I was running a daycare. We had four children at the time. My husband was home. When we found the information out. I was stunned. Prior to the accident all I know about nuclear was that it was part of an atom bomb and there was a plant near me. That was all I knew and that was all I cared about.

When the accident happened, I’m left with the conflict of going and maybe never coming back. What is the most important thing I should take with me? What do I do? We left and went to my mothers, 38 miles from here and were gone for 10 days. Then I started going to meetings.

‘if you’ll go home and bake your cookies, we’ll take care of it.’

It was traumatic. When you leave everything, you love. The house we live in, my father built, I’ve lived in it for 90 percent of my life. This community is very important to me. I was stunned of the thought of the possibility if losing all of that both monetarily and emotional.

Started Concerned Mothers & Women group: we were not socially involved with each other. We all went to a meeting at the firehouse where the NRC would tell us what happened. I said, why is the press here? There was almost as much press as there were people. The NRC said, ‘well you don’t have to be concerned, the radiation you or your children got was no more than smoking a cigarette’ and I got furious, I said you can’t give your children cigarettes!

I learned from dealing with the people in the nuclear industry and the NRC and the state and local, it was more like ‘if you’ll go home and bake your cookies, we’ll take care of it.’

We still have the group. We just did a project with a people who might do a TV series. We are still concerned funding this now when nobody wants to use their electricity

I find that so heinous and now they can’t even sell their electricity!

We really were thinking about moving. Even as much as we loved being here. We considered moving. I wanted to know where the other nuke plants in the country. You’re within 200 miles of nuke plant no matter where you go. I thought maybe this had the accident and had more scrutiny.