Almost forgotten today is the accident at the SL-1 reactor in Idaho in 1961. Unlike Three Mile Island and Fukushima, this accident killed people… three of ’em. The reactor was pretty much *exactly* unlike how you’d design one today, in that during a maintenance period the main control rod was moved manually. As in, you grab it and yank real hard. Problem was, one of the guys responsible for slowly extracting the control rod instead apparently jerked it out real fast and too far, causing the reactor to spike. The water in the containment vessel basically exploded, causing the whole array to jump up nine feet, and shooting components straight up. Sadly, there was a man in the way. I’ll let Wikipedia describe it:
One of the shield plugs on top of the reactor vessel impaled the third man through his groin and exited his shoulder, pinning him to the ceiling.
The three men who died died of mechanical injuries… impalement, getting blown up, getting burned by steam. But the radiation alone would have been fatal had they not been otherwise killed.
It has always struck me as odd that with an actual reactor meltdown that caused actual deaths, the anti-nuclear crowd focuses on the likes of Three Mile Island, which didn’t include so much as a bruise or a Band-Aid.