28 March 1979: Three Mile Island partially melts down
A reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown, the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history. No one was killed, but public fear soared, helped by the recent release of the film The China Syndrome. Orders for new nuclear plants dried up and many projects were cancelled. The US nuclear industry effectively stalled for decades.
The lesson: Public perception can reshape an industry as powerfully as the underlying facts.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Uranium (lb) at the start of 1990 → $8,000 today, vs $19,429 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1990, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 8.0 times the money, but $11,429 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Uranium (lb) teaches: In markets where new mines take a decade to build, booms and busts run long; a single accident like Fukushima can reset demand for a generation.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $10.00 | $8,000 | $19,429 |
| 1995 | $10.00 | $8,000 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $7.50 | $10,667 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Uranium (lb)? Every starting year and the full story →
More Uranium (lb) history
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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