28 March. In 1979 there was a serious accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, and although no meltdown occurred, public opinion began to turn against the whole American nuclear industry. In the film The China Syndrome, made before the incident, a character remarks that a cloud of waste could wreak death and destruction over 'an area the size of Pennsylvania.' Earlier in the year, a local magazine had run a fictional story called Meltdown at Three Mile Island, and they even got the date right, 28 March.