Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States reactors and research facilities. This led to the introduction of the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, which was "an implicit admission that nuclear power provided risks that producers were unwilling to assume without federal backing". Nuclear reactor accidents continued into the 1960s with a small test reactor exploding at the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One in Idaho Falls in January 1961 resulting in three deaths which were the first fatalities in the history of U.S. nuclear reactor operations. There was also a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan in 1966. The large size of nuclear reactors
Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States damage costs include destruction of property, emergency response, environmental remediation, evacuation, lost product, fines, and court claims. Because nuclear reactors are large and complex, accidents onsite tend to be relatively expensive. In the U.S., at least 56 nuclear reactor accidents have occurred. The most serious of these U.S. accidents was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979. The United States Government Accountability Office reported more than 150 incidents from