iStock/Thinkstock(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, site of the United States’ worst commercial nuclear power accident, will shut down in 2019 without a financial rescue from the state of Pennsylvania, according to owner Exelon Corp.
Chicago-based Exelon issued a press release announcing the planned shuttering of the plant located near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The nuclear power industry has been hurt financially by a natural gas boom fueled by a rise in fracking.
Three Mile Island was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown on March 28, 1979, that led to increased public concern about the safety of nuclear plants.
The accident occurred less than two weeks after the release of a Hollywood thriller The China Syndrome, about a fictional meltdown at a nuclear reactor.
William Whittock, a resident of Harrisburg, told ABC News in a 1979 broadcast that a “geyser of steam” erupted from the top of the plant.
“I heard a very loud noise that sounded like a huge release of steam,” Whittock said at the time. “I looked out the window, and it was dark but you could see from the lights that there was a geyser of steam rising up in the air.”
Workers were evacuated from the plant, and then “checked and rechecked” for radiation contamination, ABC News reported at the time.
A cleanup following the accident took 14 years, according to a 1993 report in The New York Times.
The reactor damaged in the accident has been closed since, but the other reactor is still in use.
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