Reality Check

When my husband and I were first married, we moved into a mobile home within the 10 mile evacuation zone of the local nuclear plant. It was kind of a running joke at the time, living in a metal box and how easily we would be irradiated. We moved a little farther out to the country, away from the emergency sirens for seven years, but when our oldest son started school, we moved to the city and even closer to the plant. Quarterly tests of the emergency sirens became a fact of life, at a fixed time on a Tuesday morning and only for a couple of minutes. The once or twice that it went off in the middle of the night was never for an actual emergency with the plant, rather for a possible tornado (as evidenced by the tremendous storms occurring at the time.

My kids' school at the time was located in the evacuation zone, therefore they had to have a plan in place to move the kids should something happen. We were to meet them in at a church in the next county.

We lived with that plant overlooking a lovely lake, home to many beautiful homes and water recreation, and never really thought much about it. The fishing was said to be quite good where the warm water was discharged into the lake. We drove past it on the way to the boat dock and I think one of my kids actually got to tour it. It was just kind of a sleeping giants, putting out pretty whites clouds of steam over the cooling towers.

In light of the recent events in Japan, I am cringing at just how naive I was. Granted, the likelihood of a tsunami many miles inland as we were was non existent, but an area an hour southeast of there had a 2.0 earthquake just yesterday. And of course there is always the possibility of human error like at Three Mile Island.

Other than the thought of getting to my kids, I never considered the realities of the situation, like not being able to return home, perhaps ever, possible exposure to radiation, etc, etc. I am also paying attention to the fact that we lived with a 10 mile evacuation zone when the Japanese are recommending 19 miles and the US government, 50 miles.