The Nation - News from Nov. 21, 1985

Pennsylvania officials simulated a disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, near Harrisburg, sparking a brief evacuation by thousands of schoolchildren and a drill by more than 1,300 TMI workers and emergency crews. The exercise was the first at the facility since TMI’s Unit No. 1 nuclear reactor was restarted Oct. 3. TMI’s Unit No. 2 reactor was crippled on March 28, 1979, in a near meltdown, the nation’s worst commercial nuclear power accident. By the time the drill ended, the make-believe disaster would involve the evacuation--on paper only--of 167,000 people.