Three Mile Island
Three Mile Island is a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, just south of Harrisburg. The facility is best known for an accident that occurred in 1979 that resulted in the partial meltdown and deactivation of Three Mile Island Unit 2, on the south side of the island. The plant began generating operations in 1974, and was closed in 2019 due to operating losses.
I have always found Three Mile Island to be fascinating from a photography standpoint, due to my interests in infrastructure. I first spotted the facility from a distance during a visit to Harrisburg in the summer of 2016, and later located a reasonable spot to photograph it on Google Maps along River Road, east of the island, near the Three Mile Island Training Center. This led to a visit to the site in March 2020, where I produced a number of photos of the site. After I purchased a drone in the latter part of 2020, Three Mile Island again became a subject of interest, as a drone allowed me to get photos of the site from many more angles than I could have ever gotten via ground-based photography. On November 11, 2021, I had the opportunity to go, and seized it in the late afternoon.
In creating this set, I used my DJI Air 2S drone. I received my necessary approvals for flying in this area through LAANC (Harrisburg International Airport is nearby, which requires additional authorization), and flew around the island in two stages. I flew the first stage from the River Road site that I had previously photographed from in 2020, and flew the second stage from a location near the Tri-County Boat Club, a little more than a mile north of the training facility. The flights were made more challenging due to a flight restriction over the nuclear facility itself, which required careful planning in order to stay clear of the restricted zone, while also ensuring that I had enough power to return the drone to the launch site. When flying to the west side of the island from the training facility, I had to fly south of the nuclear facility, and then cross over the less-developed part of the island before turning north to get into position. I then had to repeat this path to return to the launch site. The boating facility launch site is located directly north of the tip of the island, which made the restricted area less obvious because I could just fly directly to the west side of the island without having to go around the restricted zone.
