# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/61 "2011-04-20T06:29:21Z")
Of course. Nuclear power is a topic of interest to me. I’m 23. ---
**Author:** ![Arrendajo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/62 "2011-04-20T06:39:01Z")
My father worked there for a year or so, after the meltdown. I don’t know when exactly it must have been early 80’s. He had worked reactor clean-up years before after an accident at Idaho Nuclear Engineering Laboratories in the mid 60’s. That was the one where they couldn’t find one of the workers until they spied him skewered by a control rod pinned to the machinery in the top of the reactor. Good times… ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/63 "2011-04-20T06:43:01Z")
My kids are 14 and 16, they know about it. I’ve thought it was in NY as well. ---
**Author:** ![fusoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecccb3/32.png) [@fusoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fusoya)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/64 "2011-04-20T15:55:22Z")
30,and I’ve heard of it, but originally as a landmark which Amtrak passes on it’s way to Harrisburg… ---
**Author:** ![llcoolbj77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/32.png) [@llcoolbj77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/llcoolbj77)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/65 "2011-04-20T16:10:17Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I just mentioned to a younger coworker (mid-20s?) that I drove past Three Mile Island this weekend. She gave me a blank stare and shrugged her shoulders. > > Dopers under 40, have you ever heard of it? I think the general concesus is that your coworker is not as well-read/well-watched/well-high schooled as your average young doper. I do find it strangely fascinating that most think of NY (as did I). :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Koldanar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@Koldanar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koldanar)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/66 "2011-04-20T16:14:41Z")
Not only have I heard of it (born in '79…always heard stories from my mother about her getting worried that it would go off nearby) but I once had an apartment where, if you went out on the patio, you could see the cooling towers. ---
**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 20, 2011, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/67 "2011-04-20T19:22:18Z")
> [@Arrendajo](#): > > My father worked there for a year or so, after the meltdown. I don’t know when exactly it must have been early 80’s. He had worked reactor clean-up years before after an accident at Idaho Nuclear Engineering Laboratories in the mid 60’s. That was the one where they couldn’t find one of the workers until they spied him skewered by a control rod pinned to the machinery in the top of the reactor. Good times… That was the [SL-1 reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1), and that’s a fairly gruesome story. They found the guy pretty quickly, but as you say he was impaled by a shield plug that had blown out of the reactor and pinned to the ceiling. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/68 "2011-04-20T19:43:43Z")
Yep. Dad worked for the N.R.C. He woke up around 5 am that day and didn’t come home for weeks. Somewhere is a faded day-glo yellow button that said " I Survived T.M.I. " Quite unnerving to be close to. I grew up in Philly, and have never visited the site. Cartooniverse ---
**Author:** ![Teacake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Teacake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teacake)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/69 "2011-04-20T20:46:43Z")
Early 30s, British. I’d heard of it and I knew what happened, but bizarrely I also associate it with New York. I didn’t hear about Love Canal until years later, so where on earth did I get that from, and why does everyone seem to think the same thing?! ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/70 "2011-04-20T20:53:14Z")
> [@SanibelMan](#): > > Yes, I’m 27 and I know about the incident. I probably heard about it the first time by watching that sketch that Garrett Morris was in on SNL, where he went in as the cleaning lady and got turned into a fifty-foot-tall woman that fell in love with Dan Ackroyd’s fifty-foot-tall Jimmy Carter. > > (Oddly, when I googled the phrase “garret morris three mile island skit” to refresh my memory, the first link was [this archived thread!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-477329.html)) Odd, I’m 33 and Morris is b4 my time watching SNL. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/71 "2011-04-20T20:56:03Z")
27, know the basic gist but couldn’t give you solid details. I do, however, know that the phrase “worse than Three mile Island” means “bad.” I can recall originally learning the term reading Mad Magazine circa 1990. I believe it was a joke about somebody having extra limbs. ---
**Author:** ![Rala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@Rala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rala)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/72 "2011-04-21T06:26:09Z")
I’m nineteen and Australian. I just know it was an incident at a nuclear power plant that wasn’t as bad as Chernobyl. But only because it was mentioned on The Simpsons. :o ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/73 "2011-04-21T10:16:36Z")
23 and English, and until this thread I thought it was in the Pacific Ocean - I think I’d mixed it up with the Bikini Atoll atomic testing when I was younger, and never questioned how a power plant in the middle of the sea would help America (although if you use twisted logic, it makes sense from a safety standpoint…) I didn’t learn the specifics until the thread on Japan a few weeks ago. If you’d have said “3 Mile Island” I would have known that you were talking about some nuclear brou-ha-ha, but nothing as specific as if you had mentioned Chernobyl. ---
**Author:** ![BomTek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bomtek/32/21364_2.png) [@BomTek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BomTek)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/74 "2011-04-21T12:33:25Z")
I’m 30 and knew about it before the Japanese earthquake. I thought it was in NY, also, but I’m not totally surprised to find out that I was wrong in this case. I was under the impression that TMI wasn’t nearly as bad as sensationalist media would have had you believe if you were watching the news at the time. Not one person died as a result of it, correct? I’m currently deployed to Afghanistan, so I haven’t watched really any news for the last four months, but it’s interesting to me that TMI is being brought up again because of the earthquake in Japan… why is that? My understanding of the two incidents is that the one in PA was nearly a huge disaster caused by human error in an otherwise well-built facility, while the one in Japan was nearly a huge disaster because of environmental factors but was SAVED by good engineering. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/75 "2011-04-21T12:57:02Z")
> [@BomTek](#): > > I’m currently deployed to Afghanistan, so I haven’t watched really any news for the last four months, but it’s interesting to me that TMI is being brought up again because of the earthquake in Japan… why is that? Because they’re both somehow “evidence” that nuclear power is inherently unsafe - or at least some people think so. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/76 "2011-04-21T13:08:59Z")
> [@llcoolbj77](#): > > I think the general concesus is that your coworker is not as well-read/well-watched/well-high schooled as your average young doper. I think you’re probably right. I was really surprised by her (non) reaction, hence this thread. I guess it’s heartening that most youngsters know about it. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/77 "2011-04-21T13:14:11Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Because they’re both somehow “evidence” that nuclear power is inherently unsafe - or at least some people think so. I’m not sure that’s it. Any news about a nuclear meltdown is going to bring up comparisons to similar events. As there have now been only three that have been truly newsworthy, of course they’re all going to be mentioned. Much in the same way that if a President is impeached, all other impeachments are going to be mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/78 "2011-04-21T14:01:09Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Because they’re both somehow “evidence” that nuclear power is inherently unsafe - or at least some people think so. All it took was for the power to go out for a few hours and we now have an increasing evacuation zone and any dead bodies found in the area are too radioactive to be properly disposed of. TMI is frequently mentioned because TMI was a level 5 nuclear disaster and Fukushima blew right past that to a maximum level 7 disaster. ---
**Author:** ![snowmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e99b99/32.png) [@snowmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowmaster)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/79 "2011-04-21T15:05:33Z")
Very familliar with TMI, but then, we’re a nuclear family (both ways 😉 ). Dad did cleanup there for a time, and it had a devestating effect on the plant he works at and their ability to get licensed and start producing power. I can see why you’d ask. For today’s youth and many of us here, all TMI means to them is Too Much Information. ---
**Author:** ![TNWPsycho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/47e85d/32.png) [@TNWPsycho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TNWPsycho)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2011, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956/80 "2011-04-22T04:08:14Z")
20, and yes, but im kind of a nerd. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/younger-dopers-ever-heard-of-three-mile-island/578956.md?page=3)