“There is a certain irony in the shorthand that experts commonly use when discussing this country’s closest brush with nuclear cataclysm: TMI. Today, those letters are widely understood to mean ‘too much information.’ But well before the advent of social media, TMI referred principally to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, a power plant on the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania. Disaster struck there in 1979, and when it did, too much information — solid, unassailable information — was not part of the mix. Months later, a presidential commission cited a ‘lack of communication at all levels’ as cause for grave concern. Americans were frightened, and not just those in Pennsylvania. Fear was intensified because, as the commission said, their right to know what was going on had been sorely compromised.

“Then again, so many things went wrong on the Susquehanna back in 1979. Disaster struck at 4 a.m. on March 28 when water-coolant pumps failed at the plant’s new second reactor, known as TMI-2. That led to the reactor’s overheating, with the temperature rising steadily after a stuck valve misled the operators into halting the flow of emergency cooling water. Half the core was later found to have melted.”

Click here to read the entire New York Times article and to watch a really good video.

There’s a great scene in the video as the ceo of the power company that owned TMI says, “I don’t know why we have to tell you each and everything that we do.”

Really!!!