York, PA - Talk to Goldsboro residents about Three Mile Island and, guaranteed, they've heard it all before. They can probably finish your sentence.
Each time nuclear news breaks, the curious descend on the modest riverside town, and nearby landings, to garner reaction from those living in the shadow of TMI's cooling towers.
"It brings so many people down here," said resident Jesse Dellen Jr. "They come down my driveway, instead of staying on the road."
Usually, he said, they stop to snap pictures of the plant, the site of a 1979 partial meltdown that now, according to news reports, sits on par with the Japan disaster.
Despite it all, Dellen pays little attention to the four massive towers across
Goldsboro resident Natalie Hoke talks about Japan's nuclear issues in relation to nearby Three Mile Island. (Daily Record/Sunday News -- Jason Plotkin)
the Susquehanna River from the waterfront property he purchased in 2009.
He keeps busy, renovating his 100-year-old cottage next to the Goldsboro Marina. He worries more about flooding, he said, than the possibility of another accident at the plant.
That attitude echoes down the street, where Mike Baker, 63, says he doesn't own any anti-radiation iodine tablets.
"Yeah, God's gonna take care of me," he said, adding that he never thought twice when he moved to Goldsboro from Mechanicsburg 11 years ago.
Lessons learned in Japan, he said, will keep him even safer.
"Whatever's happening over there will fit us over here," he said. "We'll learn what not to do."
And if nuclear plants suit your fancy, Ron Stambaugh, 73, of Newberrytown, can help. He's looking to sell his 150-year-old building, once home to the Goldsboro post office.
He doesn't expect TMI, the "probably the safest nuclear plant in the world," he said, to deter potential buyers for the space, which features a storefront and several apartments.
"It's practically forgotten," Stambaugh said. "Anybody that's going to buy that building for commercial purposes realizes that what's happening in Japan isn't going to happen at TMI again."
Up the street, Natalie Hoke, 65, moved to Goldsboro from East York 25 years ago. She, too, watches TMI's billowing steam from her porch.
The threat, she said, is in the back of her mind, but "not now more than any other time."
"The older you get," she said, "the less you're afraid of it."
Also of interest
· In the shadow of disaster: York County and its newspaper tested 30 years ago
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