Pennsylvania has played a big role in the history of American energy. Coal has been mined there since the 1760s (Pennsylvania is sometimes called "the coal state"). In 1859 Edwin Drake drilled a rickety well that set off America's first oil rush. More recently it has produced more natural gas than any other state except Texas, thanks to the vast Marcellus shale that runs beneath it. And though it barely advertises the fact, Pennsylvania is also America's second-largest provider of nuclear energy-despite the near-disaster at Three Mile Island, a nuclear plant that suffered a partial meltdown of one of its reactors in 1979 (pictured, right), killing no one but scaring millions.
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