…lty gauge causes a technician to nearly expose the core — as ludicrous. It simply could not happen. Then, on March 28, 1979—just 12 days after the film’s release — a stuck valve in a reactor on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania set off a chain of events eerily close to those depicted in the film, resulting in a partial meltdown and a venting of radioactive steam. The worst did not happen, but how close had we come? Amid the freak-out that followed, the movie was pulled from some theaters — it played too close to the news. It was arguably the impact of these two events — the movie followed by Three Mile Island — that sca…
