In the Valley of the Shadow

"GO TO THE TOP OF THE HILL AND MAKE A RIGHT AT THE TURKEY Hill Minit Market; cross the railroad tracks and keep going until you pass a red brick church on your left...." As I sat in my office in Washington, D.C., taking these directions to a stranger's house over the phone, I was picturing every landmark. My sisters and I had frequently ridden our bikes over these rolling hills of Central Pennsylvania. This was home.

The anticipation of returning just before Thanksgiving encouraged memories of 15 years of holiday journeys back. By this time every year, the plentiful Pennsylvania corn stalks were cleared away, leaving acres of golden stubble poking through a light dusting of snow. The geese and I sometimes met head-on, they making their way south through this valley carved out by the Susquehanna River. Seeming to point the way for them and me, white candles always glowed softly in every window of familiar, old farmhouses, whose chimneys breathed out lazy curls of smoke. Often as I hit the final stretch, a setting sun would splash brilliant red behind silhouettes of stately barns.

My parents moved to a piece of farmland in Elizabethtown about the same time I moved to Washington. They built a house that, by their description before it materialized, would be "perfect for the grandchildren," with plenty of space for Mom's flowers and Dad's vegetable garden.

I grew up down the road in Hershey--"Chocolatetown U.S.A." Hershey kids had the advantage of taking frequent tours through the chocolate factory for the reward of a free candy bar. My sisters and I spent long summer days in the town's amusement park, riding one of the oldest merry-go-rounds in the world and stopping off to sip chocolate-flavored Cokes at the counter of the Hershey drug store before heading home. I learned to water-ski on the Susquehanna at the age of 7.

We were introduced to God at the First United Methodist Church on Chocolate Avenue. For my fifth birthday, I was allowed to choose a picture of Jesus to keep. I knew immediately which one I wanted--the picture of Jesus holding the lost lamb. I kept it by my bed, believing it would comfort and protect me from all fears.

But 20 years later, a fear crept into our lives that none of us had anticipated. I was told one morning as I walked into the Sojourners office, "Hershey was on the radio. They're moving pregnant women and pre-school children to the Hershey Sports Arena." I tried to picture the place where I had watched hockey games and ice shows as an evacuation center. Later that evening, the television news showed the scene: the arena lined with cots, children crying and their mothers trying to keep order under difficult circumstances. It was March 30, 1979.

THE DRAMA HAD BEGUN two days earlier, when a stuck valve in the Unit Two reactor triggered a serious accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, seven miles from my parents' home. A huge, potentially explosive hydrogen bubble developed in the damaged reactor, and by day four of the crisis even some of the nuclear experts--doing their best not to provoke a panic and certainly not prone to overstatement about the danger--were beginning to talk about "meltdown" as a growing possibility.

On Sunday, April 1, my parents evacuated to my grandmother's home in Hagerstown, Maryland. The bathroom was the only truly private room in my grandmother's small apartment; I will always remember the conversation my mother and I had there. She recounted all the thoughts that had gone through her mind as they left the house, her sadness and the fear that they might never return.

She had considered bringing photograph albums and old letters along but finally decided to leave them. I had grabbed all my journals at the last minute before leaving Washington, just in case the reactor in Pennsylvania went to meltdown and forced an evacuation of the city. The fear that the future might not be the same made us both want to hang on to the joyful and poignant fragments of the past.

In the end, the hydrogen bubble mysteriously disappeared, the reactor core stopped just short of a total meltdown, and the nuclear industry assured us that no one died from TMI. The "nuclear nightmare" was over, they said. For conservative Pennsylvanians, used to nothing more dangerous in their air than the sweet smell of chocolate, the tendency was strong to believe it.

But even then, ominous predictions were offered from other sources: Cancers, leukemias, and other health effects would begin to show up in about 10 years. At the time, March 1989 seemed eons away. Last November, just before Thanksgiving, I went home to find out.

A RUSTING SIGN BEARING a picture of a Holstein cow and the words "Holowka Farm" swings in the wind at the end of a long, dirt lane. Marie Holowka, age 73, is making her way in an old, green pick-up truck, insistent on saving me the trouble of driving over the lane's many deep ruts, filled with water from the morning's rain.

We cannot go into the farmhouse, she explains when we reach it, because her sister is very ill. We sit in the truck, and Marie Holowka begins her story. "We were milking about 70 cows then, and we started to milk about quarter to four every morning. I think I milked about three cows, and all of a sudden the barn windows started to rattle, and the barn started to shake. And my brother said, 'Oh, my God, that's an earthquake.' And I said, 'Paul, do you hear it under the ground?' It was going brrrp, brrrp, brrrp, like boiling water in a pot. I said, 'Paul, that isn't an earthquake; that must be something happening at Three Mile Island.'" The nuclear accident at TMI began at 3:58 that morning.

Marie continues: "I finished milking about 10 minutes to seven. When I opened the door, it was just breaking day, and right away my eyes started to pinch me and there was a funny taste in my mouth. It was real blue, and I couldn't see for more than 10 feet." Marie felt so weak that morning, she fell three times on the way back to the farmhouse.

She and her brother, Paul, couldn't get any news about Three Mile Island on the local radio that morning. Finally, at 9 o'clock they heard on a Philadelphia station that there had been a major accident. The radio warned people to stay in their homes, shut all their windows, and stuff rags under their doors to keep out radioactive gases.

About 11 o'clock a county agent came and told them to feed their cows and leave them enough hay for three days. According to Marie, he said, "They should live that long if the nuclear power doesn't kill them from the accident." He also told them to pack and get ready for evacuation.

Still there was no news on local radio stations, and no word that they should evacuate. Young people who didn't have any livestock began leaving, according to Marie. Many older people stayed because they had nowhere to go. A neighbor called to say, "I just counted, and I have enough bullets to shoot my cows; I don't want them to suffer if I leave."

AFTER THE ACCIDENT the Holowkas and many of their neighbors broke out in a rash that wouldn't heal. In May 1979, Marie developed a sore throat that lasted until August, when she was diagnosed with an infected thyroid. The following August, during a routine checkup, her doctor told her she had cancer. He asked her if she felt scared. "Why should I be scared?" she said. "Everybody in our neighborhood has cancer." She believes she was hit by a radioactive plume from TMI.

Marie Holowka has had six cancer operations and 39 radiation treatments. She was taken off chemotherapy last July, because her blood is poor and the marrow in her bones has stopped rebuilding. She has lost most of her hair, her mouth is blistered, and she still has a tumor in her chest.

The week of the accident, several of the Holowkas' calves got sick, and a couple died. Since TMI first began operating, the Holowkas have lost more than 200 cows; their herd is down to 40 now. Two state veterinarians came and took blood and tissue samples from some of the dead animals. They found no diseases or poison, according to Paul.

"It used to be when a calf was born, you knew it was going to grow up," says Marie. "If it was a heifer, you knew you were going to have a cow. But not anymore. You just try to raise them, and they go so long, and then they just lay down and die."

Paul and Marie and their sister, Eva, have been on this farm for 52 years, since the time that their father purchased it. In their home is an array of grand-champion blue ribbons they have won for cattle they have showed in several eastern states.

They have persistently written and called Three Mile Island officials, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and congressional committees, trying to get an official response to their crisis. According to Paul, mostly they get told that they are making too much trouble.

Margaret Reilly of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Radiation Protection once paid a visit. Says Paul, "She tried to tell us we didn't know how to farm," alleging that the cows were overbred or underfed. According to both Paul and Marie, she brought out a machine for measuring radiation, and as soon as she turned it on, the needle shot way up. "She popped her eyes wide, and she said, 'I wonder what [TMI plant operator Metropolitan Edison] is doing today,'" says Paul. Then she told them the radioactivity was caused by uranium in the stones used to build their barn. She took a gallon of milk for testing with her when she left, but, according to Paul, he and Marie were never told the results.

Levels of radioiodine 131 were discovered in milk around the nuclear plant after the accident, and local milk companies refused to accept milk from farmers near TMI. The Holowkas now only milk for themselves and raise calves to sell. Their 163-acre farm, once thriving with livestock and fields of tomatoes, corn, and beans, has fallen into disrepair.

Paul Holowka once studied nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics at Temple University. He keeps an instrument for measuring radiation and takes readings several times a day. He has spent much of the rest of his time in the last several years taking Marie to and from the hospital.

As Marie and I jolt back out to the end of the lane, she begins, "See that big white house? Mister and Missus died of cancer in that big house--just this past year." Pointing to a stone farmhouse, she continues, "And right there, he was 41, he died about three years ago from cancer. Right across the road there, she died right after the accident; she was 31 years old. There the man had the rash so bad, he finally died with it. There was a little boy here died in the hospital--his heart was on top of his chest. Not last summer, but the summer before that, we had 14 neighbors died right around here. This is practically a new neighborhood."

Marie and Paul Holowka, along with many of their neighbors, are convinced that their troubles stem from the towers visible from the edge of their property--the two that belch steam around the clock as well as the two that now stand ominously silent. They can't prove that their conviction is true. And no one can disprove it.

They, and others like them, are at the heart of a decade-long debate that has drawn in doctors and lawyers, mothers and legislators, pastors and farmers, and some of the best minds in the history of the nuclear industry. What everyone seems to agree on, from the operators of the Three Mile Island plant to the psychologists who have done documented studies, is that the trauma of the accident has raised levels of stress, depression, and fear among people in the vicinity of the plant.

But there the consensus seems to end. What remains are personal stories and, among those for whom Three Mile Island is more than just a bad memory, a heated controversy that boils, it seems, just short of meltdown.

IN MAY OF 1979, MARY Osborn's daughter carried a bouquet of daisies home to her after school. Among the bunch were two severely deformed flowers, and when her daughter led her to the field where she had picked them, Mary found about 25 more.

In October Osborn sent both of her young children out into the yard to collect leaves for crayon rubbings. The maple leaves they brought back were too large to fit under the paper. Seven months before, on the morning of the accident, she recalls the air seeming "full of metal--you couldn't tell if you were swallowing it or breathing it."

Mary Osborn is not a botanist or radiation specialist. She is a mother who simply began taking note of an array of flower and plant deformities in her neighborhood, and then in other communities around the Three Mile Island plant.

As sun streams through her picture window, past hanging ferns and impatiens and begonias, she brings out a large, flat box wrapped in gold ribbon. Carefully untying it, she pulls out huge maple leaves pressed between sheets of newspaper and a now-brittle, 31-inch dandelion leaf picked on a ridge near TMI. One of the maple leaves, she says, repeatedly registered radioactivity when a Geiger counter was passed over it. In small boxes she has a two-headed miniature sunflower, fused and leathery maple leaves, dandelions with thickened and curled stems, and a rosebud on a long stem growing from the center of another bloom.

Osborn was recently invited to West Germany to talk about Three Mile Island with people in the path of the radioactive cloud that left Chernobyl after the Soviet reactor's disastrous accident in April 1986. She noted that people had found particular plant abnormalities in the same progression that she had. Some of the people she met gave her specimens of the strange flowers that had come up in their yards and gardens. One man talked about finding some unusual dandelions--with leaves more than 30 inches long.

Mary Osborn has a signed affidavit, presented in a hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, from world-renowned botanist Dr. James E. Gunckel, who has researched the effects of radiation on plant growth and development for 39 years at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and Rutgers University. Detailing types of plant effects and radiation, his affidavit states that, after carefully examining plant specimens after the TMI accident, he found "a number of anomalies entirely comparable to those induced by ionizing radiation."

Both of Osborn's children have been hospitalized at times, she says, that correlate with announced releases of radioactivity from TMI--her daughter for a week with a fever of unknown origin and her son with respiratory trouble. He went in on a New Year's Day. Mary says that at the hospital "there were babies in the aisles--there were no more cribs for kids." She is quick to caution that not every ailment should be blamed on the power plant, but adds that "when you can correlate something that happened down there with what's happened to you or your family, it really gets bizarre."

IF ANYTHING, JANE LEE IS outspoken and forthright, a constant thorn in the side of the nuclear industry and the public officials from whom she has demanded a response regarding problems in the wake of Three Mile Island. She is also a constant giver of care to the animals that live in the shadow of the tall, aqua silos that distinguish this farm from the others in the rural town of Etters, on the west bank of the Susquehanna.

Lee painstakingly tells the story of a duck, born unable to walk, flopping around behind its mother. When the duck lost her down, the feathers that came in, instead of being smooth and flat, were brittle and stuck up like quills. Lee fashioned a sling on a long string for under her body, and tried to "do some therapy." One person kidded her, "You know, the neighbors see you walking a duck, you're in trouble."

The duck lived only five months. She was perhaps lucky simply to have been alive at all. After the TMI accident, according to Lee, great numbers of eggs never hatched.

Lee began to notice some problems around the farm--in operation since the first German settlers came here 200 years ago--even before the accident at Three Mile Island, not long after the nuclear power plant began operating. She is very concerned about the "routine" releases of radioactivity from the plant, as well as the consequences of the accident.

She began to see an increase in spontaneous abortions and stillbirths on the farm. Some of the calves that were born alive were unable to walk. She mentioned these problems to Dr. Robert Weber, a veterinarian who has had a practice in the area for 35 years. "You're not the only one," she says he replied. "We're having problems all over the place." When Lee asked him what he meant, he said, "I don't know what's going on, but in a five-mile radius of that plant down there, we've got serious problems on the farms all around," she recounts.

Weber mentioned that he normally performed one or two Caesarean deliveries a year, but after the accident he was doing about one a week, and he said recently to Lee, "Now I'm going day and night." The animals are suffering from constriction of the cervix and are simply not able to deliver their young.

With some research, Lee discovered that the reproductive systems of animals are particularly vulnerable to low-level radiation. One of the affected hormones, relaxin, is the one that triggers and prepares the body for labor. The Three Mile Island accident happened at the worst possible time of the year for animals, she points out--the females were just beginning to give birth to their young.

Litters of kittens came out stillborn and hairless; dogs were born without eyes; other animals were born dwarfed or retarded. Some livestock developed raw sores and lesions, others muscle deficiencies. Pigs had trouble breeding, as did the Dauphin County coroner's five thoroughbred horses, according to Lee. She has carefully documented a range of problems among the animals in the vicinity of the plant.

JANE LEE IS DISTURBED about the dismissal of the problems by public officials. She pulls out a slim report issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency in October 1980. "Did you ever see a government report this thin?" she asks. The report concludes that none of the reported plant and animal problems experienced around TMI could be linked to the power plant. "They came in here and talked to us and then they went back and wrote this thing up," she says. "And they did it in a matter of days." There were no soil or water or feed samples examined, and no blood or tissue samples taken from animals, according to Lee.

"The animals are giving us clear signals as to what's wrong in our environment," says Lee. "Human beings don't seem to understand that what happens to the animals who eat and sleep and feed in the environment is also going to happen to humans."

Just as she was starting to notice widespread birthing problems among animals, she read an article about a coroner expressing concern about a surge in crib deaths in York County. She went to a library and sorted through newspaper obituaries, finding a substantial increase in stillbirths and crib deaths in the area she believed had received a heavy-dose plume of radiation.

Lee later uncovered a report by Dr. Alice Stewart, one of the world's most respected radiological epidemiologists, credited with discovering the link between X-rays and fetal abnormalities. In this paper, Dr. Stewart detailed how the exposure of fetuses to radiation depletes the oxygen in their blood. After birth, the breathing of these children becomes sublevel, and they are unable to push away the mucus in their breathing passages. "There are a lot of women walking around today," says Lee, "blaming themselves because their infant suffocated."

Lee brings out a large map of the TMI area, with a multitude of overlays. Some, she says, show the paths of radioactive plumes from the nuclear power plant. Others show health effects--cancers and cancer deaths, thyroid problems, respiratory ailments, leukemias, skin rashes, and reports of "metallic taste." One solitary dot marks a dentist's office where 75 unexposed films in a desk drawer were discovered exposed after the accident--"there's a definite correlation between that and gamma radiation," says Lee.

Jane Lee is persistent in pressing for answers from the government and the nuclear industry. "If I keep quiet, then I'm as bad as they are for letting it happen," she explains.

I ask what she thinks it will take to get the industry to respond. She lays out a frightening scenario: "There is going to be an accident so bad, with breach of containment, that they will not be able to cover up the effects. It will have to happen in a place like New York City or Chicago where a lot of people die. If they want the bodies stacked up, then maybe they'll listen to what we were trying to tell them. When that happens, it will be the end of nuclear power. It won't happen before that."

JOYCE CORRADI SITS AT THE low table where the children she keeps for day care every day eat lunch and do artwork. She is surrounded by pine boughs and ribbon and works on a Christmas wreath as we talk in her Middletown home. Her five children are in an adjoining room singing along with a record playing "O Come, All Ye Faithful." Her youngest, Mark, interrupts to ask her to cut the wheels off of a small toy skateboard he wants to transform into a surfboard.

Her life, Corradi says, was her family and the local PTA. That was before TMI. It is clear as she talks that concern for her family is still at the heart of what she does--she has just taken that concern into new and unlikely arenas.

Corradi, some neighbors, and women in her Catholic parish set out to do what they felt the government and nuclear industry had "grossly failed" to do in the wake of the accident--safeguard the health of their children. They formed Concerned Mothers and Women, an organization that, as Corradi describes it, is made up of women "about as average as you can come across."

Acknowledging that they had more concern than expertise, the women began meeting regularly with nuclear industry and political officials, as well as members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, demanding answers and accountability. The attitude of Metropolitan Edison toward them at first, she says, was, "You are basically a nuisance; please go home and bake your cookies."

Corradi was disturbed by the arrogance of the experts. "Those people were lying," she says. "I mean, first there was no accident; then there was a little accident; and then there might be a big accident but we really know how to handle it," was the word from the industry. She adds, "Now [scientists] are bringing out more and more data that say the accident was indeed very grave," referring to recently released reports that the temperature inside the reactor exceeded 5,000 degrees and 50 percent of the reactor core melted.

Eventually, she says, it got "to the point where [the nuclear industry] had told so many lies to so many people that the facade was beginning to crack" and they had to respond to groups like Concerned Mothers and Women. The best thing the group has done, she adds, is to "say to many people, in many areas, women as mothers and citizens have very strong concerns for the health and safety of their children, and that cannot be ignored."

The experience of the Three Mile Island accident, Corradi says, has changed her life. For one thing, she thinks she and her friends should be awarded Ph.D.s for all the technical knowledge they have acquired over the past decade. Before TMI, she would never have pictured herself going in her Sunday clothes after church to picket at the gates of a nuclear power plant, where one afternoon she encountered a tourist with TMI on his list of attractions ("abominable," she says) who labeled her a communist.

JOYCE CORRADI IS OUTSPOKEN and confrontative of the powers that be, but she also harbors a gentle spirit of reconciliation. Several years ago, when TMI clean-up operations after the accident reached the dangerous point of lifting the head off the damaged reactor, the media wanted a comment from Concerned Mothers and Women. Corradi told them that she and all the other mothers were taking their children to a state park 40 miles away for the day. "But," she added, "our prayers and good wishes are with the men who are physically going to go down there and do that dangerous work" on behalf of the community. She told representatives of the nuclear company that concern for the workers was "a bridge that we both can cross, no matter how I feel about you people."

She recently attacked deficiencies in evacuation strategies for future crises. She points out that, during the last evacuation, most of Harrisburg's black population--"anyone who was poor or disabled"--didn't get out. She says that last time around, people in Middletown were naive about the dangers, and adds, "The next time there is an evacuation, people are going to kill to get out of this community."

Joyce Corradi acknowledges that she is like "David against Goliath," and many people have asked her what good she is doing when the nuclear industry and government always get their way. She answers, "I can't look at my five kids and say, 'They were going to do what they wanted anyway, so why should I bother?' I have to say to them, 'I tried.'"

The reason she keeps on is rooted in what happened to her oldest son, Tony, then 9, at the time that the family evacuated. With strong emotion and disturbingly graphic detail, she describes the scene: "My son threw up a vile green slime, the color of Comet cleanser, and it scared the hell out of me. And to this day, other than two doctors from Japan who told me that it was a reaction to radiation, no one has ever confirmed what that was or what that may have done to my son."

The presence of Japanese doctors in the area after the accident was both disturbing and comforting. They had done studies on survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings and came expecting to find more data on radiation victims. When Corradi told them about her son, one pulled out a pile of paint tiles and asked her to point to the color of what he had expelled. The seriousness with which they took the problem was in direct contrast to government officials who told Joyce it "must have been something he ate."

When Corradi conceived Mark after the accident, she was very concerned about his health. When he was born, he had growths on his ears that had to be surgically removed. The pediatric surgeon could not explain them. "Was it just a hereditary fluke, or was it something that was caused by the accident?" asks Joyce. "Who can answer?

"I believe that there are some real medical problems that we may have to face down the road," she continues. "To tell my children otherwise is to do what I have accused the [nuclear power] company of doing. If I said to them, 'There's no problem,' that would be like saying, 'Let's not tell them the truth; let's pretend we have an answer.'" Corradi talks again about her oldest son.

"He turned 19 yesterday," she says. "He seems healthy, he's productive, he's happy and, please God, let it be that way. But who's to say that somewhere down the road it won't be? What happens when he has children, or when his children have children? Those are questions children should not have to live with."

THE SEEMINGLY HIGH incidence of cancer in neighborhoods around TMI and the lack of response from the officials who should have been collecting health data moved some citizens to take action. Norman and Marjorie Aamodt, who had years of technical experience conducting surveys for Bell Laboratories, developed a methodology for a health survey. Dr. Carl Johnson, a physician and public health official in Colorado who documented an increase of cancers around the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, developed a questionnaire, and physician Bruce Molholt of the Environmental Protection Agency lent his support. Several citizens, including Mary Osborn, Jane Lee, and Joyce Corradi, went door to door interviewing in April and May of 1984. In the three areas they surveyed, they discovered a sevenfold increase over the expected number of cancers.

The Aamodts sent their report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to receive verification. The NRC forwarded it to the Centers for Disease Control. However, Marjorie says, the NRC enlarged the pages so that the numbers were lost and only sent about half the report, which was dismissed by the CDC. Independent scientists later verified the Aamodts' methodology and conclusions.

The report was disturbing, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health immediately moved to undermine it, accusing the Aamodts in a press conference of faulty methodology and, worse, of lying, according to Marjorie. The Department of Health carried out its own cancer study, released in the fall of 1985, which concluded that no adverse health effects had been found in people living in prescribed 5- and 10-mile radius zones from Three Mile Island.

The Department of Health study was discredited by both Dr. Robert A. Hultquist, a Pennsylvania State University professor of statistics, and Dr. George Hutchison, a Harvard University professor of epidemiology, according to a report in The Harrisburg Patriot-News. They observed that the study had been distorted by the inclusion of 150,000 people who lived beyond the designated zones--more than 40 percent of those factored in the study--which led to severely diluted conclusions about the rate of cancers around the plant.

DESPITE THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH'S attempted assurances, at least 2,000 people in the area believe that they have experienced health effects as a result of the TMI accident--strongly enough to have brought lawsuits against Metropolitan Edison and GPU Nuclear Corporation (General Public Utilities, the reorganized offshoot of Metropolitan Edison that took over management of the plant after the accident). The lawsuits represent, as one reporter put it, "an enormous catalog of human suffering"--cancers of all types, miscarriages, birth defects, leukemias, kidney and thyroid problems.

Some of the suits have already been settled out of court, although details have not been made public; it is widely believed that part of the settlement of these cases is that the victims are not to speak about them. Cases involving children by law must be made public, and at last count, according to those following the situation, some $4 million had been paid out. A representative of GPU stated clearly that these settlements do not admit guilt on the part of the company; they were simply settled to avoid court costs.

Procedure regarding the remaining cases has been shuttled between federal and state courts, and the overwhelming number has led a Pennsylvania judge to order plaintiffs and defendants to pick six cases each, to be tried as representatives of all the rest. Fred Speaker, spokesperson for the nuclear industry's case, says that a key argument for the defense is that the statute of limitations has run out on many of the cases. The outcome of that argument, plus the resolution of the proper jurisdiction for the cases, places the possibility of trials "no sooner than 1990," says Speaker.

According to Speaker, studies show that persons in the vicinity of the plant received radiation the equivalent of "less than one chest X-ray." He says the burden of proof rests with the plaintiffs, adding, "Unless we win all of these cases, there will be claims filed probably for the next 30 years." Asked his chances, he says, "I think we have a very good shot at this, ultimately. We've won almost all of the legal battles so far."

Arnold Levin, attorney for the plaintiffs, calls the actions of Metropolitan Edison/GPU at the time of the accident "grossly negligent ... They withheld information from the public and made statements saying there was nothing to worry about. If that's not irresponsible conduct, then I don't know what is."

"What's at stake," says Eric Epstein of the citizens group Three Mile Island Alert, "is the entire nuclear power industry. If the health claims are proven out, the whole industry would be indicted."

THE CONTENTION ALL along of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, as well as the nuclear industry, has been that not enough radiation was released from the TMI accident to have created the health problems being reported. Margaret Reilly of the Bureau of Radiation Protection said that the amount of radioactivity released at the time of the accident amounted to a "gnat's eyelash."

The official information put out by GPU Nuclear Corporation lists common health complaints and offers condescending dismissals of them: Metallic taste may be a result of dietary supplements; irritation of the eyes can be caused by infections, allergies, and chemical irritants; rectal bleeding is a common symptom of hemorrhoids; skin rashes result from cosmetics, exposure to sunlight, and "normal aging processes."

One of the most disturbing realities about the accident is that no one will ever know precisely how much radiation was released. The Three Mile Island Public Health Fund, which was established after the early legal settlements and is currently underwriting a health survey conducted by Columbia University, commissioned a preliminary study of radiation monitoring during the accident.

The report was released in August 1984 by principal investigator Dr. Jan Beyea, senior energy scientist with the National Audubon Society. The study found that "the monitoring network in place, both inside and outside the plant, did not perform adequately"; that "environmental sampling ... was insufficiently coordinated, with problems in labeling and calibration"; and that "a great deal of crucial data does not exist, or is unreliable."

The study reported that the thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs), used to detect environmental radiation, appeared to be spaced too far apart, leaving gaps in monitoring. The calibration of the filters used for in-plant measurements of released radioiodine was questioned, and filters were discovered missing after the accident. The study refers to reports that suggest that "many hundreds of times more radioiodine was released ... than was estimated ... in the official studies." It mentions the possibility that large amounts of radioiodine escaped unmonitored into the ground or the Susquehanna River.

Dr. Beyea's November 1988 summation of the situation at the time of the accident was this: "There wasn't enough radiation equipment; half of it wasn't working; and a large amount went off scale, because they [nuclear industry officials] never anticipated such large releases."

He says the Aamodt health study is "a good exploratory study that indicates an excess level of cancer" and commends the Aamodts' "good technical backgrounds" and careful methodology. He questions whether the radiation released was high enough by itself to create such a dramatic rise in cancers and believes that work needs to be done to determine whether chemicals released from the power plant, some perhaps carcinogenic, are a factor.

Beyea concludes with a reference to current efforts to discover the truth about the effects of the accident: "It's an extremely important issue. If one ever wanted to find an example of how not to deal with public concerns, TMI is the prime example."

A DECEMBER 1987 report on radiation monitoring at TMI, released by the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund, concluded that, almost nine years after the accident, significant gaps still existed in monitoring practices. A January 1988 study released by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a two-year effort by a multidisciplinary team of eight scientists headed by IEER Executive Director Dr. Bernd Franke, is more direct. It labels current monitoring practices at Three Mile Island "highly inadequate." It continues, "The emergency monitoring system is so deficient that if an accident occurs during unfavorable weather conditions, the emergency response decision could be fatally wrong."

Based on the findings of the study, Franke concludes, "It appears that environmental monitoring is more of a public relations exercise rather than an effort to design and build a system which will reliably detect emissions once they occur." He is currently working to reconstruct dose levels from the accident. "People were exposed to higher doses than acknowledged. There were 'hot spots' in the area," he says, referring to places affected by plumes of high-level radioactivity. These were not detected, he says, "simply because the plume does not always do you the favor of landing on a detection instrument."

Thomas Gerusky, director of the Bureau of Radiation Protection, says, "I do not believe that there was enough radioactivity released to cause any health effects. I think the only health effects we're seeing are psychological."

When asked about gaps in the data and problems with monitoring, he replies, "No, that's not really true. You can't monitor every square foot of every spot on the land. However, the monitoring that was there was more than adequate to cover the accident, in my opinion." He "doesn't buy" the theory that there were gaps in the monitoring that might have missed plumes of high radioactivity. He says that during the accident, aircraft and people on the ground were monitoring constantly, "and we did not see the kind of levels that would indicate that there was a significant, abnormal release that we didn't know about."

Margaret Reilly of the same bureau says, "I don't know that I would characterize what was there during the accident as inadequate; it was basically comparable with what everybody else had at the time." She says that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, GPU, and the bureau have all increased their TLDs around the plant.

When asked about the missing data, she says, "There was an in-house air sample filter that was missing, which upset a lot of people. I have no idea what happened to it ... But it would have filled an interesting hole, as it were."

Reilly disputes the Holowkas' version of her visit to their farm. "I had a civil defense Geiger counter, which is not the best thing in the world for that sort of measurement. And even if I were to turn on one of those in the office today, you would see the needle bounce back and forth. ... We have better stuff for looking at really low levels [of radiation] now than we did."

She does say that she might have told the Holowkas that there was uranium in the stones of their barn. "But it should not have been detectable," she says. "It's not enough to see legitimate changes with a Geiger counter."

She continues, "The thing is, in this business, it is so rare that one finds actual radioactivity that when you find it, as a technocrat, one tends to jump on it. ... We have all this equipment, and we have people sitting around looking for almost nothing, and if we ever find it, it's looked on as something interesting to get into. And if we think we have something, we certainly follow it."

TWELVE DAYS BEFORE THE TMI accident, Dr. Gordon MacLeod, a friend of Pennsylvania Gov. Richard Thornburgh, assumed his post as the state's secretary of health. During the accident, MacLeod pressed for more medical input on the emergency and urgently called for an evacuation of pregnant women and young children. The crisis was two days old before Thornburgh gave the notice to evacuate.

MacLeod also tried fervently to secure from the federal government a supply of potassium iodide, a liquid that can be taken to block the ingestion of radioiodine and thereby protect the thyroid from damage. The supply arrived five days after the accident--too late for it to do any good--and thousands of the vials were unlabeled or contaminated.

During the inquiry by the Kemeny Commission--the presidential commission established by President Jimmy Carter to investigate the TMI accident--Thomas Gerusky made what MacLeod calls "misstatements." MacLeod later wrote a letter to members of the commission concerning these statements.

In October 1979, seven months after MacLeod assumed his post, Gov. Thornburgh asked for his resignation. MacLeod says, "The only reason given for my requested resignation was a difference in operational style. Well, the governor asked me to serve as secretary of health knowing my operational style--and it didn't change."

When asked about MacLeod's firing, Thomas Gerusky says, "You'd have to ask Gov. Thornburgh; I wasn't involved." Thornburgh was unavailable for comment. As to the incident of MacLeod's letter to the Kemeny Commission, Gerusky says, "I don't recall that."

In some sense, Dr. Gordon MacLeod may have been prophetic at the time of the accident. Simply by consulting the state's vital statistics for the months following the crisis, he found dramatic increases in both infant mortality and hypothyroidism in the areas surrounding TMI.

Dr. George Tokuhata, director of the Division of Epidemiology Research of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, claimed the rise in infant mortality was rooted in the high concentration of minorities--particularly low-income blacks--in Harrisburg. Says MacLeod, "That high concentration of minorities existed before the accident-but this was reported as if it was a valid argument."

Shortly after MacLeod left as secretary of health and returned to his professorship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, someone still in the Pennsylvania Department of Health alerted him to the high rise of hypothyroid cases among children. It was critical that the data be released, says MacLeod, so that the condition could be treated and cretinism avoided in the children. The data were "sitting on someone's desk for three months," he says, until MacLeod himself released the information to the press.

MacLeod's continuing concern is that decisions about nuclear power are being made without adequate health input. Despite his raising the issue 10 years ago, there are still no physicians on the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to MacLeod, and so the future health of people is left in the hands of "a group of physicists, engineers, technicians, and administrators."

SINCE 1952, DR. ERNEST Stemglass has worked on detecting and measuring radiation. He has developed technology to reduce X-ray doses and was a pioneer in the development of the imaging technique of fluoroscopy. He is currently professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

He arrived in Harrisburg the day after the TMI disaster began. "I was very concerned," Stemglass says, "because I had taken a Geiger counter with me, and as we were flying into the airport, the readings went up between 5 and 10 times the normal background [radiation]. Riding in the taxicab into the city, I noticed the meter going up and down, indicating large pockets of radioactive air ... I knew that whether or not there was going to be a meltdown that would lead to a catastrophic release ... certainly the most vulnerable individuals--young children and women who were pregnant--should be immediately evacuated."

Stemglass talks of the false assumption that has fueled the nuclear industry for decades: Extrapolating from data on survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, it was concluded that low doses of radiation have very little effect. But, says Stemglass, there is not a direct, linear relationship between dose and effect, and low-level radiation is much more harmful than has generally been accepted.

Stemglass says that "there's no question" that Gerusky, Tokuhata, and others intentionally distorted and suppressed health data. He says, "In fact, there is just no other way to explain the changes in the vital statistics that took place the following year."

He found that the U.S. vital statistics, published monthly, showed a peak of infant mortality during the first year after the accident. "The following year," he says, "these peaks disappeared from the revised data." He also discovered that infant mortality dropped 20 to 25 percent during the time that the plant was shut down. "A year or two later," says Stemglass, "the data were revised so as to fill in this valley, thereby eliminating the evidence in the final printed volume of the U.S. vital statistics." He also uncovered that data showing a rise in deaths at the time of the accident were deliberately withheld until after the presidential commission had made its report.

Stemglass says we have "only seen the tip of the iceberg. Many of the cancers take 10 to 15 to 20 years to show up. All we can say is that we have greatly increased the chances of premature death and congenital defects and loss of immune resistance in our population around... nuclear reactors." He quotes a study on mortality in the United States by Dr. Jay Gould of Public Data Access, who "found a clear rise after 1979 amounting to a minimum of 50,000 and as high as 90,000" deaths in one year.

DURING THE WEEK that I was in the area of Three Mile Island, the Pennsylvania Department of Health released its most recent health study, which concluded that there was no evidence of increased cancer in the area. The only effect it found was low birthweight among some infants, which was the result of mothers taking extra medication, such as tranquilizers and sleeping pills, at the time of the accident, according to Dr. George Tokuhata.

When I mention that a previous Department of Health study was soundly discredited by Drs. Hutchison and Hultquist, Tokuhata says, "I was not aware of their comments." When I quote the source of the information, he says, "I remember reading newspaper articles--in local newspapers." But, he adds, "There was no conclusion there--just a critique."

When I bring up Dr. Stemglass' allegations, Tokuhata responds, "He's been saying this all over the place--Savannah River, Colorado [Rocky Flats]"--referring to Stemglass' work on health problems in the vicinity of nuclear weapons production plants. "There's absolutely no truth in. it--he's that kind of a person. ... He has evidence absolutely no one would agree with."

But, in fact, there are many people in the area surrounding Three Mile Island who are convinced of its dangers and potential dangers. After the disaster in TMI's Unit Two reactor, Unit One was shut down. When NRC hearings were initiated to determine GPU's competence to run the plant, citizens mobilized to try to prevent the restart of Unit One.

The record of Metropolitan Edison and GPU was not what one would call clean. Documented records showed that Unit Two, which had been in operation for only three months before the accident, had a history of maintenance-caused failures in its main water feed system, which was the source of the accident.

The official U.S. House of Representatives committee report on the accident, issued March 1981, offered this indictment: "... TMI managers did not communicate information in their possession that they understood to be related to the severity of the situation ... [which] prevented State and Federal officials from accurately assessing the condition of the plant. In addition, the record indicates that TMI managers presented State and Federal officials misleading statements (i.e. ... inaccurate and incomplete) that conveyed the impression the accident was substantially less severe and the situation more under control than what the managers themselves believed and what was in fact the case."

Also in 1981 the NRC held hearings on a cheating scandal that was uncovered among TMI's operators in training. Even more scandalous, it was discovered that the power company had been falsifying data on radioactive release rates within the plant. According to Marjorie Aamodt, while researching NRC documents she found evidence that the NRC was aware of the falsification but had done nothing about it.

In 1983 GPU Nuclear Corporation was indicted on 11 criminal counts related to falsifying and destroying safety data. The corporation pleaded guilty and was convicted on two of the counts; it pleaded no contest to the other nine.

It came to light later, as reported in The Toronto Star, that the late, prominent Naval nuclear expert Adm. Hyman G. Rickover--on whose staff a few of GPU's officers had served--had written reports supporting restart of Unit One in return for a donation of $380,000 by GPU to an educational foundation he had formed, according to his son, Robert Rickover. Further, Rickover's daughter-in-law, Jane Rickover, swore in a notarized affidavit that her father-in-law had told her that he had used his personal influence with President Jimmy Carter to pressure him to "suppress the most alarming aspects" of the presidential commission report on the TMI accident and release it in "a highly diluted form." Adm. Rickover had told her, according to the affidavit, that "the report, if published in its entirety, would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry, because the accident at Three Mile Island was infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public."

IN JANUARY 1985, alleging that radioactive releases from TMI had created health and plant effects, that Metropolitan Edison/GPU had falsified leak-rate reports and tried to deceive the public about the seriousness of the accident, and that the data on radioactivity that the company claims were lost during the accident "were more likely intentionally destroyed to prevent disclosure of the hazard," the Aamodts brought a motion before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct further hearings before licensing the company to restart Unit One. Their motion was denied.

The NRC set the restart date for June 11, 1985. In response, the Aamodts, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Three Mile Island Alert, and even Gov. Richard Thornburgh (who later became President Ronald Reagan's attorney general) joined in a legal appeal to block the restart on the grounds that GPU's character and competence to run the plant safely had not yet been proven. The Aamodts eventually took their plea all the way to the Supreme Court.

On May 18, 1982, citizens in three counties surrounding the plant had voted 2-to-l in a non-binding referendum to keep the plant shut down. Concerned citizens, including Eric Epstein and Mary Osborn, repeatedly participated in actions of nonviolent civil disobedience, blocking TMI's gates on several occasions. In one case, the jury found the defendants guilty, but on the basis of the expert testimony offered in the trial, issued a statement calling for keeping Unit One shut down.

In a May 1984 rally organized by Concerned Mothers and Women, a Pennsylvania state representative said, "We are here to say no. We have said no. How many more times will we have to say it?" Joel Roth, vice chair of an NRC advisory panel, said, according to The Harrisburg Patriot-News, "I'd like to see a big sign ... that says, 'This nuclear facility was closed because it was the will of the people.'"

Despite all the citizen opposition, the criminal conviction of GPU, and increasing complaints of health problems, on October 9, 1985, TMI's Unit One reactor was put back in operation. Eric Epstein says, "What became clear was that the plant was going to restart no matter what we did. As a result, probably one of the greatest tolls ... is the demise of democracy and ... [people's] faith in democracy."

He says of GPU, "They've brought nothing but heartaches and bad times to this community. They have done so many... incredibly devastating things to this community, there's no way they can regain the trust. When you have an accident with a core that exceeds 5,000 degrees, and you put people through the nightmare that you put them through, it's very hard to go out in a three-piece suit and talk nice and convince them that everything is OK--especially when you're a convicted felon."

GORDON TOMB, media relations manager for GPU Nuclear, meets me at the bridge that leads over to Three Mile Island. As we drive through the plant complex, on streets with names like Liberty and Justice, he points to the huge casks of radioactive waste that have been taken from the damaged reactor and are on their way by rail to the DOE-run Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Inside a control room, we watch on video monitors the operations inside the reactor. Workers dressed in bulky protective clothing, in constant radio contact with the control room, are attempting what has never been done before--to dig through a damaged reactor core and mounds of highly radioactive debris to get to the bottom of the accident at TMI. Some of the work has had to be done under water, and the clean-up process had just been delayed by six months due to problems cutting through steel plating around the fuel.

The future of TMI's Unit Two reactor is another point of hot contention in central Pennsylvania. GPU wants to put it in "Post Defueling Monitored Storage"--or "moth-balling," as it is more commonly called--for at least 30 years. According to Eric Epstein, GPU is "postponing [the decontamination and decommissioning], hoping that the technology will be developed." Meanwhile, he says, that leaves Three Mile Island "an unstable, radioactive waste site" well into the next century.

Gordon Tomb admits that during the accident the company gave out "conflicting information, confusing information, and inadequate information," attributing it to the company being "ill-prepared" for the kind of accident it faced. He also expresses regret that the accident "frightened people."

But he says that the "amount of radiation released has been established," and it was not enough to have created the kind of health effects people in the area have been reporting. He guesses that most of these people "are completely sincere in what they say and believe," but adds, "Honestly, sincerity isn't good enough." He says that as for health concerns, "It's been pretty much put to rest--maybe that's an overstatement, because there are 2,000-plus cases pending--but as far as the industry is concerned, it's been put to rest."

He acknowledges that GPU pleaded guilty to two indictments, but adds, "I'm not sure that [records] were actually falsified--but it was at least sloppy." Of other violations that have been documented by Three Mile Island Alert, some involving issuing of warnings or fines by the NRC--including plant operators asleep on the job, use of drugs and alcohol by operators, incidents of radioactive contamination in the plant, and improper safety procedures--Tomb says the incidents "typically have some basis in fact, but are typically skewed to serve TMI Alert's purposes." He adds that a violation read out of context "sounds, quite frankly, a lot worse than it is." He points out that in the year ending March 1988, TMI's Unit One reactor had the world's fifth-best operating record on the basis of capacity.

Of the referendum to keep Unit One shut down, Tomb says, "These issues are too complicated and not appropriately addressed in a referendum," then adds, "We have an obligation to our customers to provide electricity." Picking up the theme later, he says, "We need clean, safe energy for the well-being of this country and the world. There are a lot of hungry people out there whose well-being depends on economical power as a real important source."

STORED IN HUGE TANKS ON Three Mile Island is a major by-product of the accident that will not easily go away--2.3 million gallons of radioactive water. What should happen to it is as heated a controversy as the debate over health effects.

GPU's first plan was to dump the radioactive water into the Susquehanna River, according to Frances Skolnick, who is an "intervener" on behalf of citizens in the TMI area concerned about the water. Citizens successfully blocked that plan. The current GPU proposal is to evaporate the water and release the radioactive gas into the air. Quoting a friend, Skolnick says of GPU's alternatives, "They're asking, 'Do we want to be shot in the foot, or do we want to be shot in the arm?'"

Skolnick and others are particularly concerned about the evaporation plan in light of the highly toxic, radioactive tritium that would be released to the environment. Says Skolnick, "It's a totally unnecessary exposure to low-level radiation." She continues, "People have been onslaughted by the accident and then 10 years of continuous exposure. ... Why do they want to subject people to any more?"

Skolnick feels that the nuclear industry wants to set a precedent. If the evaporation is successful, it will be seen as the "perfect cure" for liquid radioactive waste. The resolution of the issue has major implications for the nuclear industry. As a representative of citizens in the area, Skolnick is advocating that the water remain stored on the island until its radioactivity decays.

I met Frances Skolnick at hearings by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), where she faced a phalanx of lawyers representing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and GPU, who were armed with reams of testimony by physicians and radiation experts on the safety of the evaporation plan. She explains that the ASLB judges are paid by the same body that pays the NRC lawyers and that, rather than getting the truth on the record as is their mandate, "As every day passed, it was obvious that their objective was to undermine me." A decision by the board was still pending as Sojourners went to press.

Frances Skolnick has pursued the crusade on behalf of central Pennsylvania's citizens at great personal cost. "I won't quit," she says, "because I'm speaking for my two children, who are not at the point of their lives where they're able to stand up and speak. And I'm speaking for my friends' children, too. We're deciding the future for them."

Gordon Tomb says that the amount of radiation that would be released by evaporating the water "isn't even measurable." He dismisses the opinions of well-known nuclear scientists Dr. Karl Morgan, who testified before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on the evaporation issue, and Dr. John Gofman. He says that their opinions "represent the views of an extreme minority of scientists" and "are not considered credible by the experts in the field." He says that "reputable scientists" concur that the radiation releases at the time of the accident were too small to cause health effects, and that they "had nothing to lose but their own credibility and reputations if they sought to distort the records."

DR. JOHN GOFMAN TELLS A different story. Gofman is professor emeritus of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has received worldwide acclaim for his work on heart disease. He is a pioneer in radiation research who co-discovered the fissionability of Uranium-233 and isolated the world's first workable quantities of plutonium for the Manhattan Project, the enterprise that developed the atomic bomb, during the 1940s.

In 1963 Gofman became associate director of the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory and founder of its Biomedical Research Division. He and a colleague were given the task to find out the health effects of radiation. They came to the conclusion that radiation was 20 times more harmful in producing cancer than was thought. Gofman released this information publicly. "Up to that moment," he says, "the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission, forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission] considered me a 'fair-haired boy,' because I didn't say anything that they didn't want to have said." But, he says, at that moment, "the roof caved in on me. And they started essentially a war against ... me." They took away all Gofman's laboratory research funds. Before his study, one AEC commissioner had told him, "All we want you to do is tell the truth," according to Gofman; but, he says, "There was nothing they wanted less than the truth.

"I don't have any respect for the NRC," he says. "I think they are much more concerned with the financial health of the utilities... and they tend always to minimize health effects of radiation. So I don't trust anything that comes out under the auspices of the NRC...or the DOE [Department of Energy], My experience with them is that they're no better than the old AEC. They tend to hide things."

Indeed the entire sweep of nuclear history--from the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, to bomb tests in the Pacific Islands and the Nevada Test Site, to the current controversy over high incidences of cancer in the vicinity of nuclear weapons production plants--is an immense catalog of attempts to cover up the effects of radiation and marginalize and discredit those scientists who, like Gofman, have attempted to expose the truth. This abysmal history is documented in Killing Our Own, by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon.

In that book is an astounding quote by John Gofman. Gofman was part of the team that developed the atomic bomb, the initial rationale for which was stopping Nazi atrocities and experimentation on humans. But, Gofman says, in the United States "we have already accepted the policy of experimentation on involuntary human subjects. ... I feel that at least several hundred scientists trained in the biomedical aspect of atomic energy--myself definitely included--are candidates for Nuremberg-type trials for crimes against humanity through our gross negligence and irresponsibility." And, he adds, "Now that we know the hazard of low-dose radiation, the crime is not experimentation--it's murder." Gofman stands by this quote, adding, "I have repeatedly stated that setting permitted levels of radiation exposure for people is the same as saying you think it's permissible to have a certain amount of random murders."

Gofman says that the Three Mile Island accident remains a "kind of mystery," its health effects uncertain. He adds that it was "just a lucky break for all of us" that the reactor didn't go on to a complete meltdown.

Gofman says, "I don't believe for a minute that they [the nuclear industry] really believe in the safety of their reactors." He mentions the Price-Anderson Act, which substantially limits the industry's liability for its accidents. "If you won't put your money where your mouth is, you don't believe what you're saying--it's just that obvious." He wants to see the nuclear power industry shut down, he says, because, "I can only foresee ... that they're going to steadily contaminate the earth more, and there will be a very high price the people will pay for it."

TEN YEARS AFTER THE accident that shook central Pennsylvania and the nation, the fall-out continues. For many, the accident was a life-changing experience that still carries deep spiritual and emotional impact.

Rev. Gregory Harbaugh received his formal call to serve as associate pastor of the Lakeside Lutheran Church in Harrisburg the weekend TMI blew. His first response was, "Am I going to have a place to go to?" He found a congregation that was dealing with a great deal of stress, confusion, and fear. Gregory Harbaugh sees nuclear power as "not only a dangerous way to boil water, but also a dangerous way of concentrating power in the hands of a relatively few people." In the aftermath of the accident, his congregation became divided over TMI, and some pro-nuclear members left the church. He says, "People are still anxious about it, but I think they largely feel powerless to do anything."

After the accident, people often asked Harbaugh, "Where is God in all this?" He says, "I was saying, 'God is right here.'... Most of us have an image of God as Superman--'Why didn't Superman come in and rescue us from this terrible thing?' We tend to divorce God from the cross, so that the concept of God present with us, suffering with us, doesn't register very well."

Joyce Corradi remembers that after the accident, the bishop of her Catholic diocese came to her parish and granted the entire church general absolution, or pardon for all sins. She says, "That is unheard of, except in a very dire crisis" such as extreme emergencies or times of war.

Some people talk about the converting power of the accident. David Messner, an administrator in the Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs, says he used to be "a preacher of left-wing politics" who had "absorbed the doomsday scenarios by environmentalists uncritically." The accident pushed him to read about nuclear power, and he became convinced that the media were exaggerating the danger.

After the accident, Messner and others formed Friends and Family of TMI, which sells souvenirs at the TMI visitors center and has promoted nuclear power through such efforts as providing prizes for pro-nuclear science projects at area schools. Messner feels the risk to TMI workers "substantially increases when they leave the island and drive out on Route 441" and believes that nuclear power "gives the Third World an option out of chopping down the rainforests to generate electricity."

But it appears that the overwhelming number of conversions has been in the other direction. Rep. Bruce Smith, a Pennsylvania state legislator, was chair of the board of Newberry Township at the time of the accident. He says, "The news media called me for my reaction to the accident, but I hadn't been informed of it. ... The state police went to neighborhoods [to alert people to evacuate], but they skipped some, including mine."

Smith, whose views represent well those of his people in this largely Republican, conservative area whose major newspaper is called The Patriot-News, says, "I'm a different person. ... I'm more skeptical than I used to be. The experience of TMI made me much more sympathetic to the plight of the individual who feels the system is against him or her."

He continues, "Prior to the accident, I had no problems with nuclear power whatsoever. After the experience at TMI, I firmly believe that nuclear power plants should not be built near populated areas. I think most Americans feel that way."

Powerlessness, feelings of betrayal and the demise of public trust, fear of the future and one's children's future, continuing stress on marriages and families--all of these are part of the fallout of Three Mile Island. In the midst of all the controversy over health effects, it must be remembered that the psychological consequences of the accident are documented health effects that are widespread and real.

Rev. Earle Fike Jr., who was pastor of the Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren, says of the accident, "Those who lived through it walk around with a dread in their soul." Indeed, the fear in this valley is tangible. And the memories are vivid.

"I WAS IN CLASS, in second grade, and I remember that my Aunt Margie and the principal came and told me to come out. My aunt seemed kind of worried.

"My aunt brought me home, and my Mom was getting everything ready to go. That was when I heard that there was an accident at the power plant, and it was dangerous. The kids were telling stories--like that somebody's grandma was sitting in her rocking chair and all of a sudden she died from this thing. And I believed it; I didn't know what to expect. But I wasn't really concerned about it then, because I was little; and when you're little, you think your parents will take care of everything and won't let anything happen to you."

The old clock on the mantle chimes out quarter-hours as Beth Longenecker speaks, a reminder of the passage of time, as her story brings home the fact that 10 years is time enough for a little girl to grow into a young woman anticipating college. Indeed, this whole house speaks of time, of rootedness and generations.

Beth's parents both have roots in this area that go back 200 years. Like many people here, their ancestry is Deutsch, or German, which generations ago got mistranslated as "Pennsylvania Dutch." I share these roots on my mother's side, and I grew up familiar with a tradition well-known for colorful quilts and decorated barns, for hospitality and generosity and plentiful good food.

The good food is evident here, as Patricia Longenecker, Beth's mother, insists on feeding me a meal that is traditionally Pennsylvania Dutch New Year's fare--pork and sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and homegrown vegetables, homemade applesauce, and, of course, a generous slab of shoo-fly pie.

Patricia's great-grandfather was the last canal boat operator on the Susquehanna River. Other relatives once had a watermelon farm on Three Mile Island, which, she says, "grew the best watermelon in the area because it was on the flood plain." After a major flood in 1929, they sold the island to the power company.

Sixteen years ago, not long after Beth was born, Patricia and her husband, John, cleared land and built this house outside Elizabethtown. It looks like a homestead out of Country Living, with care given to every detail--baskets filled with dried flowers, quilted wall hangings, and rustic hurricane lamps. In the upstairs hall is an old wooden chest, built in 1832 of poplar and pine; Patricia's son will be the eighth generation to inherit it.

PATRICIA PICKS UP the story of the TMI accident where Beth left off, recalling the instant when she realized just how serious it was. Her voice breaks as she says, "At that moment, time stopped."

She describes the scene in the town: "Everyone was in a state of panic, and no one knew what to do. It was fueled by the sirens, and by broadcasts through the town. People just began leaving quickly, some not even knowing where they would go. ... By Sunday Elizabethtown had become a ghost town."

She talks about the conversion she experienced: "We went from total belief in a system--feeling secure that the [nuclear power] corporation, and certainly the federal government, would only promote something for everyone's welfare--to total shock and disbelief that this would be allowed to happen." Patricia began devoting her time to setting up citizens hearings regarding the TMI accident and promoting alternative energy sources, particularly solar.

Both Patricia and Beth talk about meeting Dr. John Gofman and the tremendous impact of that encounter. When Beth realized that he had been "fired because the government wanted him to say something he couldn't," she lost her trust in the system: "I feel that the government is hiding so much that they're not telling us." When I ask her how that makes her feel, she says, "Scared."

Two years ago, when she was a sophomore, Beth delivered a "persuasive speech" in class against TMI, an opinion that is not shared by most of her peers, many of whom have parents who work at the plant. She explains, "When you're a teenager, you have more on your mind than finding out what the government is doing."

At a young age, Beth carries an awesome and sometimes lonely sense of responsibility for the truth. She is headed to college to study sports medicine, or perhaps environmental science. Her essay on her college application is an articulate plea for care of the environment. "We have to start doing something," she says. "It might even be too late."

Patricia speaks of a spiritual pledge that is this home's foundation: "When we made a commitment here 16 years ago to create a homestead from the woods, we looked at this whole project with a caretaker's spirit--to grow our own food, to try to be as self-sufficient as possible, to give back to the land what we took." She mentions the deer who come to the salt lick, the ducks who gather at the lake, the abundant fruits and vegetables that stock their dinner table. "You must give the care in order to have something to care for. That's what life is all about. You give, and you always receive--and more so, tenfold.

"And this is the message on the larger scale," she continues. "If we're not taking care of the environment, protecting it ... what are we going to have then to care for?"

The Longenecker homestead is in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, considered among the most fertile farmland in the world. "A nuclear plant came a half hour to meltdown--which could have meant the end of a whole farming region," Patricia says. "Here we are 10 years later--what have we learned?" She adds that she has been "bombarded by friends having cancer."

Beth then talks about a woman who lived on a ridge near their home, the mother of three young children, who just found out she has cancer. I ask her if she has fear for her own health and future. "Yes, I do," she says. Her mother says Beth is convinced she will have cancer some day.

I leave the Longeneckers' lane and turn left--toward the clouds of steam rising from the horizon. It is a portentous night, accented with moon shining between patchy clouds. A fierce wind howls through bare trees, sending dead leaves airborne in circles from the ground.

As I approach them, the cooling towers rise tall--red lights blinking, pink steam swirling all around like vapors from some boiling, primordial soup. The view is frightening, as if coming face to face with the spewing mouth of an ancient abyss of unknown proportion and danger. Ezekiel's apocalyptic vision of Gog and Magog, the enemies from the north, comes to mind.

Behind the belching twin beasts sit two silent partners, eerily quiet. I shudder and turn from the view. "We would all be better off with watermelons," I say to myself as I head toward the other end of Elizabethtown.

DURING THE TIME that I was home, another of my parents' friends died of cancer. He was a neighbor for several years, the father of my first childhood friend.

I do not know what gave him cancer. I only know that disturbing things are happening in the Susquehanna Valley--and in other places in this country in the shadow of nuclear power and weapons plants.

Upon hearing the news of his death, I thought back to the day in Sunday School 30 years ago when I chose the picture of Jesus holding the lost lamb. It has been a comforting image for a long time. In moments of crisis or fear, I have often turned to the 23rd psalm, to that vision of a shepherd who leads and protects and consoles.

In all my readings and prayings of that psalm, the images of pastures and still waters were always vivid; but I lacked a clear picture of the "valley of the shadow of death." Today, that image is disturbingly concrete for me. It is home.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared. Brian Jaudon contributed immeasurable time and invaluable research to this report. Suzanne St Yves and Mary Teresa McCullagh spent many hours on tape transcription. Research for this article was funded in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Inc.