more on drugs1984
In July 1979 a reactor on an Echo I-class nuclear-powered attack submarine suffered a meltdown in the Pacific.
Fall from Grace - Gregory L. Vistica p.56
In 1979 the U.S. Government admitted that more than 35 of approximately 330 "underground" nuclear blasts sent radioactivity outside the boundaries of the Nevada Test Site, during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic - Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon with Robert Alvarez & Eleanor Walters p.405 online at wiretap.spies (large file)
[Three Mile Island] ... the worst single reactor accident the West has ever known, producing the largest amount of radioactivity released in the West since the peaceful nuclear power program began.
The Nuclear Barons - Peter Pringle and James Spigelman p. 433
The Three Mile Island 2 (TMI-2) Reactor Accident
The Critical Mass Energy Project, part of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization, keeps tab on nuclear transport, and its report on 1979 lists a hundred and twenty-two accidents, with seventeen of them involving some contamination.
Radwaste - Fred C. Shapiro
In September, 1979, the NRC received a report from the Erwin plant saying that the facility had lost track of more than 9 kilograms (about 20 lbs.) of highly enriched uranium, enough to construct at least one atomic bomb.
...Over the past decade, losses there exceeded 246 pounds.
Nukespeak -Gilette
The September 1979 incident in which American and Soviet spy satellites detected a suspected nuclear explosion over the Indian Ocean was in actuality the explosion of a nuclear shell launched from a cannon in a joint experiment of South Africa and Israel that involved "one of the most advanced tactical nuclear systems to be used anywhere in the world."
The Fateful Triangle - Noam Chomsky p.466
more on nuclear1981
...CIA agents at the American Embassy in Tehran, which was later seized by radical students, failed to burn classified documents. Students retrieved the documents from the shredder and painstakingly taped them back together, in the process discovering that three of the hostages they had seized were CIA agents.
Warriors of the Night - Ernest Volkman p.327
In El Salvador alone, from October 1979...until December 1981 - approximately two years - about 30,000 people were murdered and about 600,000 refugees created. Those figures have about doubled since. Most of the murders were carried out by U.S.-backed military forces, including so-called death squads.
The Chomsky Reader - Noam Chomsky p.328