The reason the Discovery Channel is so good is that we all learn when we watch, and there isn't any required background to understand before a program starts.

This was the attitude three Penn State employees took when they decided to write TMI 25 Years Later.

Three Mile Island, located just outside Harrisburg, is the sight of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history.

On March 28, 1979, the island's nuclear reactor overheated, and the reaction was unable to be contained.

Significant amounts of radioactive noble gases were released into the containment atmosphere, but no one was injured due to the radiation.

Tony Baratta, a former Penn State professor and one of the book's co-authors, said he used his on-site experience to help write the book. "I started to help clean up the site a year after the accident and have been studying it for the past 25 years," Baratta said.

Penn State has acquired thousands of documents and videos from the accident, and to organize the research, two Penn State librarians created a Web site (www.libraries.psu.edu/ tmi).

The Web site was first developed as a database for those in the field, but it became so popular that the librarians started to receive hundreds of e-mail messages with questions about it.

"The interesting thing was that most of the questions that we received were from high school and college students, and not nuclear engineering students," said Tom Conkling, head of the engineering library at Penn State and a co-author of TMI 25 Years Later. "This eventually led to writing the book for an audience not nuclear savvy."

Bonnie Osif developed the Web site with Conkling, and she said the misconceptions that most people have about the nuclear industry are substantial and can affect their opinions.

"A lot of people want to condemn the whole industry before they know the facts," Osif said.

The book begins with a crash course in nuclear engineering and then describes the accident and clean-up process that followed the accident.

"When we were writing the book, I gave chapters to my niece that's in high school, to make sure we were writing to the right audience," Baratta said.

Conkling and Osif agreed that writing the book for the average person was an important decision.

"This is an issue that everyone in Pennsylvania should be aware of, but it applies to anyone that lives near a reactor," Osif said.

TMI 25 Years Later is available at the library and will soon be carried in bookstores around State College.