It’s Sad Seeing How Much My Hometown Has Changed Since That Level 7 Nuclear Accident
COMMENTARY • Opinion • ISSUE 50•10 • Mar 11, 2014
By Kevin Demers

As I get older, I become more and more nostalgic for my youth. Times change, people grow up and move on with their lives, and it’s hard not to yearn for the simpler days when you were just a kid without a care in the world. Never do I feel this sentiment more strongly than when I return to the town where I was raised and see just how different it’s become since the level 7 radiological event.

I realize there’s no sense living in the past, but I can’t help but get a little misty-eyed whenever I think about how much the passage of time and a burst of 75 sieverts of ionizing radiation an hour and intense gamma ray exposure can change a place.

It’s hard not to notice every time I go back. As a kid I used to love walking downtown; back then the place positively bustled, full of friendly faces and fun things to do. But these days the sidewalks are mostly empty apart from the teams of contamination specialists in hazmat suits. And even though it doesn’t even feel all that long ago that I was hanging out with friends at Al’s Pizzeria, if you look around now you won’t even find the old red-and-white checkered tablecloths or comfy booths where I spent so many Saturdays and had a number of my childhood birthday parties. Nope, all you’ll find is a charred imprint on the ground and a few melted metal girders due to its proximity to the released core material.

And don’t even get me started on all the changes along Main Street. When I was a boy it was home to so many thriving mom-and-pop shops—a hardware store, a green grocer, a corner pharmacy—but they were replaced long ago by that big ugly Wal-Mart. Which has since been commandeered and occupied by the Nuclear Regulatory Committee response teams following the reactor criticality incident.

Yes, things inside my hometown and the surrounding 35-mile fallout radius ...