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When friends challenged County Commissioner Gary Burns about his support for a proposed nuclear plant in Victoria County, he listened to their concerns.

“I’ve got good friends who come up and say look at Three Mile Island,” he said. “I told them that was 30 years ago and a lot of things have changed in 30 years.”

But just telling them what he thought should be obvious wasn’t enough. Burns traveled recently to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania at his own expense to see what people there think.

The plant, which is on an island in the Susquehanna River, suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.

It was owned by General Public Utilities Nuclear at the time. Exelon Nuclear, which is considering building a plant in south Victoria County, now owns it.

Burns said he took the company tour of the plant. But he also visited with people at his hotel, a fruit stand owner adjacent to the plant, waitresses and a community activist.

“I went everywhere,” he said. “During the whole trip, I found two people who had a negative impression of the plant.”

One was the manager of the hotel he stayed at and the other was a woman conducting a wine-tasting event. Neither could back up their concerns with specific reasons or facts, Burns said.

The woman at the fruit stand 200 yards away from the plant told Burns she was pregnant at the time of the plant incident. Neither that child nor the other two she had suffered health problems from the incident, he said.

And having the nuclear plant as a neighbor hasn’t hurt her business, he said.

“She said she had people offering her big money for the land,” Burns said. “But she said, ‘I’m not going to sell. I like it here.’”

Even the community activist admitted that Exelon has been good for the community.

“He said ‘I’m not antinuclear, but I’m pro-community,’” Burns said. The activist monitors the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which monitors the plant.

Burns said he was impressed with what he saw of the plant on the company-conducted tour. That includes everything from security and the control room to where spent fuel is stored.

He said he’s more convinced than ever a nuclear plant would be good for Victoria County, but he remains conscious of such issues as spent fuel. “That’s going to be something that has to be addressed.”