it was the first step in a nuclear nightmare the accident occurred here at the 3M Island nuclear power plant a dozen miles south of Harrisburg it took a full 18 days before the Soviet leader mik gorbachov made any public pronouncement on the nuclear disaster at chal Engineers are fighting to contain the damage to this nuclear facility in Japan warning that one of the reactors could melt down but today the need for more and cleaner energy is changing the cost benefit equation and opinion in the us has started to shift the majority of Americans now say they support more nuclear power one of those supporters is Heather Hoff fear of nuclear is dangerous but nuclear itself isn’t Hoff is co-founders of mothers for nuclear a group she started on Earth Day in 2016 to address some of the misconceptions about nuclear energy I think when we talk about risk it’s also important to ask you know like what is the actual impact when something happens happens and so everyone kind of knows the big three things that have happened in nuclear Three Mile Island Chernobyl and Fukushima and when we go back and we look at those events and say what was the impact to human health our environment the planet it’s pretty minimal and even some of the impacts that we did feel were caused by our own overreaction to those incidents