DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. — Twin cooling towers still loom over the Susquehanna River, silent sentinels that have stood watch over Dauphin County for decades. To many residents, they’re not just industrial landmarks but painful reminders of one of America’s worst nuclear accidents.
Friday marked 46 years since the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island that prompted the evacuation of more than 100,000 Dauphin County residents. Nearly half a century later, the debate over nuclear energy in Pennsylvania has been reignited by plans to restart one of the facility’s reactors.
“We found out that there was some type of nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, and we had never thought about that before,” recalls Maria Frisby, who was a freshman in high school when the accident occurred on March 28, 1979. “People just started to cry and everything. I mean, we were really scared.”…