That's about right. The fuel rods that were inserted into the initial core of the reactor probably ranged from 2 to 4 weight percent U-235 which is the isotope of uranium that readily fissions. When the accident happened, they were probably 4 months into the expected 15 months of operation prior to having to refuel. So it is reasonable that the remaining weight percent of U-235 was in the 1.5 to 3.5 range. But the real kicker was that there was no licensed commercial facility in the US to reprocess uranium from spent fuel rods. (Commercial is the key word here - the DOD/USN and DOE have been reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to extract uranium and Plutonium for years, including at the Savannah River Facility in South Carolina - right across the river from Augusta National Golf Course). They would have had to ship the fuel to France to have it reprocessed. There was also some Plutonium in the fuel rods at that time, and given the hysteria (thank you to the unschooled media) surrounding Plutonium, that would have been politically Dead on Arrival.
What most people don't know is that in a reactor that is fueled with uranium, a small portion of the uranium atoms absorb neutrons and transmutate to one of several Plutonium isotopes. By the time a fuel rod has to be removed from the reactor, up to 40% of the heat producing fissions are from Plutonium.
There's a reactor on the University Park campus. It's a research reactor in a big swimming pool, so it isn't like a power reactor at all.
