The Truth About Nuclear Power in Utility Reactors
It was in 1996 that I was first
contacted by an organization called the Standing for Truth About Radiation
(STAR) Foundation. The Long Island-based group, a loose bundle of veterans of
the anti-nuclear movement, local artists, businessmen with large investments in
second homes on the East End and scientists with a career-long dedication to
the issue were attempting to raise awareness about the Brookhaven National
Laboratory and its nuclear-powered research facility, the High Flux Beam
Reactor. The headline is about utility reactors but we’re about to hear a
story about a government research reactor. This reactor had known issues, but
was denied the ability to pinpoint their cause because of congressionally
mandated budget cuts. This is the same government that our dear friend Alec
wants more regulation from for utility reactors.
The reactor operations at Brookhaven were reported to have
released billions of gallons of tritiated water into the headwaters of the
Peconic River during the period of its operations from 1965 to 1996. As evidenced here, it isn’t know
exactly how long the leak was occurring, only that it was at least 12 years. We’ll
humor Alec and assume that it was indeed 32 years from Jan 1, 1965 to Dec 31
1996. The leak was 6-9 gallons per day. We’ll go with the high end of 9
gallons. 32 years * 365.2 days/year * 9 gallons/day = 101,904.75 gallons. Not
quite the billions our friend promised us. And diluted in the water system over
32 years. Bad yes, but not the tragedy Alec makes it out to be. BNL, the
U.S. Army's former Camp Upton and the site of decades-long research into all
things nuclear, had been the base of operations for some of the earliest work
on the atomic bomb. Our dear friend just invoked the image of the bomb, one of the most
annoying tricks anti-nuclear lobbyists use. The lab has never been involved with
bomb and just happens to be on the same site as an old Army facility, but now
his loyal readers will be thinking about the bomb for the rest of the article. A coalition of different community groups had been opposing
the HFBR at BNL for years. Classic logical
fallacy, just because a view is popular doesn’t mean it’s based on any
objective evidence. Pro-business lobbying
groups warned that closing the reactor would have dire consequences to the Long
Island economy, as national laboratories, with their high-skill, high-paying
jobs, were viewed as "sexy" components of any area's business
landscape. Lol, science and engineering jobs are
sexy now? Oh, yep, you’re right. A hoard of women just broke down my door. But
seriously, he’s honestly just saying that high paying jobs shouldn’t be
presented as a valuable benefit of national labs and he expects us to just
accept this as truth with no reason for it. Opponents
of BNL pointed out that levels of soft tissue cancers and rare diseases such as
rhabdomyosarcoma were extraordinarily higher adjacent to the water recharge
area near the lab. LIES! Two studies that took
all of 5 seconds to find on google are here and here. More
effectively, the anti-BNL groups pointed out that Long Islanders had already
voiced their opinion of having nuclear reactors in the area when they agreed to
absorb the unconscionable amount of money necessary to shutter the Shoreham
nuclear power plant several years earlier. Biggestwaste of money ever. Oh, the stupidity.
The Long
Island Lighting Company, one of the most horrifically mismanaged public utilities
in U.S. history Source? No. I didn’t think so., had thrown the switch and already
gone "online" with a utility reactor on the North Shore of Suffolk
County, a decision that represented a game of chicken with the area's rate
payers. Once the reactor went "hot", any move to shut it down would
surely mean hundreds of millions of dollars extra in decommissioning and
decontamination costs. Still no sources. Long Island residents said, "Bring it
on." Already the highest utility rate payers in the forty-eight contiguous
states, LILCO customers absorbed billions in costs, amortized over several
years Such a lack of sources, and Shoreham closed. Soon after
that, then Governor George Pataki set up another darling of Albany politicos, a
quasi-public authority (the Long Island Power Authority or LIPA) to, among
other things, evacuate LILCO's overpaid executives who were responsible for the
Shoreham debacle. All the information you could possibly want on this issue was
brilliantly covered by one of the greatest journalists in the area, Karl Grossman.
Shoreham was closed because even the Feds could not argue that
Long Island had no effective evacuation plan, a vital issue for people who
would have to either bottleneck through the biggest city in the U.S. or swim to
Connecticut in the event of some disaster. That fear also applied to BNL. Fear is the
operative word. Fear can make us do some stupid stuff. Soon, the
HFBR was closed as well.
During that time, I became acquainted with Dr. Ernest Sternglass,
whose work (studying the accumulation of ambient radioactive materials which
mimic calcium in the developing human fetus and, thus, serve as scientifically
effective markers for radiological spikes in the atmosphere) helped to leverage
the test ban treaty during President Kennedy's administration. Dr. Sternglass,
along with Dr. Jay M. Gould, founded the Radiation and Public Health Project,
which I support today. In 1996, during the period where BNL was on one burner,
RPHP turned my attention toward the reactor mess in Millstone, Connecticut;
Millstone is one of the dirtiest and most often fined reactors in this country At that time
it was in fact very heavily fined due to mismanagement of Northeast Utilities,
but his claim of it being “dirty” has absolutely no basis. We gathered
information about Indian Point, and worried about implications of a containment
breach there long before 9/11 heightened that risk. Logical
fallacy, our buddy Alec and his buddy the Doctor worrying doesn’t qualify as
evidence that we should worry. What was the risk of a breach and what is the
risk now. Here is a great video of a jet on a rocket sled hitting a piece of
reactor containment wall. We gathered information about Oak Ridge,
Tennessee, The Gaseous Diffusion plant in Piketon, Ohio. The problems with
operations at Dresden, Illinois. At Turkey Point in Florida. And we immersed
ourselves in the problems surrounding the Oyster Creek facility in Tom's River,
New Jersey. I have a feeling that despite implying there are issues with all of
these sites, he isn’t going to substantiate any of them and not even mention
most of them again.
I started
going down to Oyster Creek in 1996. I returned there with a 60
Minutes camera crew a
couple of years ago. I have a strong and abiding belief that true knowledge of
what does and does not go on in Tom's River, as well as in both Trenton and
Washington, combined with unbiased knowledge about nuclear power in utility
reactors could kill any of the talk about reviving this industry. The truth not
only could but would kill it, if it were known and were disseminated in the
press fairly. WOW. What a lofty claim. And yet he doesn’t substantiate a single
word of it. The truth known only by the gremlin living in Alec Baldwin’s left
scrotal sac would shut down Hollywood for good if only it were disseminated in
the press fairly.
In my next post I will comment on last Saturday's broadcast of
Weekend Edition on NPR and how Scott Simon appallingly allowed Stewart Brand to
burble on and on with his outrageous pablum about "the new safe and clean
nuclear power." Yes, let’s just dismiss the other side out of hand instead of
attacking his specific points with evidence based arguments. I will tell
you some of what I have learned during the years I've worked with RPHP down in
Tom's River and how I view some of the efforts I have joined, with people like
the tireless and courageous Joe Mangano I could go on and on about Joeseph
Mangano, but I’ll save that for a later post now heads RPHP, as some of
the most important work I have ever undertaken. Sorry to disappoint you, he’s
not referring to 30 Rock.
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