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Three Mile Island

American  

noun

  1. an island in the Susquehanna River, near Middletown, Pennsylvania, SE of Harrisburg: scene of a near-disastrous accident at a nuclear plant in 1979 that raised the issue of nuclear-energy safety.

Three Mile Island 1 Cultural  

  1. The location of an accident in 1979 in a nuclear power plant — an electrical generator powered by a nuclear reactor — in Pennsylvania. The plant underwent a partial meltdown that resulted in very little leakage of radiation into the atmosphere, panic among nearby residents, losses of billions of dollars, and intense criticism of nuclear power programs in general. (Compare Chernobyl.)

Three Mile Island 2 Cultural  

  1. The location of an accident in 1979 in a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The plant underwent a partial meltdown that resulted in some radiation leakage into the atmosphere, panic among nearby residents, losses of billions of dollars, and intense criticism of nuclear power programs in general.

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Example Sentences

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Microsoft wants to reopen Pennsylvania’s retired Three Mile Island nuclear plant.

From The Wall Street Journal

Many nuclear-power plants have fewer reactors than initially planned because of spiraling costs and waning enthusiasm for the technology after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in the late 1970s.

From The Wall Street Journal

Written just a few days after the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the worst such accident in U.S. history to date.

From Salon

Three Mile Island was located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just a few hours’ drive from Asbury Park, making it also just a few hours’ drive from multiple major population centers.

From Salon

Other tech-nuclear deals include Amazon.com’s investment in the reactor developer X-energy, Microsoft’s 20-year power-purchase agreement with Constellation to spur the restart of the former Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, and a Google-NextEra Energy partnership to reopen a nuclear reactor in Iowa.

From The Wall Street Journal

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.