Three Mile Island

A dear young friend asked me the other day, "Why do you take pictures of Three Mile Island?", and said, "I can't believe you take pictures of TMI." The statements could have been more complex than face value. She had a boyfriend that worked at TMI but he no longer works there and they are no longer girl friend/ boy friend. In any case the long and short of it is, I think it looks cool. From the shape of the cooling towers and their hugeness to the mezmerizing, ever changing vapor plumes to the reflection in the river and more, I just think TMI is a fun, interesting subject.
The other day Emily said to me in response to some explanation I was making about the atomic energy process, "It's not steam that comes out of the towers." Fully expecting to get some wacky "It's pollution" statement spewed first by some uninformed, anti-nuclear science teacher at her high school, I asked, "Oh, really, what is it then?" "It's water vapor." Unafraid to look stupid in my 53rd year I said, "I'm not sure I know the difference between steam and water vapor." Of course, at some point in my education I knew this perfectly well, but the need for it apparently hadn't arisen often enough to cement that important knowledge in my brain. "Water vapor isn't hot." She can be soooo dramatic sometimes and so succinct at others. This moment was one of the later. She just wanted to share.

When we first moved to Elizabethtown, I was trying out the various routes to work. Interesting thing about Pennsylvania. There are multiple ways to get from anywhere to anywhere else, even many ways. But they all take the same amount of time. It's uncanny. There are, for example, at least four good ways to get to work. They all take about 20 minutes. Well, on this particular morning, I had decided to drive down to Rt. 441, drive along the river to Middletown and cut up to work from there. Suddenly, there in front of me was Three Mile Island. I knew we lived in the shadow of TMI, but at the same time, there was some lack of recognition or denial, or something, because when I saw it that morning, it was as if it were a big surprise. I honestly turned to look at the hillsides across the road to see if there were any cows dead in the fields with their legs sticking straight up. As a young man on the west coast when the "accident" happened, I thought pretty much the entire state was wiped out by radiation. TMI is a good neighbor. There are those sirens that go off every month to remind us to flee for our lives if there is ever another accident - but, electricity sure is more reasonable here than in other places we've lived. And, oh yeah, it's fun to take pictures of.