Oh wait, no, Three Mile Island was pretty bad, but we also nearly lost Detroit. They even wrote a book and a song about it, each called We Almost Lost Detroit. That was probably the biggest boo boo in America's storied history of nuclear power, and just another example of a time they accidentally almost caused the end of the world. It's not really funny at this point, is it? Just concerning. You don't let a kid who keeps slicing their hands up use proper scissors any more. We should probably be subbing America's real plutonium for plastic plutonium. That's more suited to their abilities. Fermi 1 was the country's first attempt at building a breeder reactor, a nuclear reactor capable of generating more fissile material than it consumes. Which is nice in theory, but in practice...a lot less so. Fermi still exists, FYI, albeit in slightly better nick than it was during the 1966 when it suffered a partial fuel meltdown. Which the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission claimed saw no abnormal radiation release to the environment but, well, any amount of radiation release to the environment isn't exactly ideal. They also never reopened Fermi 1, choosing to decommission it after a good decade of trying to be it operational. Which suggests that "no contamination outside the containment area" should have been followed by "and if it had we probably would've been screwed soz guys". This was basically America's near-Chernobyl. And it happened near one of its biggest cities. Oops.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
