My wife and I were kids in 1979. I was in sixth grade in Mount Joy, PA. I remember my elementary school not allowing any students to go outside for recess. My teacher at the time, who probably shouldn’t have been working with children, tried to appease us by saying that “It doesn’t matter if you go outside or not. The radiation can get you through the walls.”
I also remember him saying that the emergency must be over when newspapers started abbreviating “Three Mile Island” to “TMI.”
“It doesn’t matter if you go outside or not. The radiation can get you through the walls.”
My wife was in third grade a the time, living in Middletown, PA. She remembers her school bus driver advising her and her best friend to hold their breath and run home from the bus stop so the “radiation doesn’t get you.”
Fun times, being a kid in central Pennsylvania during TMI.
BTW, my father recently passed away due to cancer, and my mother has also been having major health problems due to cancer. I wish I could support nuclear as a carbon-free energy source, but TMI (and Chernobyl and Fukushima) have turned me against it for good. It’s just not worth the risk.