In 1978, Donna Hastie, who now lives in Flat Rock, had moved up to a management position in a nearby Pennsylvania nuclear plant, Beaver Valley Power Station. Hastie has three master’s degrees—one in medical technology, another in business and a third in nuclear chemistry—and not long after the accident, she was asked to take over as Beaver Valley’s director of emergency preparedness. But this was no small task, considering the accident had caused such a countrywide panic. In 1978, she recalls, her plant’s emergency procedures were about 33 pages long. By 1980, the emergency manual barely fit into four thick binders. "After Three Mile Island, it was such a change in our culture, and in the nuclear field," she says.

In Hastie’s view, that was the beginning of the trouble. Compared to other global citizens, she says, Americans are still particularly wary of nuclear power. France, for example, gets nearly 90 percent of its energy from nuclear power plants, and China, she says, is "building power plants five at a time." The U.S. currently has 104 active reactors, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute, and those generate around 20 percent of our energy (the majority still comes from coal). "In a global economy, your hands are tied behind your back if you limit yourself to fossil fuel plants," she says.

So what’s the holdup? Public perception. "I can’t tell you how many power plant demonstrations I have lived through," says Hastie, who, after her five-year stint in emergency preparedness, spent 15 years at the Institute of Nuclear Power, an industry group in Atlanta. Hastie says she toured every nuclear facility in America before she retired last year. These days, she’s on to other projects—like gardening and raising money for the Hendersonville Symphony—but she does occasionally step back into her old role as a nuclear power advocate, giving a presentation, for example at the Hendersonville Lion’s Club. "I didn’t get much pushback from the crowd," she says. "The Energy Department predicts a 21 percent rise in demand by 2030. With the depleting of our natural resources, nuclear right now is about our only option." — J.M.