Green Party of CT - Rock The Reactors contact 50 miles radius editors

Dear editors,

It has become apparent from the most recent pump failure and emergency shutdown at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan NY that there is a pressing need to decommission the nuclear power plants closest to densely populated areas.

Rock The Reactors and the Green Party of Connecticut have identified 5 nuclear power plants in the United States top of the list for putting the public at greatest risk, not only in case of catastrophic accident, but also from long term exposure to chronic mishaps, leaks and daily venting of radioactivity.

The reactors with the most neighbors within a radius of 50 miles are:*

Indian Point, near Buchanan, N.Y., 41 miles upriver from the center of New York City, with 17.2 million people within 50 miles.

San Onofre, near San Clemente, Calif., and 45 miles from San Diego, 8.5 million.

Limerick, near Limerick, Pa., and 28 miles from Philadelphia, 8.0 million.

Dresden, near Morris, Ill., and 43 miles from Chicago, 7.3 million.

Peach Bottom, near Delta, Pa., and 36 miles from Baltimore, 5.5 million.

Hope Creek and Salem, both near Hancocks Bridge, N.J., and 43 miles from Philadelphia, 5.5 million.

*msnbc.com

The financial firm UBS has recommended to Entergy, owners of the Indian Point Energy Center, that they need to shut down their smaller nuclear power plant in Brattleboro VT to remain financially soluble. This is a Mark 1 reactor, the same design as built by General Electric in Fukushima, Japan. The state of Vermont has accused Entergy of not having sufficient funds in escrow, as required by law, to decommission Vermont Yankee. A similar situation may exist for Indian Point according to our sources.

Remy Chevalier, director of Rock The Reactors, founded in 2006 to enlist the participation of the arts and fashion community in the fight to shut down Indian Point, feels residents of Fairfield County, who live and work in the Indian Point 50-mile evacuation zone, should have a say in their future.

Riverkeeper and other local environmental organizations are in the courts fighting to prevent the NRC from awarding Indian Point a renewed operating license which would allow Indian Point to continue playing Russian Roulette with the lives of 20 million people for another 20 to 40 years, or until an accident permanently shuts down the plant.

Riverkeeper has demonstrated that Indian Point only provides a small portion of electricity to New York City and New York's 19th district, comprising Westchester, Orange, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess counties. Electricity today can easily be made up through conservation, improved technologies like LEDs, and alternative energy generation like solar or wind.

Rock The Reactors and the Green Party of Connecticut ask that our local representatives in Fairfield County raise their voices in opposition to the relicensing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in solidarity with our neighbors in New York.

Contact:

Remy Chevalier
Green Party state senate candidate

Environmental Library Fund
25 Newtown Turnpike

Weston CT 06883

203-227-2065
remyc@prodigy.net

www.rockthereactors.com

David Bedell

Green Party state representative candidate

Secretary, Fairfield County Green Party

116 New Norwalk Road

New Canaan, CT  06840

203-581-3193

dbedellgreen@hotmail.com
www.ctgreenparty.org

Post-Op CAN Rally in DC

Moral of all this I think, sadly, is that until or unless there's another major accident, in the US, within our borders, nobody is going to give a shit. Until then, we'll keep getting poisoned to death slowly by leaks and spills. I always said that the only way to shut down nuclear power is to shut down Indian Point, because that's like starting the dominoes tumbling. It's also the most vulnerable because so many affluent and influential people want to see it shut down, and they give Riverkeeper a lot of money to make it happen.

What Rock The Reactors tries to do is create links between the serious, professional, legal shut down IP community, and professionals in fashion and media in the New York area... We do what we can, but it could not reach as far as Washington DC, because in New York fashion trumps politics, and ultimately nobody in New York cares about politics, because they know that media can succeed where politics fail.

To get the media you have to give it what it wants, so without a scandal, a riot, exposing yourself like FEMEN, whatever it takes to get on the cover of the NYPost, nobody pays any attention... Interesting that those celebrities most often associated with the anti-nuclear community like Alec Baldwin or Christie Brinkley so often keep their names in the headlines by behaving like children... one would suspect it's all an act, the fame game.

Problem is finding useful idiots who will play that game in the anti-nuclear community to put and keep nuclear on the front page. It hasn't been easy, discouraging... Images of peace flags don't cut it, it pigeonholes the issue... the movement isn't growing, except online, where it remains invisible. Other than that, I'm kind of out of steam and ideas at this point... something needs to give somewhere.

(Photo: AnonMedia)

Getting Entergy out of Dodge!

Remember the plot of the Magnificent Seven, not to be confused with the Chicago Seven?

It just started with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen... and a small village under the thumb of an evil gang (cough! Entergy...) which owned everything, the bar, the goods and supplies store, the mayor, the sheriff, the church, the whore house even!

The local town's people were so afraid they couldn't move a muscle, crippled by fear, terrified. So they went to get a gun fighter, who couldn't do it alone, went and got another... and that wasn't enough... so they looked for more. And then they were Seven.

Right now it's more like the Good, The Bad & The Ugly... We know who we are... As a matter of fact Eli Wallach played in both films. We're not nice guys. We're gun fighters, we shoot from the hip, we're fast, we're cool, we're ruthless, we're dudes, we fight amongst ourselves, and your women fall in love with us, cause we're bad boys, we don't bathe, we don't shave, because we're here to get the job done.

Get Entergy out of Dodge!

As a kid I dreamed of being two things, Abbie Hoffman and James Coburn. I once saw a movie where James Coburn played a pirate, A High Wind in Jamaica, and I said to myself, that's me... That's who I want to be. Tall, slim, twisted, inscrutable, sexy, mean, wonderful... and I became that man... and soon, in a few months, I will be leaving environmental activism behind, after 30 years, to join the ranks of Hollywood actors, because I freakin' deserve it after doing their dirty green work for so many years... I want to be the new Vincent Price... I want to play super-villains... I want to relish in my persona.

So you see, Indian Point, for me, it's just honing my chops, a peice of cake really, frosting on it... I haven't even gotten started yet, because after we chase Entergy out of town, we'll track'em down, all the way down, to Bayou country... and like Swamp Thing, we'll bog'em down, drown'em in their own folly.

I'm being accused of driving a poor young woman crazy right now... with my antics... and for the first time in my life, I'm not apologizing for it, because she signed on, we toasted stout over it, and she's in till the bitter end, kicking and screaming if we have to. Sergio Leone once said, "The best characters are the sinners who look like saints."

That's a western. That's a real western... Just ask the Peekskill historian!

Millstone Is More Of a Threat Than Ever

CONNECTICUT COALITION AGAINST MILLSTONE
www.mothballmillstone.org

January 26, 2007

September 11 Five Years Later: Millstone Is More Of a Threat Than Ever Five years after terrorists flew over the Indian Point nuclear reactors on the Hudson River bound for the World Trade Center...

Dear Members of the Energy & Technology Committee:

We note that Rep. Elizabeth Ritter recently extended an invitation to fellow members of the Energy & Technology Committee to visit Millstone’s dry cask storage installation in Waterford. Please refer to the minutes of your January 4, 2007 and January 11, 2007 meetings.

While we appreciate earnest efforts to inform your Committee about all aspects of Millstone operations, we write to be sure you are aware of the following:

1. Dominion’s application to the Siting Council to site a de facto permanent high-level nuclear waste storage installation is the subject of a legal challenge initiated by the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone; an appeal is now pending before the Appellate Court.

2. The approval defied the Waterford Conservation Commission’s decision and is contrary to Waterford’s zoning regulations, which prohibit permanent nuclear waste storage within the town.

3. The storage units are federally licensed for only 20 years; it is generally acknowledged that there will be no federal repository to take the waste before the licenses expire.

4. The federal regulator, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, did not evaluate the vulnerability of the above-ground, highly visible (see accompanying photograph) nuclear waste storage facility to acts of terrorism. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently ruled with regard to a dry cask storage application in California that the NRC erred in failing to take into consideration such vulnerability; the U.S. Supreme Court denied the utility’s pedtition to appeal.

5. Millstone’s above-ground storage installation is highly vulnerable to an airborne terrorist attack. (See photo.)

6. Dominion flagrantly misled the Siting Council when it represented the site is protected by state-of-the art perimeter security. When Dominion, through its lobbyist, Daniel Weekley, made such claim, it was deliberately disabling its perimeter security system because it was generating hundreds of false alarms. Dominion’s security was and is a travesty. These facts have become known through whistleblower disclosures.

7. High-level nuclear waste dry-cask installations in the U.S. have been plagued with defects. Components made in Japan do not meet U.S. quality control standards.

8. The NRC’s approval of Millstone’s high-level nuclear waste storage disallowed any public hearing or other public input.

9. The facility is designed to continuously release high levels of radiation requiring limited worker exposure. Direct unshielded exposure results in a lethal dose of radiation.

10. Millstone’s above-ground and highly visible dry-cask storage facility is located but yards away from Jordan Cove, an active recreational area and estuary of the Long Island Sound, which affords waterborne access.

11. Ex-Governor John G. Rowland’s office facilitated Siting Council approval of the facility, according to DEP records made available under the Freedom of Information Act. Mr. Weekley arranged for Dominion to fly the chairman of the Siting Council, its executive director and a voting member of the Siting Council to out-of-state nuclear facilities to acquaint them with dry-cask storage installations, a fact withheld from the public during the Siting Council’s proceedings. The then-Ethics Commission gave a green light to this arrangement, calling it a “gift to the state.” Current standards of ethics would disallow such an arrangement today.

12. Dominion represented that the dry cask storage facility was needed in order to keep Millstone Unit 2 operating. Unit 2 had filled its wet storage pool to capacity. Unit 2 - which began operations 31 years ago - has been troubled-plagued. Most recently, it was put under special scrutiny by the NRC because of the high number of defective equipment-related unplanned shutdowns. Its operational history was so bleak that the DPUC declared Millstone Unit 2 “no longer used and useful” and removed it from the rate base c. 1998. Millstone Unit 2 is an accident waiting to happen.

Sincerely,

Nancy Burton
147 Cross Highway
Redding Ridge CT 06876
Tel. 203-938-3952