You really have everything here on Long Island, good restaurants, still a lot of wide open

spaces, beautiful beaches, auntie sports teams to root for, and access to New York City.

That's Michael Duidziak or Mike D. Mike's a political pollster who's worked prominently

in the area of environmental protection. He's also a Long Islander for life, but there's

one place on Long Island that he doesn't love.

When you drive up there, you will see the plant, and it's sort of eerie-looking. I always

thought the building was scary looking to begin with the images, and with the concerns

about nuclear power, it became almost a scary kind of image in people's minds. Now that

it's deserted and just sitting there, you know, it really is kind of an eerie, you know,

kind of almost kind of image when you see it.

I'm Dylan Thoris, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places. Today, we venture out to Long Island, not for the beautiful

beaches, or the islanders' game, or to visit Billy Joel, but to explore a gigantic, ominous

sea foam green nuclear power plant, $5 billion in the making, and to learn the story of how

it became Mike D's least favorite place on Long Island. That's after this.

The mid-20th century was this time of enormous optimism and excitement. World War II was over.

The economy was booming. Babies were booming. Science was booming. In 1958, America's first

nuclear power plant was opened in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

In his address, dedicating the Shipping Port Atomic Power Station on May 26, 1958, the

President of the United States said, Michael DeWidziac remembers the excitement around nuclear

power, or atomic power, as it was called back then. I remember when I was a kid, you know,

taking a family driving trip across country and stopping. This is a nuclear power plant.

...