Ukraine, Libbe HaLevy, veteran of Three Mile Island speaks out: “Real nuclear threat and frightening”

It was 1979 when Libbe HaLevy, originally from Chicago, traveling from California to Middletown with friends who had just moved there, began the nuclear nightmare: that of Three Mile Island, the most serious nuclear accident in the history of the United States. . A nightmare that over the years has led her to take action to inform and sensitize people on the issue of nuclear power, but which today returns with the threat that accompanies the conflict in Ukraine and rekindles terror in her. “What do I feel? Fear. Repressed terror. Those idiots could really do it, destroy the future of life on this planet,” the author of the book tells AdnKronos “Yes, I glow in the dark! One mile from Three Mile Island to Fukushima and nuclear hotseat “, producer and host of the podcast” Nuclear Hotseat “(nuclearhotseat.com). “There is no need to even launch a bomb – underlines HaLevy – it would be enough to damage one of the 15 nuclear reactors present on Ukrainian territory (as well as in any other country), or the storage of ‘spent’ fuel (which still contains huge amounts of plutonium), the cooling system … It’s madness. It’s self-destruction that sacrifices the rest of humanity. There’s a reason my podcast is called Nuclear Hotseat, and that’s because we’re everyone on this planet is in an uncomfortable position with regards to nuclear power, no one excluded “. Libbe HaLevy recalls her misadventure, the one that was the beginning of a long nightmare and open eyes and that today leaves her astonished and angry in the face of what is happening in Ukraine, as if you can never learn from history. She was therefore traveling with friends and had settled just a mile from the nuclear reactor. “For the first two days – he remembers – we ignored the warnings thinking that it was just a media hype, we were definitely in the phase of denial. The third day, I was alone at home when a vehicle arrived from the road and the loudspeaker intimated ‘ stay inside and close doors and windows. Don’t go out unless necessary. “I was alone, I had no transportation, I didn’t know anyone to ask for help, the phone lines were overloaded and stopped working.” “I didn’t know if that thing would explode at any moment, and having lived through the Cold War with all the terrifying information about atomic bombs, I thought I was one step away from Armageddon, with no way out. I also knew about the risks of radiation but there was no way of knowing how much radiation I had already been exposed to. As far as I was concerned, I was already dead. Then, my friends came to pick me up. After a week of evacuation, the airport was cleared. open, I could go home. None of us have ever had children, it was our conscious decision. “Going home didn’t mean leaving that accident behind.” How did it change my life? The immediate effect was that of post-traumatic stress that made me unable to think, act, plan – explains HaLevy – We didn’t know what amounts of radiation we had been exposed to, maybe I was already dead and just living my last days . Part of me thought so, I imagined everything around me as a ‘flash forward’. A bad daydream. I couldn’t work, write, think. I drank to excess for the only time in my life. I avoided friends, I lived isolated at home, in a daily existential terror. A nightmare. Things changed only after more than a year, when I was now living outside the United States with no intention of returning “. In the end, she returned to the US,” but well aware that everything around me, myself included, could disappear in a single ‘nuclear instant’, and that what I had experienced was slowly, invisibly killing me. I have tried to ignore everything related to nuclear power. Also Chernobyl. Were they all afraid of nuclear power now? It was a fear that I had already lived, I didn’t want to do it again. “It took Fukushima to trigger something in Libbe, a reaction that led her to commit herself to the subject with all of her being. Today, with her work, the books, the podcasts, the site, tries to make sure that people can have news and information on everything related to nuclear power and find support. by Stefania Marignetti