Unleash the Power


Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant, Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, from the series Power Places The country's first nuclear power plant broke ground in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1954.

Coincidentally, the most serious accident in the U.S. nuclear power industry occurred 25 years later in the same state. The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island prompted regulatory changes and sparked public concern over the safety of nuclear energy.

John Pfahl's photograph, taken three years after the 1979 incident, depicts that notorious site in a stark landscape. See more contemporary photography in our online exhibition Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography.

Pictured: John Pfahl, born 1939, Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant, Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, from the series Power Places, 1982, Ektacolor Plus color photograph on paper, 16 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Consolidated Natural Gas Company Foundation.