Forty-five years and a lot of anxiety - and cash flow - later, the Three Mile Island nuclear power station on the Susquehanna River is in retirement.

But the main public acknowledgment of that Friday felt more like a wake than a retirement party, as local officials mourned what they called the premature loss of a high-performing, safe source of economic and electric power for the midstate and beyond.

They blamed politics, and the grip that natural gas producers hold on the state’s major power brokers.

In reality, it was the one-two punch of the 1979 partial meltdown that killed the Unit Two reactor there, and a more recent flip in the nation’s energy economy that combined to make the energy produced at Three Mile Island Unit One move from nuclear’s historic promise of “too cheap to meter” to “too costly to sell.”

None of that made the pain of the present moment any more tolerable, of course.

“Today is reality, and reality is painful,” said state Rep. Tom Mehaffie, R-Dauphin County and one of the leaders of a so far unsuccessful effort by the nuclear industry to press for a subsidy program in Pennsylvania.

“And we’re going to see exactly the repercussions of a ten billion dollar asset - because that’s what it would cost to build one reactor (today) - a ten billion dollar asset going off our portfolio and being closed today.”

Inside the plant, and out of public view, the plant was formally removed from the region’s power grid at 12:07 p.m., according to sources on hand. Employees then gathered for what plant spokesman Dave Marcheskie called “a private, intimate ceremony to celebrate 45 years of service.”

Outside, in full view of the last steam clouds billowing from the cooling towers on a fine, late summer day, some of those who must now deal with the economic effects of Harrisburg’s post-nuclear era mourned what’s going away:

More than 600 permanent positions at a plant where salaries of $80,000 and higher were not uncommon, and;

A biennial influx of about 1,200 extra jobs for union laborers in the area during periodic refuelings that provided a month or more of work at hourly rates starting in the mid-20s and up.

Those losses will be gradual, to be sure, but they are already starting to be felt in many ways.

“Probably one of the things that I’ve found most difficult is hearing the stories from our neighbors and our friends who have to pick up roots, dislodge their families and move to other parts of the state, to other states, or even to other parts of the country,” said Londonderry Township Supervisor Anna Dale. Three Mile Island is physically located in Londonderry.

According to plant filings related to the decommissioning, 66 percent of the permanent Three Mile island workforce lived in Dauphin and Lancaster counties.

Marcheskie noted Friday that every worker that has left the plant to date, as the workforce has shrunk from 675 to 515, has done so either through retirement or to take a job with another Exelon Generation facility.

The workforce will be shrunk further, to about 300, over the next couple of weeks.

Exelon Generation also includes on its nuclear roster the Peach Bottom reactor in southern York County, and Limerick in Montgomery County. Figures on how many Three Mile Island families have moved already were not immediately available, but Dale said she knows from personal experience that a small exodus has begun.

“In my own little neighborhood, I have a lot of people who have worked at Three Mile Island," she said. "Some have retired, a few are actually looking to move, you know, and I hear the stories because they have been here for quite awhile.

“Taking their kids out of school, getting them to relocate, and to do it at the beginning of a school year is going to be challenge,” Dale said.

As an elected official, meanwhile, she and others are concerned about the inevitable requests for a reassessment of the property for real estate tax purposes after it ceases to be an income generator, and the dent that will put in revenues for Lower Dauphin School District and the township.

The district stands most exposed on that front, as Exelon currently accounts for more than 2 percent of Lower Dauphin’s total property tax base. That money won’t go away instantly, but any decrease at a time of rising health care and retirement costs for public schools present a challenge.

And then lastly, there’s the loss of ancillary benefit of having a strong corporate partner in your backyard.

That’s the part that Bart Shellenhamer, chief of the Londonderry Township Volunteer Fire Company, said he’s going to miss the most.

Shellenhamer said a charity golf tournament put on by Three Mile Island employees over the last 13 years has covered the lion’s share of the company’s monthly mortgage payments since a major fire station expansion project.

“Now, we have to figure out, how are we going to make that payment,” Shellenhamer said.

The funereal attitude was just as evident Friday on the streets of nearby Middletown and the riverside developments that lie in the nuclear plant’s shadow.

Ron Hoover is among the local people who believe a colossal mistake was being made today.

“I think we’re being short-sighted,” the 74-year-old Middletown resident said. “We’re on this alternative energy kick. I think we’re just letting nuclear energy go by the wayside.”

“It’s disappointing,” agreed Earl Showalter, a former electrical engineer who retired from Three Mile Island with 42 years of service.

“Do you realize how much clean energy TMI makes, carbon-free?” Showalter asked a visiting reporter.

So, lots of questions, lots of concerns, and lots of good-byes that many are bit resentful at having to say.

The next step in the formal decommissioning of the 45-year-old plant will be the removal of the reactor’s fuel supply to storage in the station’s used fuel pool, essentially a large water bath where the reactor assemblies cool until they reach temperatures suitable for dry storage.

At that point, the workforce will be reduced to about 300 for the next year or so, Exelon said.

Ironically, Three Mile Island - which will forever be known nationally as the site of the America’s worst commercial nuclear accident - set one final milestone with Friday’s closure.

Marcheskie noted that Friday represented the 709th day of continuous operation at Unit One, beating the station’s previous record of 705 days set in 2009.

It’s a record that will stand forever.

But no one here sees where the next Three Mile Island is going to come from.

“These jobs... Let’s face it, we’re central Pennsylvania,” Dale said. “Unless you are very high up in some of our other industries in the region, you’re not going to make that kind of money. And it’s a very specialized kind of work that you do.

“So that’s going to be a challenge.”

Staff writers David Wenner and Matt Miller contributed to this report.