "2011-04-19T16:16:05Z")
31, and I remember it from the Simpsons, in the Homer gets fat episode. Burns is giving him an award while he’s stuck in the containment tank, and he says something about turning a potential Cherynobyl “into a mere Three-Mile Island.” I picked up the gist of what happened at some point from Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/24 "2011-04-19T16:18:34Z")
1. My first knowledge of it came from Adam Bomb, the wrestler with the nuclear monster gimmick. He was billed as being from Three Mile Island. but yes, we learned about it in school too. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/25 "2011-04-19T16:22:20Z")
I don’t even think we mention it in Geography. We cover Chernobyl, but TMI is maybe a blip on the screen. I’m a teacher and I don’t even remember. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![SurrenderDorothy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/surrenderdorothy/32/1221_2.png) [@SurrenderDorothy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SurrenderDorothy)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/26 "2011-04-19T16:25:21Z")
19 and I’ve heard of it. I know the basic story. I always get confused and think it’s in New York, too, though (I guess I get it confused with Long Island). I think I read about it when I was reading about Chernobyl on wikipedia or something. And I think I learned about Chernobyl from here\*. I remember someone posting pictures of all the abandoned houses and broken dolls and stuff and it intrigued me, so I looked it up. Something I read about then mentioned Three Mile Island, so I looked that up and read about it, too. \*Understand, though- I’ve been registered here since I was 14 and had been reading for years before that. So I learned LOTS of stuff from the SDMB that we may have later talked about in school. It’s not like I was 37 and going, “what’s this Chernobyl thing?”. eta: I honestly don’t ever remember learning about Chernobyl in school and I’m certain we never learned about Three Mile Island. We may have mentioned it at some point after I learned about it here, but never in any depth. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/27 "2011-04-19T16:28:49Z")
Show of hands: How many people, prior to Fukushima, knew Three Mile Island was a meltdown? ---
**Author:** ![Silophant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Silophant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silophant)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/28 "2011-04-19T16:29:21Z")
1. I knew about it even before the Fukushima accident, and now, of course, there’s been no way to not hear about it. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/29 "2011-04-19T16:30:30Z")
Huh, I thought it was in upstate New York too. Kind of a weird misconception for multiple people to have. But anyways, age 30 and I knew what it was and the general details of what happened, though apparently not how to find it on a map. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/30 "2011-04-19T16:32:22Z")
We never got to WWI in school, much less TMI. I can throw a recreation of the First Thanksgiving with the best of 'em, though. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/31 "2011-04-19T16:56:37Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I think this whole thread is TMI. 🙂 I was with my friend when she asked me if I wanted to see TMI. I thought she was going to show me something that was, you, know, too much information. Then we drove by a nuke power plant. OK, that’s nice. Then she mentioned that the island was, in fact, three miles long. It wasn’t until then that it dawned on me what I was looking at. D’oh! ---
**Author:** ![LateComer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5ac83/32.png) [@LateComer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LateComer)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/32 "2011-04-19T16:57:25Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Huh, I thought it was in upstate New York too. Kind of a weird misconception for multiple people to have. Maybe it’s conflated with [Love Canal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal)? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/33 "2011-04-19T17:04:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Show of hands: How many people, prior to Fukushima, knew Three Mile Island was a meltdown? \ I also knew, prior to the earthquake that devastated Japan, that it wasn’t that big a deal, despite everything going wrong that could go wrong for a plant of that design. Almost 34, for what it’s worth, so I’m near the top of the “under 40” range. ---
**Author:** ![llcoolbj77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/32.png) [@llcoolbj77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/llcoolbj77)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/34 "2011-04-19T17:08:29Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Show of hands: How many people, prior to Fukushima, knew Three Mile Island was a meltdown? Hand up. I remember watching an excellent program on Chernobyl on the History Channel many many moons ago (maybe 10 or more years ago). They did a bit about TMI. We also discussed it briefly in US Gov’t class my senior year. But we learned about it in the context of media bias, i.e., compare and contrast how different news sources cover the same story. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/35 "2011-04-19T17:16:44Z")
29 and Canadian, so while I don’t think I learned about it in high school, I knew what it was, that it was in PA, and I had heard of it before Fukushima. I wrote a really crappy 3 page paper on it a couple of years ago in our so-called “engineering ethics” class in university. Got an A, because being able to write your name down was a pass in that course! ---
**Author:** ![Azeotrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/0ea827/32.png) [@Azeotrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Azeotrope)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/36 "2011-04-19T17:20:06Z")
Happened on my 2nd birthday. In one high school English class we had to pick an event that happened on our birthdays and write an essay about it; I remember being glad that I got to do a cool one. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/37 "2011-04-19T17:20:34Z")
I’d heard of it, but didn’t put it all together until recently. My brain keeps on wanting to associate it with Alcatraz for some reason, and I want to place both of them in New York. When I would hear of Three Mile Island, I would think it was a prison site that also housed a nuclear reactor nearby. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/38 "2011-04-19T17:44:01Z")
> [@LateComer](#): > > Maybe it’s conflated with [Love Canal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal)? Ooh, good one; I bet that’s at least a large part of the reason. (Age 40, known of it since childhood, would have said “New York?” for the location.) ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/39 "2011-04-19T17:47:20Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I’d heard of it, but didn’t put it all together until recently. My brain keeps on wanting to associate it with Alcatraz for some reason, and I want to place both of them in New York. Is it possible that you were also confusing them with Riker’s Island? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/40 "2011-04-19T17:48:23Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Ooh, good one; I bet that’s at least a large part of the reason. (Age 40, known of it since childhood, would have said “New York?” for the location.) Another reason, perhaps, is because of [Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant), which never operated at full power, largely because of TMI. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956.md?page=3)