by keith harmon snow
I
have swum in the Deerfield and Connecticut Rivers. Perhaps this is foolish of
me. These rivers are beautiful, they appear reasonably clean, they draw me in
to their ominous currents, their tranquility, their wild nature. There was a
time when I didnÕt know what I was doing. Later I made a conscious choice. What
distinguished that choice from the blind choices of so many other people
however, is my personal awareness of the insidious and deadly nature of the
nuclear reactors on both rivers.
People
swim in these rivers. People eat the fish. Tourists and adventurers raft the
whitewaters of the Deerfield. These paying customers are not informed of the
potential health risks due to upstream radiation releases. Corporate responsibility -- in a
just and honest world -- dictates that people be informed of the risk. Public
health departments have a responsibility to alert the public of radioactive
threats.
There
is a tacit policy of nondisclosure by the local tourism industry, local media,
boards of health and – lest we forget the source – the
multinational nuclear corporations. There is an ethical dilemma in not
informing people that the nuclear plant upstream has dumped, and continues to
dump, radioactive waste into the river. Indeed, and instead, theirs is an
active and profitable campaign of disinformation.
Circa
1961 Yankee Atomic Electric Company (YAEC) in Rowe (MA) began their now
historical operations on the Deerfield River. The next four decades saw
standard operations dumping nuclear waste into the Deerfield River valley
through airborne and aquatic effluent releases.
Always
defined ÒsafeÓ by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, amongst the radiotoxic
byproducts YAEC has confirmed present in these releases are cesium-137,
cobalt-60, strontium-90 and tritium. Cesium 137 decays to cesium 133 – an
isotope with a radioactive half-life longer than your imagination (can imagine).
Think
about it. Cesium-133 has a half-life of three million years. ThatÕs the time it
takes for just half of the initial volume to decay. And decay doesnÕt mean that
it has gone anywhereÉits just radiating around out there in our spaces. Of
course, according to the industry, such radiotoxins are always beneath the
background levels of radiation – like the industry PR people, background
levels are amorphous moving targets. They are arbitrarily defined and ever
modified to confirm the deceptive science of nuclear propagandists. With every
radioactive release, the background level of the environment rises. As
background rises, so do NRC standards for safety. This is the insidious heart
of the nuclear deception.
Shut
down thanks to concerned local citizens in 1991, and now being decommissioned,
YAEC has for the past decade pursued their Òclean-upÓ by flushing the
radioactivity of the reactor site into the river. Stripping the reactor and
shipping the irradiated hardware and soils out and dumping them on the economically
impoverished community of Barnwell, South Carolina, YAEC has pursued methods of
flushing and diluting to effectively ÒdisappearÓ unmanageable contamination.
Bald
eagleÕs are routinely sited by YAEC as evidence of a thriving ecology in the
reactor vicinity. Just above Sherman Dam, the muddy sediments at the outpipe to
the Yankee Atomic reactor cooling system -- submerged beneath the tranquil
surface of Sherman Pond -- are so lethally contaminated that YAEC experts in
cryptic and secretive discussions with Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulators
confirmed that these profoundly contaminated sediments were too hot to handle. Yankee decided to leave
the waste. The NRC nodded their approval.
Imagine
this: You could, if you so desired, row a boat out into Sherman Pond, dive down
and scoop up some of this incredibly nasty irradiated sludge. Storm and flood
damage could also displace these sediments. Worse still, YAEC seeks to allow
public access to this site. (This information is very readily available to interested
parties.)
Faced
with the impossibility of cleaning up the public sediments, YAEC spent their time and energy and hundreds of
thousands in advertising dollars in Valley newspapers cleaning up the public sentiments. This has profound ethical implications, as Yankee
Rowe and other reactors go through the motions of decommissioning. Nuclear
waste is too hot to handle, insidious and deadly, lasting forever, and there is
no place to put it. This means flushing, shuffling, burying and dumping the
waste in places which canÕt, wonÕt and donÕt contain it.
The
newspapers for their part – while taking in thousands of dollars in
advertising revenues for disingenuous public relations advertorials –
have pretended to cover nuclear power with that standard American journalistic
practice of Òobjectivity.Ó Funny how billion dollar corporations are always
right, always quoted, never seriously questioned. Meanwhile, the citizens have
to prove beyond all reasonableness that their cancers have any basis in fact.
There is very little if any unbiased news attention to burgeoning radioactive
contamination. These corporations are getting away with murder. Worse still,
they get all kinds of public subsidies to do so.
Remember
that NRC regulators are always former or future nuclear industry careerists
intent only on regulating public awareness, and limiting public oversight and involvement. These are people whose livelihoods and self-interests
revolve around the trillion dollar economic and ecological boondoggle of
nuclear power. People whose interests – like the interests of big tobacco
– revolve around lies, lies and more lies.
Thus
Mr. Bush, with our unquestioning nuclear media, can ever declare the sanctity
of nuclear power. Having invested a billion dollars into nuclear propaganda
over the past sixty years, we have yet another U.S. President touting nuclear
power as a viable, clean, safe energy alternative. It is not: Every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle grossly contributes
to climate change.
George
BushÕs insanity is at issue here. Reminds me of Radiation
Ronny. Prior to his Presidency, Ronald Reagan was for years a key spokesman and
speech-giver -- ever bringing good things like armaments, munitions, PCBs and
nuclear waste to life – for GE nuclear. Recall that this is the guy who defended cutting school lunch programs
with the justification that Òketchup is a vegetable.Ó
Along with the horrific US government spectacles
of the Contras and the Star Wars weapons program, the Reagan Era ushered in new
standards of deceit in the radiation and cancer arena. Radiation studies compromised by industry and widely
regurgitated by the newspapermen found nuclear power clean, emissions-free AND
safe. What a bargain, at billions and billions of dollars in public taxation.
Meanwhile, circa 1983, Reagan and his corporate cabal successfully annihilated all emerging solar technology – setting solar back
twenty years, further entrenching genocidal energy corporations and their
ecological and democratic hostility.
But
radiation studies not compromised by big nuclear money – and there are
plenty of these hidden from the public – have documented the burgeoning
epidemics of disease. Radiation reconcentrates in the environment. It is
cumulative, collecting in plants, soils, and the silt of rivers. It collects in
the tissues of organisms -- where it irradiates muscle cells and nearby organs.
Indeed, YAEC studies of the Deerfield River Valley found radiation in cowÕs
milk. YAEC also found a complete absence of trout in Sherman Pond. Now this is
supposed to be a healthy, New England river ecosystem. No trout? (Ask George W. Bush: If ketchup is a vegetable, is a
trout an organism?)
Remember
that Madame Curie died of cancer
and a curie is a large unit
of radiation and consider a few facts available to interested people at the NRC
public document room at Greenfield Community College. Over 10,000 curies of
radioactivity were dumped into the Deerfield from 1966 to 1973. Some 136,000
curies of waste were removed from Yankee Rowe between 1991 and 1995 in an unconstitutional
and illegal rush-job called ÒEarly Component Removal.Ó There were 110 cases of
worker contamination in April and May of 1994, and the containment vessel had
to be evacuated when radiation levels soared during the experimental reactor
disassembly. Experimental methods, unregulated releases, and worker
contamination continued to plague YAEC throughout the 1990sÕ.
Thanks
to the relentless intervening by the Charlemont based CitizenÕs Awareness
Network (CAN), the Mass Department of Public Health (MDPH) investigated and
conferred in 1994 that there was statistical evidence of epidemics of cancers,
birth defects and leukemias in the Deerfield River Valley. In one study of
health effects due to radiation releases at Pilgrim Nuclear (MA), Dr. Robert Knorr
(MDPH) found a four-fold increase in leukemias. Children and pregnant women are
most at risk.
Daily
releases – occurring at some 103 reactors nationwide – continue to
concentrate radioactivity in our aquatic and terrestrial resources.
These
plants were shoddily designed, experimental, rushed into operation. They are
crumbling behemoths, leaking, polluting, spewing nuclear waste. Next=generation
nuclear may have some some of the problems, but the daily dumping and flushing
of radioactive waste – no accident – is a design necessity.
As
for the Connecticut River, the fish are bigger, the currents stronger -- the
radioactive releases from Vermont Yankee greater by volume and frequency. In
1976 some 86,000 gallons of radioactive tritium were released into the
Connecticut. (These are NOT isolated incidents; they are standard nuclear
practice.) Decades of standard operation led to daily dumping and flushing of
radioactivity. And, like Yankee Rowe, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Facility has
a Spent Fuel Pool contaminated with spent fuel rods in a radioactive soup
capable of melting superman down to a mound of mutant slag.
Spent
Fuel Pools are always being flushed with the adjacent rivers. Contamination in
the YAEC Spent Fuel Pool (1995) exceeded 1,000,000 curies due to a single
reactor component later shipped out and buried (NC). Of course, there are
filtersÉand there are filter failuresÉ and no matter the level of radioactivity
that seeps, spills or is dumped into the river, it is always declared safe,
never a cause for public concern.
In
1997 a routine water sampling turned up a chunk of cobalt-60 in the sediments
of the Connecticut River – in Vernon, downstream from Vermont Yankee.
Cobalt-60 is a nasty and lethal radiotoxin. Nuclear officials quickly reassured
the public. Engineers played it down, arguing that Òcobalt-60 has been detected
in the Connecticut River in previous years.Ó
ThatÕs
the part that always shocks me. The way they tell me – in all seriousness
– how thereÕs no cause for public concern. I have remembered that chunk of cobalt-60 every time I chose to swim in these rivers. But mine is an informed decision. I own the choice. In the end, I would own
the cancer.
End—and it really will
be.