It’s a tossup between Three Mile Isle and Centralia for who gets to be called Pennsylvania’s Chernobyl. (Personally I vote Centralia since it’s still a hazard… I should visit)

Current status, definitely not an ongoing hazard. At the time, though, a husband-wife team that joined up as a radiation monitoring technician and a senior surveillance technician, the Thompsons, spoke out about a health/dosimeter badge coverup and had to flee town after a stranger warned them their life was in danger. When they settled in NM and began working on a book about it with the wife’s brother, him and the husband were run off the road, killing the brother while a manuscript of the book that was in the trunk went ‘missing’. Epidemiology links increased rates of health issues that stem from ionizing radiation to both the locations surrounding the incident and the areas downwind. Jean Trimmer, in the area, reported a flash of heat and rain, followed by bad sunburns, hair turning white and falling out, and an idiopathic atrophy of the kidney that warranted presentation to a symposium of doctors nearby from how strange it is. None of these are consistent with the official estimates of exposure, but do match the symptoms of acute exposure of a much higher dose.

Of course, this was also a time when the Soviets presented an information warfare challenge. On the same token, disasters of any size and sort are often covered up when there’s a cold war justification. See: the pandemic (ongoing, unabated)

Potentially, the only difference between this and foreign radioactive disasters is the competency of US intelligence. I would not be surprised to learn much later that a coverup was instituted, which would have been perfectly possible especially in the information environment of the time. I recommend nuclear energy advocates cease condescendingly using it as an example of nuclear panic, and instead make an effort to compassionately address people’s concerns over potential health hazards and lack of government support in the future. At the very least, to avoid potential embarrassment and backlash if a “full story” ever comes out about the incident.