Three Mile Island

Editor at Large

It was a beautiful spring day in centra! Pennsylvania. As I finished a lecture on Genesis on the creation of God’s good earth, the Scripture seemed to have a special relevance to the day.

As the class members gathered together their books to leave, a student quietly stepped to the windows and closed them. Another explained to the class that the governor of Pennsylvania had requested that we all stay inside until further notice—and stay calm.

From our campus—Pennsylvania State University’s Capitol Campus—we can see the high cooling towers of Three Mile Island and have come to accept them as part of the landscape. It was hard to believe these massive pots with their harmless-looking flumes had been transformed into monsters spewing forth radioactive gases.

We gathered quietly in the auditorium and listened to our engineering professors explain how the plant works and then speculate on what might have gone wrong. It was reassuring to listen to the gentle ticking of Geiger counters registering normal levels of radioactivity. This reassurance was abruptly undermined by the governor’s orders to evacuate our campus.

Driving home, I still found it inconceivable that the air was poisoned. The balmy spring day belied the words of ill omen on the radio. Stopping as usual at the grocery store and the gas station, I noted that immediate concerns like feeding the family and the car seemed more real and pressing.

The highways were already crowded with families fleeing to the mountains or the shore; many of them were in a holiday mood because of the unexpected work stoppage. Less affluent families who lived close to Three Mile Island bundled their households off to shelters at the Hershey Sports Arena. As hysteria began, frantic parents stopped by schools to gather their children in the midst of their lunch hours. Youngsters whose homes were on the Susquehanna near TMI sobbed with fright. For miles around the waves of fear struck Pennsylvanians. Some collected belongings and fled to stay with families. Others abandoned their work in midday.

My own family—living almost ten miles from the plant and feeling only slightly threatened—stayed inside and gathered around the TV to listen to the unfolding of the frightening drama of compounding error and incompetence.

The various reactions to the peril over the weekend were an instructive insight into human nature: Some fun-seekers spent the evening attending China Syndrome—only to find themselves sobered considerably. Some cruel jokesters set off sirens to watch the panicky reactions. Opportunistic thieves called homeowners to notify them of fake evacuation directives, and then broke in and looted the vacant houses. On the other hand, churches offered housing for the dislocated, and friends and relatives called to offer hospitality to those in danger.

I found my own reaction was, first, resentment over the need to stay inside, of the waste of a perfectly good afternoon I could have spent in the garden. But as the news darkened, I found my mind moved from strawberries to death. As I hung out the laundry on Saturday morning after the order to stay indoors was lifted, I looked at the lonely landscape—on which I was the only human figure—and wondered if this is what the Rapture would be like. Then, as the confusion at the plant grew and we realized that the hydrogen bubble was out of control and might burst, we realized that we were at the mercy of human ignorance. No one had ever faced this problem before, and no one could guarantee a solution.

After President Carter visited TMI on Sunday, we grasped the fact that there was an argument, which amazed us by its very possibility, of human values versus property values. Though chagrined to discover any hesitation in the decision, we were gratified to discover that human values finally were deemed paramount.

During those painful days, we listened to the constant (and hardly reassuring) assurance of present security and distant threat. We found ourselves considering plans for escape and for life after disaster. We looked at our family and calculated where and how we might live if the whole region were rendered uninhabitable. When we listed the essentials we should pack for the evacuation, we discovered that nothing mattered so much as the living creatures in our household. None of the previously precious bits of paraphernalia that clutter our lives appeared on our priority lists.

By Monday, the news brightened. But we knew that we should never again see those towers as friendly parts of our landscape. We admit that we want our TV and our freezer, though not more than we want our lives; and we know that we have to pay a price for our appetite for energy. We are ready to admit that we do not live in Eden—only in central Pennsylvania—and that we have eaten of the tree of knowledge and not of the tree of life.

Learning to live with the biblical truth, “Thou shalt surely die,” we confess that we have not prepared our souls to evacuate our bodies. We need to learn a lot more about priorities. But we can be calm because we know that Death has been overcome. Three Mile Island can only hurt our bodies; it never threatened our immortal souls.

In one sense, Christ is the great example of the “meltdown” in human history. In his death and resurrection, his power expanded beyond human containment. Yet his power is creative, not rendering the land uninhabitable, the women sterile, and the children cancerous. His ministry of love and healing opens up to the Christian an abundant life, filled with joy.

Here in central Pennsylvania we expect things soon to return to normal. Surely we shall all have learned some lessons, at least for the moment, about safety controls and energy gluttony and priorities.

By then Lent will be over, with its message of preparation and restraint. And Easter will be past, with its message of victory over death. Perhaps, however, when we come to Pentecost, a few of us will remember the near meltdown. Then let us offer a prayer of thanks that the power of Three Mile Island cannot compare to the power of the Holy Ghost.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

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