Columnist Dr. Karen Scott

There are less than 150 days before the next session of the VT
legislature convenes, at which time the future of the aging nuclear
reactor to our north will again be discussed. The reactor continues
to make headlines on a regular basis, with mishaps, structural
collapses, and increasing radioactive emissions. Despite all this,
Entergy and the NRC continue to insist that Everything is Fine!

In January 2006, as you may recall, Entergy applied to extend the
operating license of Vermont Yankee for 20 years beyond its initial 40
year license, which is due to expire in 2012. The NRC has yet to
refuse a license extension to a nuclear plant in this country. Later
that spring they requested and received approval for an "uprate" of
their power generation by 20%, meaning the reactor operates with 20%
more heat and pressure than it was designed to withstand, and earns
more profits for its Louisiana based corporate owner, Entergy. It is
the oldest reactor in the country to be approved for such an uprate.
Many citizens and legislators in Vermont and Massachusetts have voiced
concern about the safety of the reactor, and it has been under intense
public scrutiny. You would think that at such a time, they would be on
their best behavior.

So what happened? Shortly after the uprate was complete, one of the
cooling towers collapsed. Surely you saw the photos, thousands of
gallons of water spewing over a pile of rubble. Within 10 days of
this photogenic disaster, the plant experienced a sudden emergency
shutdown, or SCRAM. Shortly thereafter, a crane lifting 100 tons of
spent fuel malfunctioned, dropping its load to the floor. Had the
cask fallen more than 4 inches, perhaps back into the spent fuel pool,
it could have caused a major disaster. In May, we were informed there
had been a "security breach" earlier in the year, with absolutely no
details given. The list of incidents such as these extends back
throughout the plant's history, and continues to lengthen. Even
Vermont's pro-nuke governor, Jim Douglas, has said it seems as if
"Homer Simpson is running the place."

Is it safe from a terrorist attack? An NRC document, "Report on Spent
Fuel Pool Accident Risk," concludes that the containment structures of
aging plants such as VY "present no substantial obstacle to aircraft
penetration." Nevertheless, the NRC refuses to address issues of
vulnerability to terrorist attacks or viability of evacuation plans
when considering license renewals. This is considered a "local
problem," not a reason to deny relicensure. Do you have a personal
plan for keeping your family safe in the event of catastrophic nuclear
accident? Put it on your to-do list!

Even if this decrepit reactor could be maintained and operated with
perfection, it still would be far from safe. Nuclear power is
inherently unsafe. Vermont Yankee, like all nuclear power plants,
releases radiation as a known and accepted side effect of its
operation. It now releases 30% more radiation than it did in previous
years, as a result of the "uprate" in 2006.

The decision to store low-level radioactive waste on site, as well as
plans for on site high-level waste storage, will only increase the
radiation released. This gift that keeps on giving will be with us
for the rest of most of our lives, as Entergy has announced plans not
to decommission the plant for 60 years, regardless of license renewal.

Radiation causes cancer. There is no debate on this. There is also
no safe dose of radiation. Background radiation causes some cancers,
and additional exposure brings additional risk. Currently, the
lifetime risk of cancer of any type for Americans is about 40%. Do we
really need to increase that?

There is no viable long term strategy for safely storing radioactive
waste, which retains its deadly properties for 100,000 years. No
country has yet found a solution to this problem, because one does not
exist. To suggest that we can ensure the containment of massive
quantities of radioactive waste for longer than all of recorded human
history is sheer hubris.

Proponents of nuclear power look to it as an answer to global warming,
but this is a fallacy. An MIT study concluded that it would take 300
new nuclear power plants in the U.S., and 1500 worldwide, to have any
effect on climate change, and that effect would not be seen for a
decade. Never mind that building new plants entails massive carbon
emissions during construction, and there is likely not enough uranium
left in the ground to run all those plants even if they were built.

Nuclear power is a dead end, and the reactor to our north is a
striking example of this. Despite repeated mishaps, the NRC continues
to assure the public the reactor is "safe" even as it refuses to allow
local citizens and lawmakers the slightest say in if or how the plant
is run. However, the Vermont legislature recently passed a bill
granting itself the right to vote on whether to allow Vermont Yankee's
license renewal. This is an unprecedented opportunity to take back
our energy future! If you are sick of worrying about the next Vermont
Yankee headline, get involved with Citizens Awareness Network
(www.nukebusters.org) or the New England Coalition
(www.newenglandcoalition.org.) Do something!

Sustainable Society/Economy Definitions

by Richard Witty

What is a sustainable society?

1. A society that generates a minimum amount of unassimilable toxins.

2. A society that confidently and universally provides for natural minimum necessities (fresh water, fresh air, food)

3. A society that confidently allows for other species’ habitat.

4. A society that facilitates diverse local community and culture.

5. A society that values work and craft.

6. A society that provides for an optimal and constantly evolving realized experienced value.

7. A society that provides for an optimal and constantly evolving capitalization of future realized experienced value.

Other features that are either ends in themselves or means to the above ends include:

1. Equitable (not equal) distribution of income and wealth within a reasonable range.

2. Emphasis of economy based on income from work rather than from speculative investment or welfare.

3. Emphasis on capitalization of sustainable productive activity in EVERY region and micro-region.

4. Emphasis on stability of primary commodity prices and particulary of land and housing.

5. Emphasis on product durability.

6. Emphasis on utilization model of assets, in contrast to speculative gain model.

This is borrowed from Richard's blog which you can link to here: http://rwitty.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/sustainable-societyeconomy-definitions/

Columnist Daniel A. Brown

Image via Wikipedia

Paranoia strikes deep

Violent words can lead to violent actions

We live in a bubble here in western Massachusetts. While citizens of Franklin County have been submerged in rain, tomato blight and the pros and cons of the proposed bio-mass plant, it seems as if the rest of the nation has gone stark, raving mad. Because we are lucky to reside in a part of the country where people are both educated and intelligent, you’d have to do some serious searching to find local citizens who would support the following actions and beliefs. Armed men intimidating politicians at town hall meetings. A sitting president verbally insulted as he speaks to Congress. Accusations that this same president is a Socialist, a Communist, a Nazi and a Fascist, an illegal alien, a Muslim and, not least of all, the Anti-Christ who will surrender the United States to the New World Order (remember that?).

All this over health care?

Obviously, none of this has anything to do with reforming the American health care system. That would be as nonsensical as an ocean of volcanic hatred generated by reworking your car insurance policy. What is happening now is what historically occurs during times of economic stress when too many people feel frightened and powerless to have any control over their own lives. It explains why the civilized, intelligent and industrious German people could turn into a nation of monsters during the years of the Third Reich. Adolph Hitler was nearly washed up until the Great Depression hit and he was able to ride the subsequent wave of anger and helplessness into power, designating scapegoats while appealing to a malignant form of patriotism. Were he alive today, he’d have his own radio talk show and a page on Facebook.

There is little logic on display here and (after finding out the hard way on the Internet); I’ve learned that there are few venues for rational discussion. Like brainwashed cultists, members of extreme political ideologies divide the world into Traitors and True Believers and facts are mostly an impediment to rants. What is frightening is that people like this are willing to hold contradictions as truths and believe things that a smart 5^th grader would laugh at. You know them by now: “Death Panels” to kill Granny; Obama brainwashing American schoolchildren to become Commies, Obama as Hitler (apparently the Nazis conquered Europe to implement the public option? Who knew?) etc. That this frenzy of lunacy and paranoia is being ignited and exploited by demagogues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and lesser known radio screamers goes without saying.

And, yes, there is a racist component, carefully expressed in code, which is sparked by the reality of an African-American in the White House. It should not be surprising seeing that right-wing conservative ideology defended racial segregation fifty years ago and a century before that, defended slavery. But I will join my voice to fellow columnists, Gary Sanderson and Jim Culleny, in believing that it’s only a matter of time before a latter-day Timothy McVeigh comes out of the shadows and starts killing Americans in the name of anti-(liberal) government resentment. Beck, Limbaugh and company are having a grand time with all this and raking in the dough. But what they don’t seem to know (or care about) is that their crazy, irrational words are eventually going to lead to crazy, violent actions. They are reaping the whirlwind and might, too late, come to understand that their irresponsible divisiveness will have a negative effect on the country they supposedly love.

They would do well to take into account the example of Jean-Paul Marat, one of the most feared of the leaders of the French Revolution. Marat was not so much a political leader as a journalist at a time when print media was the Internet of its day in terms of its influence and effectiveness in reaching a wide audience. French revolutionary journalism was not only widespread but incendiary in ways that, by comparison, makes Beck and company sound like Grandma Moses. Their writers were out for blood, literally, and Marat’s newspaper, “The Friend of the People”, howled the loudest. And, in a viable warning to today’s hate mongers, they got their wish. Marat’s printed rantings, stoking the fear and paranoia of its contemporary citizenry, led to what was known as the September Massacres whereby mobs murdered thousands of men, women, and children being held in the Parisian prisons for no other crime than being the “Other”.

Marat justified his actions by declaring that he was expressing “The rage of the People”. Rush, Hanitty, Savage, and Beck could claim the same excuse. But Marat was no Joe the Plumber. He was a physician and scientific experimenter who spoke five languages and was once in the service of the royal family. His venom was fueled, not by political concerns, but more by the need for revenge for the years he felt ignored by the scientific establishment. Unable to gain acceptance by the status quo, he decided to turn against it with lethal consequences. One wonders how many of the inflammatory radio ranters are equally motivated by their own human weaknesses.

But what goes around come around. If you spew hatred and fear, those same energies will eventually come back to bite you (a process also known as the law of karma). Marat fell victim to his own passions by being stabbed to death by someone as nihilistically patriotic as himself. His vitriolic peers in the revolutionary news media met similar fates, often being condemned by their former supporters. I’m not wishing for violence to arrive at the doors of the current crop of rage exploiters. Instead, I am asking whether they are bringing out the best or the worst in the American people,

And, if the latter, why are they doing it?

Columnist Susan Laing:

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Friends and Fellow Citizens,

Please visit the website StopSpewingCarbon.com to find information about the citizen “Initiative Petition to Change the Law in Massachusetts” regarding the allowable limit of CO2 emissions from new power plants in MA. I am one of the 10 original petitioners, and now that the petition has been certified, we must collect 100,000 signatures in the next 6 weeks to ensure that the proposed new law can be debated and voted upon in November of 2010.

We are trying to stop biomass incinerators. Biomass is a nice sounding term that denotes a set of things including public forests, trash including hospital waste, construction and demolition debris. Those biomass power plants (incinerators that make a tiny bit of electricity) emit at least 50% more CO2 than coal per killowatt hour (depending on what exactly is burned) – not to mention the other greenhouse gases and toxins.

In western MA there are many companies strong-arming small towns with promises of jobs and real estate taxes, looking for permits to do exactly this incineration in the name of (and with the public subsidies for) "renewable energy." Those public subsidies should go to wind, solar and geothermal; with biomass in the renewable category, the money will be diverted to biomass—a fancy name for incineration. Combustion does not belong with renewables. Our investment in the future does not belong in the hands

In my town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, Pioneer Renewable Energy, LLC will build (unless we the people succeed in stopping it) an incinerator to burn 3 million pounds of green wood, 24/7, to produce one quarter of one percent of the electricity Massachusetts citizens are using now.

55% of that wood will come from public forests. There have been clear cuts from Mass public forests for a biomass plant in New Hampshire. I urge you to visit MaForests.org to see the evidence. It will also evaporate close to 600,000 gallons of water daily--water that the river is accustomed to receiving daily from our wastewater treatment plant. In case of a drought, the biomass plant will have the right to take what it needs from our reservoir. If there is not enough water for both the people and the power plant...

None of this is going in the right direction for climate change and sustaining life on this planet. We can do something to help shift the direction, and we must do whatever we can!

In Massachusetts, and in the Waxman Markey bill and now in the Senate Climate Bill, biomass is included among the "renewables," which means that the CO2 from those operations will be off the books, not counted in the CO2 emissions. This is the most alarming and nearly invisible treachery of all.

At the Zoning Board Hearing in Greenfield, for example, when the developer (a 34 year old grad of Tufts School of International Diplomacy) was asked, "What about the CO2?" the answer on the record was, "There will be no CO2." In the real world there will be TONS of CO2 emitted, but in the made-up world of pollution trading, it helps the game to define biomass among renewables and to define renewables as having zero CO2 emissions.

The real world in which our bodies live and breath is irrelevant to these climate bill operatives. The financial game is what matters to them. What matters to you? Will you have enough to buy your family's passage to the new planet when this one is cooked? It's time to prove that WE THE PEOPLE means something.

Please be in touch in with me if you can help gather signatures. It's easy, fun and satisfying citizen work. A voter’s signature says, “Yes, let my fellow citizens raise this question for public discussion and a vote in November of 2010."

Please help me get this initiative to the ballot! Call me (413-773-5529) or email me (vermontlives@gmail.com) and let me know what you think. I'll make it easy for you to help!

Sincerely, Susan Laing, originally from Somerset, Massachusetts