Will your child be an acceptable statistic? Will your grandmother or your grandfather be EXPENDABLE?A brutally inflammatory and impassioned question, yet one that must be asked. Is Entergy, DOE, NRC, the nuclear industry, even our government prepared to sacrifice the lives of our American society's most vulnerable citizens to save say Indian Point's aging, trouble plagued reactors in case of a serious incident at the plant? A simple question that Indian Point, Entergy, NRC, FEMA, the Emergency Management folks, and even Andy Spano's office have refused to answer honestly and directly got me to doing some late night research. What I have found, is very disturbing and has begged the question...are our most vulnerable citizens expendable in the eyes of the nuclear industry?
Look at your Emergency Evacuation Plan booklet if you have actually recieved one. I say that, as I went to a great deal of trouble to get my own...even more disturbing, according to FEMA's website, we are supposed to be provided a NEW ONE once a year. (Yes Entergy, I can provide the link to this FEMA statement.) This worthless piece of bird cage lining recommends two basic courses of action.
1. Evacuation-curious here, how many residents around Indian Point know that Entergy and the Emergency Response people only have adequate space in case of an evacuation to protect TWENTY PERCENT OF US?
2. Sheltering in place-When questioned about this option, Indian Point employees admitted there were two likely reasons for sheltering in place. A) Traffic made movement impossible, and B) inclement weather, such as a heavy winter snow storm, and frigid temperatures.
Now, if you read their little booklet, if we are ordered to be sheltered in place, in the middle of a frigid winter night in a snow storm because of a nuclear incident at Entergy's Indian Point reactors, they have a set of instructions for us to follow.
1. Don't go outside-now there's a NO BRAINER! Hey MA, let's go watch the mushroom cloud hovering over the reactors.
2. Keep all windows and doors shut-another one of those DUH instructions. No, we thought we would throw open our doors and windows on a cold winter night to let in a bit of the radioactive fall out.
3. Turn off your furnace. Let me repeat that...turn off your furnace.
4. Close all fireplace and woodstove flues and dampers.
Now, risk assessment is all about modeling various scenerios. For some odd reasons, Entergy, Indian Point, NRC, DOE, FEMA, Emergency Management and every other agency of our government seem bent on stacking the deck in a fashion that suits their own purposes, and when you push them, they STRIKE OUT AT YOU, and claim you have a certain duty to make your own decisions...fair enough if they would honestly answer our questions.
A frigid winter night, no heat to speak of, 15-20 inches of snow on the ground, nuclear fall out as far as the eye can see (OH...we are in our basements), and Entergy has rung their non-working alarm systems, and listening in our handy dandy transiter radios because the electric has gone down, we have been ordered to be sheltered in place. Thinking on this, I called an assortment of agencies and various companies officials at Entergy and posed a simple question. In such a scenerio, how long could we safely be sheltered in place in such conditions before the effects of hypothermia began setting in? The closest thing to an answer I got was the suggestion that maybe I should go out and buy ten goose down comforters to burl into. The rest of what I got was EVASION.
First, being in contracting/landscaping I made some phone calls, did a bit of research into home heat loss. Without going into a lot of jargon about BTU's and inside/outside temperature differentials, not to mention factoring in the square footage of door and window openings, in such conditions, the average home would become VERY COLD in a matter of HOURS. In as little as four hours, some homes could be at the exact same temperature as the outside environment. Now, how long do you think our elderly will survive in a significant event with no heat...why does the NRC REFUSE TO ANSWER A BASIC QUESTION?
At every step of the way, ENTERGY, the NRC make it clear that human health, our environment, commonsense all take a BACK SEAT TO PROFITS. Cost benefit analysis in short makes humans expendable, makes our community's expendable, makes our children expendable, makes GRANDMA AND GRANDPA expendable. We do not need a nuclear reactor in our community, do not need a neighbor who sees us and our children as expendable.
2. Sheltering in place-When questioned about this option, Indian Point employees admitted there were two likely reasons for sheltering in place. A) Traffic made movement impossible, and B) inclement weather, such as a heavy winter snow storm, and frigid temperatures.
Now, if you read their little booklet, if we are ordered to be sheltered in place, in the middle of a frigid winter night in a snow storm because of a nuclear incident at Entergy's Indian Point reactors, they have a set of instructions for us to follow.
1. Don't go outside-now there's a NO BRAINER! Hey MA, let's go watch the mushroom cloud hovering over the reactors.
2. Keep all windows and doors shut-another one of those DUH instructions. No, we thought we would throw open our doors and windows on a cold winter night to let in a bit of the radioactive fall out.
3. Turn off your furnace. Let me repeat that...turn off your furnace.
4. Close all fireplace and woodstove flues and dampers.
Now, risk assessment is all about modeling various scenerios. For some odd reasons, Entergy, Indian Point, NRC, DOE, FEMA, Emergency Management and every other agency of our government seem bent on stacking the deck in a fashion that suits their own purposes, and when you push them, they STRIKE OUT AT YOU, and claim you have a certain duty to make your own decisions...fair enough if they would honestly answer our questions.
A frigid winter night, no heat to speak of, 15-20 inches of snow on the ground, nuclear fall out as far as the eye can see (OH...we are in our basements), and Entergy has rung their non-working alarm systems, and listening in our handy dandy transiter radios because the electric has gone down, we have been ordered to be sheltered in place. Thinking on this, I called an assortment of agencies and various companies officials at Entergy and posed a simple question. In such a scenerio, how long could we safely be sheltered in place in such conditions before the effects of hypothermia began setting in? The closest thing to an answer I got was the suggestion that maybe I should go out and buy ten goose down comforters to burl into. The rest of what I got was EVASION.
First, being in contracting/landscaping I made some phone calls, did a bit of research into home heat loss. Without going into a lot of jargon about BTU's and inside/outside temperature differentials, not to mention factoring in the square footage of door and window openings, in such conditions, the average home would become VERY COLD in a matter of HOURS. In as little as four hours, some homes could be at the exact same temperature as the outside environment. Now, how long do you think our elderly will survive in a significant event with no heat...why does the NRC REFUSE TO ANSWER A BASIC QUESTION?
At every step of the way, ENTERGY, the NRC make it clear that human health, our environment, commonsense all take a BACK SEAT TO PROFITS. Cost benefit analysis in short makes humans expendable, makes our community's expendable, makes our children expendable, makes GRANDMA AND GRANDPA expendable. We do not need a nuclear reactor in our community, do not need a neighbor who sees us and our children as expendable.
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