Since you are concerned with being properly informed, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that the TMI accident resulted in the PARTIAL, not TOTAL meltdown, involving approximately HALF of the fuel.
You can read about it numerous places, but here's an easy and very clear explanation, with pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
...It was later found that about half the core had melted, and the cladding around 90% of the fuel rods had failed, with five feet of the core gone, and around 20 tons of uranium flowing to the bottom head of the pressure vessel, forming a mass of corium. The reactor vessel, the second level of containment after the cladding, maintained integrity and contained the damaged fuel with nearly all of the radioactive isotopes in the core.
I happened to be flying in a small private plane a day after the TMI accident, between upstate NY and Washington DC area, and flew within a few miles of the TMI facility. I got to view the cooling towers from a position downwind, which a day after the excitement was itself rather exciting.
It seemed a big deal at the time, and I grant I would have been nervous living downwind. But in retrospect, and by comparison to the Japanese situation, TMI was relatively small potatoes, that got used for political anti-nuke purposes and blown way out of proportion. IMO.