Newsletters

April 2011 - Nuclear Power, Salamanders, Photo Contest

WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES!
APRIL, 2011

“Working at Chernobyl is safer than driving a car.”
- Pyotr Bondarenko, Superintendent of Safety, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 1977
 
“The odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years. The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety lines. The lines operate independently without duplicating one another. New equipment with higher reliability is being developed. Pilot models are tested under conditions similar to working conditions. The environment is also securely protected. Hermetically sealed buildings, closed cycles for technological processes with radioactive agents and systems for purification and harmless waste disposal preclude any discharge into the external environment.”
- Vitali Sklyarov, Minister of Power and Electrification of the Ukraine, speaking about Chernobyl.
 
“Let us be clear:  there are billions and billions of dollars at stake for the nuclear industry, which has, as I’ve written earlier, managed to bamboozle governments around the world, much of the press, and many ordinary citizens into believing that nuclear power is green and clean.  Nothing could be further from the truth.   The industry will not walk away from that money without a fight.
I have said before, unfortunately, the only thing that is capable of stopping this wicked industry is a major catastrophe, and it now looks like this may be it.”
-Dr. Helen Caldicott on Fukushima Daiichi release

 
PLEASE PASS THE POTASSIUM IODIDE -

Remember, just a few short weeks ago, when folks living in the vicinity of the Fukushima radioactive releases were being assured by government officials that the nuclear power company would soon bring the damaged facility under control?

Political leaders, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) officials and dozens of our own home-grown nuclear power boosters were all over the news media initially saying the Fukushima’s escaping radioactivity problems were nowhere near as serious as the Three Mile Island incident. As Tepco’s radioactive releases continued, officials then decided it was on the same scale as Three Mile Island, but nowhere near as serious as Chernobyl. And what are they saying now?

Some nuclear industry shills were even saying the released radiation is beneficial …it is good for you! Sure, maybe if you are a cockroach!

The Japanese government recently declared an 18 mile exclusion zone around the damaged power plant. Residents within that zone are being given two hours to retrieve what they can from their homes …and they will not be allowed back.

A release in this country of a similar level of radioactivity, as occurred at Fukushima, would trigger an evacuation and exclusion zone of nearly 50 miles.

In our own backyard we have Entergy’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth. It is of the same class as Fukushima Daiichi right down to its General Electric Mark 1 reactor.

Pilgrim is an old facility and its license to operate expires in 2012. It is seeking an extension of its operating license to 2032.

Should Pilgrim ever “melt-down” it would necessitate the evacuation of over 5 million people. A 50 mile exclusion zone would include Boston, Plymouth County and most of Bristol County.

Few want a radioactive waste dump in their neighborhood so Pilgrim’s spent fuel rods are stored on site. Spent fuel is even more dangerous than the reactor’s core material. Some forms of radioactive waste have a half-life of millions of years.

Nuclear power is a ridiculously dangerous way to boil water and what a mess of waste it leaves behind …virtually forever!

Paleolithic humans, following the retreat of the last glacier, moved into this area of New England ten thousand years ago. Does anyone really believe that we can store and secure increasingly larger amounts of radioactive waste for ten thousand years into the future? What arrogance that some think we can manage and secure radioactivity that can sicken and kill not only us, but ALL future generations.

Our life span is too brief, our ignorance too great to allow us to “manage” radioactive fuel and waste. Life expectancy for New England women is 80 years, for men 76 years. Half-life of some forms of the isotope plutonium is about 80 million years. Half-life is the period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half.

Nuclear electrical power generation is a scant few decades old yet we’ve already witnessed three catastrophic failures at electrical generating facilities. How many catastrophes will occur over a million or more years?

Click on the Greenpeace link, below, for a list of nuclear “accidents” that occurred in just the ten years after Chernobyl: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html

No nukes …is good nukes!

 

FUKUSHIMA RADIOACTIVITY SPAWNS GODZILLA-LIKE MONSTER SALAMANDER -

Okay, just kidding! Actually this is one of the spotted salamanders we got an up-close look at while participating in The Trustees of Reservations’ annual ‘Salamander Soiree” the first week in April.

All the vernal pool critters were present and everyone had a good time.

Here are a few additional photos of the big event:


 


 

WE HAVE A WINNER!!! –

Letitia W. is the winner of our Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve “History and Mystery” photo contest!

Here are the photo names and locations.
How many did you know?

To view the photos again go to gf.gareworks.com and check them out in our March Newsletter.

1 - Doctor Durfee’s Mill. Eighteenth century mill remains.
2 – Statue commemorating FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps.
3 – Mowry Path. Used by Philip and Weetamoe at the start of the King Philip’s War.
4 – Civilian Conservation Corps camp barracks fireplace and chimney.
5 – Stairs remaining from building at former Stony Acres Nudist Colony.
6 – Blossom carriage barn on Blossom Road.
7 – Bell Rock at Bell Rock Road.
8 – Boiling Spring. A source of the East Branch of the Westport River.
9 – Blossom Cemetery, Blossom Road.
10- McGowan’s Quarry site.
11- European Beech shading former location of Brightman homestead.
12- Fighting Rock Corner. Where early disagreements were settled.
 
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