I was finding my way after university when the Duane Arnold Energy Center began operations on Feb. 1, 1975. I had other things on my mind in the pre-Three Mile Island, pre-Chernobyl, pre-Fukushima world of electricity generation. I was trying to start a life and it wasn’t going as well as I had hoped.

I heard about the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania soon after it happened on March 28, 1979. I was living in Mainz, Germany and the accident made international news. Two brothers I knew from high school had just left my apartment after a weekend visit. Three Mile Island did not register in my journal. I was more worried about taking my writing to another level than about the risks of nuclear power. The accident did not immediately change the direction of my life. It was simply planted in the back of my mind as an unsettling reminder that a technology widely promoted as safe was not infallible. It would take several more years—and a very different movement—for nuclear power to become a personal issue.

During the years that followed, nuclear power remained in the background for me. That began to change after I joined the Johnson County Board of Health in 2005, and met Maureen McCue, president of the local chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Through Maureen, I was introduced to another dimension of the nuclear debate. The organization’s principal concern was preventing nuclear war, but many members also questioned the public health implications of commercial nuclear power.

Maureen and I became partners in advocacy on a number of public health issues, including the effort to oppose renewal of the operating license for the Duane Arnold Energy Center. That campaign would draw me into issues around nuclear regulation, public hearings, and scientific debate in ways I never imagined.