Nearly 50 years ago, a partial meltdown on the three-mile island forced Gene Stillp into an activist life. Starting in March at Capitol in 1979, he organized appearances with 65,000 demonstrators and by Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown and Graham Nash.
At 75, Stilp is still among them. Now, a deal with Microsoft is protesting Baltimore-based Constellation’s plans to reopen nuclear reactors at Harrisburg-area power plants that are not involved in the accident. After living nearby for decades, Stilp began to stop TMI restarts last fall. The group has approximately 32 members.
“We’re two generations away from the accident that took place on the three-mile island,” said Stilp, who accused officials in a lawsuit in April of failing to protect the health and safety of residents of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. “People forget that nuclear power stands for a dedicated dead zone with nuclear waste. People who are environmentalists forget all of these things their parents and grandparents knew.
But as Bob Dylan once sang, “They are a-changins.”
As Maryland and other states push clean air amid rising demand, they support viewing nuclear energy as a critical cost-effective climate solution. The lead in the Maryland push is Democratic Gov. Wes Moore. Wes Moore supports policies to support new technologies that are touted as safer, more efficient and more versatile than traditional nuclear reactors.
California environmentalist Valerie Gardner argued that anti-nuclear stubborns refused to focus on their goal of reducing carbon emissions. She said she focused too much on renewable energies like the wind and the sun, rejecting the nucleus. The founder of the Climate Union, who is almost 10 years old, said she’s coming. Now they are fighting to keep nuclear power plants open, including California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon.
“It was total insanity and stupidity to try and close a massive, reliable source of clean energy,” said Gardner, who called out anti-nuclear activists who held “30-year-old grapes,” which stemmed from “the fear promulgated by groups to make the public scare.”
“They lost the fight, the plants were built, but they kept carrying the flags all the way through,” she said. “In its history 68 years ago, it is the safest energy we’ve ever had, no pollution and fewer deaths” with less energy caused by fossil fuels.”
The anti-nuclear movement has evolved as officials tried to cut costs and achieve their goals
The “no nuclear weapons” movement, born from anti-war protests in the late 1960s, spreading from weapons to energy after nuclear disasters in Fukushima and other places, dwindled to gain followers. Shortly after STILP helped organizers of the 1979 Union Anti-Nuclear Rally in Washington, Bruce Springteen, who was said to be the biggest anti-nuclear protest at the time, joined the musician for safe energy for a No Nukes concert at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1979. By the mid-2000s, natural gas had gained favour as a cleaner, more abundant energy source, and investment in nuclear power plants had declined.
In Maryland, bipartisan lawmakers are focusing on rising energy costs and want to encourage new generation in the state. Moore, who supports the expansion of nuclear power, says the state has not made enough progress to generate energy to hit its targets.
Moore said some proposals that did not create an energy bill in mid-June “we allowed more nuclear power to the states and allowed nuclear weapons to be considered clean energy sources.”
Sen. Mary Beth Carrozza, a Republican on the Education, Energy and Environment Committee, said the opportunity to deal with the climate crisis is “more people see nuclear energy as reliable, clean and safe.”
Groups like the Clean Air Task Force have highlighted the dangers of coal capacity in the late 1990s, but have promoted nuclear energy policies in both the public and private sectors. Their focus is on reducing costs, faster development and addressing the challenges faced by older nuclear power plants. The organization is exploring ways for state and federal governments to expand nuclear energy in the most cost-effective ways, such as upgrading or reopening retirement facilities.
To achieve a 100% carbon-free grid of advanced nuclear, advanced geothermal and other technologies beyond renewable energies such as wind and solar, says 100% regional policy manager John Carlson, 100% regional policy manager John Carlson, who is seeking to control fee payer costs while achieving transportation and fare payer goals.
“We see nuclear energy as a proven technology that will help us achieve our US climate and decarbonization goals,” said Victor Ibarra, senior manager of CATF’s Advanced Ruclear Energy Program. He said it would require a “a wide range of technology suites beyond nuclear energy to effectively and efficiently produce tomorrow’s next power grid.”
Maryland plants, upgrades elsewhere
John Phillippi, a nuclear engineer at the Constellation’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby, oversees the High Security Factory as operations director. The two-reactor facility, originally owned by Baltimore Gas & Electric, began operating in 1975 and 1977, and last year rebranded Calvert Cliffs Clean Energy Center.
During the factory tour, Philippi said Constellation is evaluating plant upgrades and expanding capacity. This is a very expensive and long-standing process to plan and rebuild the turbine and steam production aspects. Locking long-term customers is one way that constellations and other nuclear operators could do that.
Other types of modifications have made Culvert cliffs change since the earliest times, making them more efficient, reliable and safer, he said. At the plant’s 24-hour control center, reactor operators monitor flat panel displays, touch screens and automatic alarm functions. The right side of the room is dedicated to Unit 1, and the mirror image on the left is Unit 2. The central device links to the switch yard.
Thousands of data points filtered through computers and alarms “can detect changes in our systems that warn operators to show early what they need to take action,” Filippi said.
Gardner, founder of the Climate Union, said it was essential that nuclear power plants not only remain open, but they could expand like a cliff in Calvert. Technology entrepreneur Gardner began accepting nuclear power after spending tens of thousands of dollars installing solar panels in 2008, but her energy bills were still not covered.
“I’m starting to notice. We can’t put this huge (climate) crisis and its solution on the backs of individual residents,” she said. When she found two-thirds of all the clean (power) coming from the nucleus, my jaw just fell. I didn’t even imagine the nucleus being clean.”
The future of nuclear energy
Gardner said “nuclear-free” opposition to the constellations could have been changed last year when Constellation signed a 20-year contract to power Microsoft data centers in the Mid-Atlantic, with the reopening of Unit 1 on the 3-mile island now known as the Crane Clean Energy Center.
“The news is an inflection point where people realized this anti-core thing was wrong, and the discussion about the nuclear is not based on facts that are not based on data,” Gardner said.
Last month, Constellation signed a similar agreement with Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, providing artificial intelligence technology with nuclear energy for 20 years at the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Illinois.
These transactions come amid growing demand for artificial intelligence, where large technology companies and data center operators are rushing to lock in long-term clean power sources. Data centers need consistent and stable power supplies, increasingly becoming nuclear powered due to dedicated power.
Such transactions continue to be opposed by activists who argue that electricity is heading towards faraway data centers, not near the plants. Such groups include Harrisburg-based 3-mile Island Alert. This was founded in 1977, when Unit 2 came online and experienced a partial meltdown.
The US’s worst nuclear power plant accident, partial meltdown, began around 4am on March 28, 1979, and according to the US Nuclear Regulation Authority, mechanical or electrical failures occurred in the nuclear-free sector of plants that prevented pumps from sending water to steam generators, leading to the closure of the reactor.
The NRC said small radioactive radiation has no detectable health effects on workers or the public, but opponents are challenging the findings in court.
Coincidentally, the 1979 film “Chinese Syndrome, depicting a nuclear accident, was released a few weeks ago. It provided additional feed to the 1983 silkwood “No Nuke” movement, based on the true story of a nuclear power plant worker who may have been killed after raising concerns about radiation safety practices.
In some of this, Three Mile Island Alert said its advocacy has led to improved communications, security and evacuation plans. In a recent battle, the group wants to stop plans for Constellation to restart Unit 1 of the plant, which resumed in 1985 and closed for economic reasons in 2019. The TMI Alert advocates for eliminating both nuclear and fossil fuel generation, claiming that sufficient renewable energy and storage projects are under consideration on the local grid.
Group chair Eric Epstein said he has the same concerns he had 45 years ago.
“Nuclear power is an economical bo-fire,” Epstein said. “I thought now, like I’m doing, there was no place to store waste. Nuclear has been reformed as renewable. It’s crazy.
Any news tips? Contact Lorraine Mirabella@baltsun.com or Lorraine Mirabella at (410) 332-6672.
Original issue: July 15th, 2025, 12:49pm EDT
