In an era when Occupy Wall Street protestors are beaten and arrested like hardened criminals, more than 40 years ago in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there was another organized protest movement that captured the nation's attention as it spread from New Hampshire's Clamshell Alliance to the Abalone Alliance in southern California. In the mid-to-late 1970s, massive civil disobedience and notably peaceful arrest of protestors were taking place from the tidewater of Virginia to the farmlands of Oklahoma against the construction and operation of commercial nuclear power reactors.
What is less well-known is that at the root of the controversy, prior to public demonstrations of opposition, were a handful of exceptional women, mostly "housewives" whose thankless work done at their dining room tables provided those demonstrators and an uninformed country with the true realities of the "peaceful" atom.
As each became a legal "intervener" against utility applications during the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's unwieldy licensing process, NRC bureaucrats quickly discovered, each was a feisty woman with a built-in B.S. detector and an ability to recognize a dog-and-pony show when they saw one. With not a shrinking violet among them, none were intimidated by a deliberately complicated NRC process meant to deter public access nor did they succumb to coercion by high-paid snooty corporate lawyers.
All educated, the intervening women interpreted lengthy, complex interrogatories from utility attorneys as they discovered an ingrained NRC resistance and a special vernacular that hid the reality of "abnormal events" that translated into recurring safety problems as "isolated incidents," "generic safety issues" and "lacking specificity" became common denominators for bureaucratic camouflage. Exhibiting innate leadership qualities, each funded their own interventions at great personal expense -- both monetarily and emotionally, each understood their role to educate the public and media to the immediate and long-term health and safety hazards of nuclear reactor operations.
After the first nuclear chain reactor split the atom in 1942, it was only a matter of time before a profit-motivated industry would be created around an extremely complex, dangerous and expensive way to boil water with the added benefit of U.S. taxpayer subsidies. Established by Congress in 1974, the NRC's licensing process required a legal petition to intervene identifying an "interest" that may be affected and at least one "admissible" contention which the individual seeks to litigate. Once granted "standing," the petitioner becomes an "intervener" as a legal party to the proceedings.
* Irene Dickinson, who was in her 70s when she organized the Citizens Committee for Protection of the Environment in 1966, quickly became the heart-center of the intervening women's network with a reputation for an expertise in all aspects of an intervention including anticipation of NRC and nuclear industry tactics. With the energy of a teenager, Irene opposed Consolidated Edison's plans at Indian Point, 34 miles north of New York City.
Under the pressure of reams of NRC inspection reports and depositions to be answered, Irene became a savvy, proficient intervener and persistent questioner as she introduced a multitude of public officials to the hazards of nuclear pollution, radioactive spent fuel, seismic faults, inadequate evacuation plans and "abnormal occurrences." By 1979, her voluminous files containing more than 6,000 pieces, all alphabetized and catalogued into 22 boxes, were turned over to Columbia University.
Thanks to her efforts so many years ago, former Governor Mario Cuomo, then-Senator Hillary Clinton and current Governor Andrew Cuomo have all called for shutdown of the Indian Point plant.
* In 1973, Carrie Barefoot Dickerson was a grandmother of five when she became aware of plans to build two GE nuclear reactors near her farm in northeast Oklahoma, setting for the musical Oklahoma and near Will Rogers' childhood home. In response, a former school teacher and author of "Aunt Carrie's War Against Black Fox," Dickerson formed the Citizen's Action for Safe Energy. As a registered nurse, Dickerson questioned the health effects of cumulative nuclear exposure from the daily release of radioactive emissions during routine operations.
In 1982, after an arduous nine-year battle, her retirement savings depleted and her farm mortgaged, Black Fox became the first nuclear reactor to be canceled due to combined legal and citizen action. Until her death in 2006 at 89 years old, Carrie Barefoot Dickerson continued to actively promote safe, renewable energy sources.
* In 1967, when Midland, Michigan resident Mary Sinclair's letter to the editor questioning the safety of a proposed nuclear reactor along Lake Michigan stirred considerable heat, she knew she had a tiger by the tail. A former technical writer for the Atomic Energy Commission, Sinclair intervened and when the sinking and cracking of buildings designed to contain the plant's twin reactors was discovered, Dow Chemical pulled out of the project. By 1984, Consumers Power backed out of its contract after spending $4 billion with construction 85 percent complete and by 1987, the Midland nuclear project was converted into a natural-gas fueled power plant.
During her years as an intervener, Sinclair endured community ire when the family car's brake lines were cut, their mail box bombed, her husband's business boycotted, life-threatening letters received, and being spat upon while grocery shopping. In commenting on Sinclair's role in cancellation of the Midland reactor, a spokesman for Consumers Power said, "I want to blame her but I don't want to give her any credit."
In 1994, Mary Sinclair earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Communications at 75 years of age and continued to question the storage of spent fuel at reactor sites 300 yards from the shore of Lake Michigan until her death in early 2011.
* As the Atomic Energy Commission's (forerunner of the NRC) began public hearings on Vermont Yankee Power Company application to construct a nuclear reactor along the Connecticut River, Esther Poneck organized the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution to intervene against construction in 1971.
Descendant of a Quaker family that (almost) dates back to the country's founding and owner of a 500-acre farm 20 miles north of the proposed reactor, Poneck, a psychologist and member of the first graduating class of the New Jersey College for Women in 1918, was joined by her equally-formidable daughter Diana Sidbotham, a Vassar College graduate and classical singer. Poneck, known as a Grand New England Lady, continued to oppose nuclear projects throughout New England until her death in 1991 at 91 years of age.
* Dr. Judy Johnsrud established the Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power in 1970 when she became the original intervener against Three Mile Island construction in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Johnsrud participated in interventions against the Limerick nuclear power plant and the proposed Peach Bottom reactor both in close proximity to high population areas. With a Ph.D. in geography and a brilliant analytical mind, Johnsrud analyzed the features of each site and today, the Limerick plant is considered to be the third highest earthquake risk in the United States.
A longtime citizen activist who criss-crossed the country speaking to safe energy groups and testifying before the NRC and State regulatory commissions, Judy was considered an expert on all aspects of nuclear power and remained active until health considerations forced her recent retirement at 80 years of age.
* With a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Michigan, Kay Drey made her first speech against nuclear power in 1974 before a Missouri State Senate Committee. In 1976, Drey organized the Citizens for Reformed Electric Rates which sponsored a successful ballot initiative against a rate increase to finance construction of the Calloway Nuclear power plant. The initiative passed with 65 percent of the vote.
Drey participated in the intervention against the Calloway reactor, participated in the cancellation of the Marble Hill nuclear plant in Indiana and provided expert testimony against the Dresden reactor in Joliet, Illinois. Kay continues a 25-year effort to clean up nuclear waste from the uranium purification sites located in downtown St. Louis.
* A music and English Literature major at the University of Vermont, June Allen organized the North Anna Environment Coalition in Virginia when she learned from a local geologist that the proposed nuclear reactors at North Anna, 86 miles south of Washington, D.C., sat astride an existing geologic fault.
A soft-spoken classical pianist who wore pearls, Allen developed her investigative talents as she became an eloquent, hard-nosed intervener in 1972 pointing out what she saw as collusion between the NRC and Virginia Electric Power Company. Allen testified before Congress in 1974 identifying the "nuclear-industrial complex" as an inherently unsafe technology and frequently attended VEPCO stockholder meetings. According to Allen's husband, on an occasion when spied in the audience, VEPCO's Chairman stopped the meeting, extended an arm, pointed a finger directly at June and announced with great indignation, "There is Mrs. Allen."
After the reactors at North Anna began operation, June continued to expose the health effects of radiation as she succumbed to breast cancer in 2010 which she believed to be caused by radiation exposure.
* A graduate of the University of North Carolina and on Walter Cronkite's staff at CBS in New York City, Faith Young organized the Concerned Citizens of Dixon Springs when she learned of the Tennessee Valley Authority's plan to build the world's largest nuclear complex one mile from Young's 150 acre beef cattle ranch. Four GE reactors were to be built at Hartsville, 50 miles northeast of Nashville along the Cumberland River amidst a historic rural farming community with antebellum homes that date back to 1787.
One-half of a southern belle duo, Steel Magnolia #1 became an intervener in 1975 and, as a result of President Carter's review of TVA's plans, all reactors at Hartsville were cancelled by 1984 as too expensive and unnecessary with a $2.5 billion "white elephant" cooling tower still visible from Young's farm.
In 1985, Young was arrested while speaking at a TVA meeting on the Watts Bar reactor and held in Knoxville County Jail until the hearing concluded at the end of the day. The next morning's Nashville Tennessean headline read "TVA Arrests Two Grandmothers."
* Steel Magnolia #2, Jeanine Honicker, who was arrested with Young in 1985, filed a 92-page petition with the NRC in 1978 to shut down the entire nuclear industry based on excessive radon emissions from the milling and mining of uranium. The petition was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982.
A leukemia diagnosis for Honicker's 19-year-old daughter as she read Dr. John Gofman's "Poisoned Power" was enough to motivate the Nashville native to become an anti-nuclear activist. Today, still active with safe energy groups, Honicker recalls that her daughter's illness was "too high a price to pay for electricity."
By 1978, due, in part, to widespread public opposition, no new applications for nukes were forthcoming until 2011. Touted today as a "'clean' non-polluting energy," nuclear reactors are known to release radioactive gases and liquids during routine daily operations. In their determination to publicize its hazards, the intervening women were pioneers alerting the American public to the scientific consensus that all radiation exposure is cumulative and damages cellular DNA.
With five of the intervening women gone, they remain all-American visionaries, every one a heroine almost half a century later. In the aftermath of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima, the result of their persistent efforts, their diligent research and analysis on behalf of a safe energy planet for all the world's children, lives on.
"If world energy demand grows by 3.5 times between now and 2025, Keepin and Kats calculate that substituting nuclear for coal would require 8000 large nuclear plants, as opposed to the 350 operating today. New ones would have to come on line at an average rate of one every 1.6 days, at a cost of 787 billion dollars per year, for 38 years."
http://www.sustainabilityinstitute.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn238keepined
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
I find the most interesting thing to be the section on "nuclear reactor attacks". Never knew there was that many, but otherwise a lot of "accidents".
U.S. Nuclear Accidents
http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html
Deaths, but judge for yourself or cherry pick around them, I don't care. Funny how many died at Surry in separate incident but almost exactly same circumstances.
"Comparing the historical safety record of civilian nuclear energy with other forms of electrical generation, Ball, Roberts, and Simpson, the IAEA, and the Paul Scherrer Institute found in separate studies that during the period FROM 1970 to 1992, there were just 39 on-the-job deaths of nuclear power plant workers worldwide, while during the same time period, there were 6,400 on-the-job deaths of coal power plant workers, 1,200 on-the-job deaths of natural gas power plant workers and members of the general public caused by natural gas power plants, and 4,000 deaths of members of the general public caused by hydroelectric power plants.[53][54][55] In particular, COAL POWER PLANTS are estimated to KILL 24,000 Americans PER YEAR due to lung disease[56] as well as causing 40,000 heart attacks per year[57] in the United States. According to SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, the average COAL power plant EMITS MORE than 100 times as much radiation per year than a comparatively sized nuclear power plant in the form of toxic coal waste known as fly ash."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
Nothing "FUNNY" about it and no "CHERRY PICKING" required.
Anyway, if you are naive enough to think nuclear doesn't cover-up, esp cancers.......well thats your problem. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2005-104/ is a good study, cleans out a bunch of crap.
This one is a lot more interesting to me. We actually did some of this?
http://listverse.com/2010/03/25/10-famous-incidences-of-death-by-radiation/
Instead of simply watching the weather for a few days to recognize the absurdity of a claim that it is possible for unreliable energy sources like the wind and sun to provide the energy that we need to live healthy, productive, prosperous lives, some activists continue in their steadfast assertions that they can fight BOTH nuclear energy and fossil fuel energy.
Less than 3% of the electricity in the US is produced by the wind and the sun. None of the reliable energy comes from either of those sources. How healthy do you think your local water supply would be if it was only powered by solar collectors and wind turbines? Do you think the refrigerator where you store family meals would provide healthy food if it was dependent on sun and wind? Do you think the wind and sun are appropriate power sources for hospitals, traffic lights, and the heat during long cold winter nights?
Fighting nuclear energy plays right into the hands of the established fossil fuel industry.
That is why the movement has been so successful; it enabled continued energy market domination by fuels produced by people with lots of money and political power.
The interesting part is that there seems to be no balance in the anti nuclear movement. It is quite fanatical and loves to spread fear and we all know that people are very receptive to fear. It is easier to accept the fear than it is to truly do research, to question things and to find the truth.
I'd like to add a few of today's "heroes," imo, who are working so hard to get the truth out.
1. Donna Gilmore www.sanonofresafety.org
2. Libbe HaLevy http://www.nuclearhotseat.com/blog/
3. RadChick - Christina Consolo http://www.facebook.com/pages/RadChick-Radiation-Research-Mitigation/260610960640885
Men get cancer from exposure to radiation, and
men die from that cancer, however, for reasons
not yet fully understood, fewer males get cancer
and fewer of them die from it compared to
females of the same age at the same level of
radiation exposure. The difference is not small:
for every two men who get cancer, three women
suffer this disease. These findings of physical
difference (not based on behavior) of 40% -- 60%
more cancer in women compared to men come
from the (US) National Academy of Sciences
(NAS), Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation
(BEIR) Report number VII, published in 2006ii.
It has been common knowledge that children's
bodies are the most vulnerable to radiation
impacts, but from BEIR VII we also learn that
little girls (age 0 -- 5 years) are twice as likely to
suffer harm from radiation (defined in BEIR VII
as cancer) as little boys in the same age group.iii
In October 2011, NIRS published a briefing paper
Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Women
containing more details about these finding.
http://www.nirs.org/radiation/radiationharm2pg.pdf
Very good RECENT primer on radiation effects.
Women & Children Require More Protection from
Ionizing Radiation than Men
NAS Findings: Adult Males are Group Most
Resistant to getting Cancer from Radiation
There is no safe dose of ionizing radiation: any
exposure of living cells to sub-atomic particles
(alpha, beta, neutron) or waves of energy (gamma,
X-ray) ejected from unstable radioactive atoms
has the potential to trigger cancer in people.
http://www.nirs.org/radiation/radiationharm2pg.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Z._Morgan
Morgan's autobiography, The Angry Genie: One Man's Walk Through the Nuclear Age was published in 1999 by the University of Oklahoma Press.
"After decades as a "pillar of the nuclear establishment", Morgan had a "change of heart" about nuclear weapons production and nuclear power. He began to offer court testimony which was friendly to people who said they had been harmed by nuclear weapons and the nuclear power industry. In October 1982, he testified in a lawsuit brought by nearly 1,200 people who accused the government of negligence in atomic weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s, which they said had caused leukemia and other cancers. Morgan, then 75 years old, testified that radiation protection measures in the tests were substandard.[6] Morgan also testified on behalf of Navajo uranium miners and their survivors, saying government officials had known about mine radiation dangers but had not protected the miners. He also testified in the case of Karen Silkwood against Kerr-McGee.[6] Morgan's autobiography, The Angry Genie: One Man's Walk Through the Nuclear Age was published in 1999 by the University of Oklahoma Press.[6] He died in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on June 8, 1999, apparently from a ruptured aortic aneurysm."
Fighting nuclear energy because of its relationship with weapons is akin to fighting aluminum because it is a key enabling material for bombers or fighting gasoline because it contains the same chemicals as napalm.
Humans need reliable energy to enable us to thrive in places where the weather is not temperate. We need it to move goods from place to place. We need it to clean our water and assist in our manufacturing enterprises.
We have a choice - we can take advantage of the gift of clean energy available inside the nuclei of a couple of naturally occurring elements (uranium and thorium). We can enjoy the fact that that energy comes without any gaseous byproducts that need constant disposal and enjoy the fact that the waste products are so compact that fifty years worth of used fuel from a fleet of 100 reactors could be easily accommodated in a building the size of a Super Wal-Mart.
Or, we can do what the economic establishment would love for us to do. We can turn our back on nuclear energy and remain addicted to the ever more profitable - for the establishment - fossil fuels that currently supply about 85% of our energy needs.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
guinea pigs by marching them into area's just after a nuclear Atomic
Bomb blast, or pointing out substandard safety practices for uranium miners.
Dr Alvin Weinberg, patent holder on the LWR and the THorium Molten Salt Reactors
said this about Dr Morgan in 1995:
"Karl Morgan, once director of ORNL's Health Physics Division, disagreed with the way reactor development was going. He thought the thorium cycle (breeding uranium-233 in a reactor by neutron bombardment of thorium) should be pursued because the waste disposal problem was simpler to handle. We had some difficult times there."...
...."Rep. Chet Holifield, chairman of the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, said, "Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it might be time for you to leave nuclear energy."
Dr Weinberg was removed as director of Oak Ridge by President Nixon 1973.
Nixon selected the LMFBR. A breeder of a tsunami of Weapon Grade Plutonium
and costs from $400M in 1971 to $3.2B in 1981. Even that was too much for
President Reagan by 1983.
Both of these men Weinberg and Morgan where correct then and correct now, not "rogues". They were just unfortunately not listened to then. Are we willing to LISTEN now?????
The Weinberg "Faustian Bargain" Nuclear Legacy is accumulating as we speak.
http://www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/news_items/news_061018.shtml
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy
Margaret Harding, owner of 4 Factor Consulting and widely quoted for her nuclear energy expertise during the Fukushima media frenzy. (Margaret worked on GE BWR fuel designs for 30 years)
Suzy Hobbs, Director of PopAtomic Studios, a 501 (c)(3) non profit dedicated to nuclear energy education
Meredith Angwin, a granny who has been fighting for several years to save Vermont Yankee and keep Vermont as a state that produces a large percentage of emission free electricity than any other state.
Andrea Jennetta, the publisher of Fuel Cycle Week and a strong supporter of efforts to help nuclear professionals learn to communicate with less technically inclined people.
Yes, there are passionate and effective organizers who somehow adopted the notion that there is something peculiarly risky about nuclear energy as an alternative for supplying our electricity needs. However, the facts show that the power source has an amazing safety record without a single radiation caused death in 50 years of commercial nuclear energy. Nuclear plants around the world produce the energy equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil per day. It could be a lot more without the focused opposition.
Of course, allowing nuclear to flourish might have reduced sales opportunities for coal, oil and gas, which partially explains the success of antinuclear activism.
By 1974, Ralph Nader had organized the Critical Mass Energy Project, there were widespread disruptive protests, and expensive legal battles. The Atomic Energy Commission was dismantled and replaced by the obstructionist Nuclear Regulatory Commission plus a hodgepodge of other programs.
Since there have been no nuclear nuclear plants ordered and completed in the US since 1974, (four new plants just got licensed to proceed with construction and operations once they are complete) the antinuclear activists seemed to have won. That was not due to being on the side of truth, it was due to being on the side of establishment POWER that hated the idea of replacing coal plants that were a reliable market for 2-4 million tons of coal per year EACH with nuclear plants that did not purchase any coal at all.
It was not just the coal guys - oil held a 17% market share in the US before nuclear. It now holds about 2-3% of the market (Hawaii, Alaska and some intermittent high peak units).
Rod Adams
I've never actually seen cigarettes cause cancer, Rod. And yet I know they have. Why is that?
Do not compare the science supporting the fact that tobacco smoke, in the doses taken by millions of people, contributes to many different cancers with the fact that radiation, in the doses resulting from commercial nuclear energy production, has caused no deaths.
There are warehouses full of well accepted science disputed for years by the tobacco industry supporting the first contention.
There are also warehouses full of well accepted science that supports the second contention.
In each case, there may be a few studies conducted by pseudo scientists that go against the grain of overwhelming evidence. In both cases, there are well heeled industries that would love to have people believe the opposite of what the science shows.
The tobacco industry would love to return to the good old days prior to the surgeon general's report.
The fossil fuel industry loves the fact that there are people who are so afraid of small amounts of radiation that they willingly risk the fate of all the world's people by supporting the continued consumption of massive quantities of of fossil fuel that could be displaced by atomic fission power plants.
Consider: Alice Slater, Nuclear Age Foundation, NYC; Carol Urner, California; Hattie Nestel, Vermont; Liz Apfelberg and Sandy Silver, California; Ellen Thomas, North Carolina and many others from the Women's League for Peace and Freedom.(WILPF). Then there is Bobbie Paul, WAND (great interracial group), Atlanta Georgia. Let's see an update. Thank you again. Jean Verthein
Nice work!!!
http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/other-resources/investing-in-clean-power-329295
"The clean energy sector is emerging as one of the most dynamic and competitive in the world, witnessing 630 percent growth in finance and investments since 2004," said Phyllis Cuttino, director, Pew Clean Energy Program. 'In 2010, worldwide finance and investment grew 30 percent to a record $243 billion.'"
Throw in some energy storage, and it's game over. There's no turning back.
http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html
Those reactors produce about 30% more electricity each year as the entire US grid produced in 1960.
Today, eco-illiterates wish to kill vast acreage of the Earth's ecosystems for dead fields of solar panels [mined from a rare earth mineral] and plant devouring windmills that gobble up immense acres of ecosystems for low energy yield! In fact, we would have to solarize and windmilllize every ecosystem on the Earth for energy for the entire planet.
Conversely, nuclear energy devours less of the living body and face of the Earth for high energy yield.
While most think we are making our Earth safer by this energy and that, it all comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, but according to ecologists, the gravest danger mankind faces is the entombing of ecosystems and the extinctions of the strands in the web of all life or the creators and job-holders of all ecosystems, plant and animal biodiversity.
Nuclear power plants require large quantities of rare metals in their construction, strip mining for uranium contaminates water supplies and leaves large amounts of radioactive tailings that must be managed for thousands of years, the manufacture of nuclear fuel releases large quantities of ozone depleting chemicals into the atmosphere, huge quantities of water are needed for cooling, radioactivity is released during normal operation, and high level radioactive waste is produced that requires safe storage for thousands of years. Your on attack solar as dangerous to the planet and promotion of nuclear as safe is sick. Just look at what is happening in Japan, 160,000 people are displaced from their homes, some permanently and many will die from cancer and disease in the coming years and precious agricultural land has been lost. Nuclear is known to be very expensive, even the top nuclear executives now say it. It is also well known that a serious nuclear accident can economically break a nation, and cause great harm to large numbers of people. Nuclear energy is killing our planet as are fossil fuels, we must live on electricity produced by renewables it is the only path forward.
Releasing oxygen [and today, we have less than historic levels of oxygen]; balancing the gaseous composition of the atmosphere; naturally regulate and moderate the climate, naturally takes care of those heat trapping gases for Earth; provides the nitrogen cycle and the hydrological storage and flux, purifies the air and water, creates and renews a life giving soil and the entirety of Earth's biogeochemistry; provides
decomposition, pollination, seed dispersal, 75% of all new medicines, 99% of all pest control and the regulation and control of human disease pathogens that cause global epidemics.
We can all continue on our merry path, hoping ecologists are wrong, but if not! All ecosystems have feedbacks and loops to the climate and the atmosphere, and they all, altogether create the life zone of Earth, her biosphere/ecosphere.
Why not alternatives on buildings, rooftops, shopping centers, parking lots, along freeways? Why kill the Earth when we have roofs, cities, etc.
Uranium is often the byproduct of copper mining - about 50% of copper mines produce uranium but knowing which ones is the key to superprofit$.
As long as we allow it to be extracted - with those in government positions who use classified information to profit, we are all doomed.
Why those who support nuclear energy don't "get" that they and their loved ones are going to be nuclear glow worms soon due to Fukushima, is beyond me .. they should fight it, too. Then we all would win another round against something truly evil.