Nuclear Power Plant Boom Results in Sacrificed Communities

Author: Edith Honan

Something is rotten in Washington. Reading White House press releases about the Energy Bill of 2003, it almost seems as if war in the Persian Gulf has inspired a transformation of sorts in the American President. His rhetoric is one of fighting global warming and of a radical overhaul of business-as-usual in the energy production industry.
But it's actually a game of hide-and-seek. Radiation is being touted as the great alternative to carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, and, if the Bush energy bill is pushed through, the nuclear industry will receive points for all the good that they're doing to the earth's atmosphere. Meanwhile, over the next decade emissions of heat-trapping gases will increase by 14 percent.
And there's more! Never mind the piles of hazardous waste that has already amassed. The United States taxpayer is posed to subsidize the construction of six to eight new nuclear reactors - signaling the first effort to extend the nuclear industry since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. This also marks the first time that so much taxpayer money has been volunteered for the construction of commercial nuclear power plants.
"While dressed up in slick rhetoric, the administration's proposal is simply the same old voluntary, business-as-usual approach that has done nothing to reverse our ever-increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases," says Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It has one goal: to mislead voters into thinking something serious is being done to address the global warming threat while, in reality, doing nothing to inconvenience the administration's allies in the auto, electric utility and other polluting industries."
Before Bush and Cheney entered the scene, it seemed as if the nuclear industry was on its way out. But the White House has a different understanding: "Since the 1980s, the performance of nuclear energy operations has substantially improved." Never mind recent close call, under the nose of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at the Davis-Besse. Never mind, also, the barrages of complaints by whistle blowers that safety concerns are systematically drowned out at reactors across the country.
And when it comes to creating new nuclear power plants, never mind the communities that are soon to earn the status of "sacrifice communities."Many sacrifice communities are required to sustain a nuclear reactor.
In the case of Vermont Yankee, for instance, Vernon, the town that will play host to the plant is the first sacrifice. Residents of Vernon are subjected to routine radiation emissions from the plant, and since there is of yet no permanent, safe storage facility for radioactive waste, Vernon also plays host to the Vermont Yankee waste dump.
The group, the Citizen's Awareness Network, whose founders come from Rowe, Mass., a town that played host to the Yankee Rowe power plant, discussed the experience of living in such a community. "Researching the records of the reactor, we learned that it routinely and regularly released radioactive waste into the Deerfield River. Citizens were shocked. Our community uses our river for recreation. Over 500,000 people a year use the river. Since the NRC classified our river a "dead river," it was not required to the meet the EPA standards for drinking water. We fear that the increases in disease observed in our community are related to these releases."
Recently, the town of Hinsdale, N.H., identified itself as another sacrifice community of Vermont Yankee. On April 8, in protest against receiving inadequate funds and planning, Hinsdale officials refused to participate in a regular emergency drill.
Jill Collins, the Hinsdale town administrator, was quoted in the Brattleboro Reformer as saying that board members "would like to see, during graded drills, more of an actual evacuation process take place." Since Sept. 11, sacrifice communities have been faced with a new fear, that of a terrorist attack, and this stress seems evident in Hinsdale.
The nuclear industry is being praised for being friendly to the environment, but what will come of the radioactive waste? Much low-level waste is transported to Barnwell, S. C. - a community that, needless to say, does not benefit from Vermont Yankee's energy production, but that is made to manage the cost of leaky storage casks. High-level waste is set for storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a site which has yet to be approved. In fact, since Yucca Mountain was selected in 1987, no other site has been studied as a final, permanent burial site for America's high-level nuclear waste.
This is not to say that Yucca Mountain is ideal, nor that those who make their home in the vicinity of the site have supported the plan. According to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service: "This area is as seismically active as the California Bay Area. There have been more than 600 earthquakes within a 50-mile radius of the site within the last 20 years. A major jolt knocked windows out of a Department of Energy facility in the early 1990s. In 1998 and 1999 there have been whole spates of tremblers, at greater frequencies than previously observed." Yucca Mountain, if approved, will create yet another nuclear sacrifice community in the United States, to say nothing of the towns that sit along the highway routes that separate Yucca Mountain from America's network of 103 operating nuclear power plants.
There are better options. Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), who is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has introduced legislation to require that by the year 2020, 20 percent of U.S. electricity production shall come from renewable resources like wind, solar and geothermal energy. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and a grand total of 40 U.S. Senators have endorsed this plan.
Indeed, President Bush has not been transformed. Rather, his energy plan seeks to redirect American energy policy in radical ways. Among the consequences of this is that more sacrifice communities will be created, and existing sacrifice communities will fall even further from public radar.

Edith Honan is a literary studies major from Redding Ridge, Conn.