As Vermont’s AG launches into a challenge to Judge Murtha’s ruling in favor of Entergy/Vermont Yankee, it seemed like an opportune moment to take a look at some of the nuclear stories rolling out around the country.
Then I received this astonishing piece of news, and all the rest became quite secondary:
MIT has released a study which, they say, suggests that populations need not be evacuated in the future, should another event like Fukushima take place!
That’s right; long captive by the now-threatened nuclear industry, in whose future it is heavily invested, MIT has finally jumped the shark. Ignoring the large body of scientific evidence very much to the contrary, MIT constructed its own experiment, carefully designed to “prove” a thesis convenient to the industry: that low-dose radiation over long periods of exposure is essentially harmless.
In a single stroke, the MIT study attempts to overturn all existing science and eliminate a significant collateral cost from the nuclear balance sheet.
Are people concerned, in the aftermath of Fukushima, because evacuation plans almost everywhere have been found gravely wanting? A simple paper fix from MIT, based on junk science, allows the industry to maintain that exclusion zones aren’t even necessary!
This isn’t the first time MIT has been found to be exercising extreme bias to make nuclear look more affordable. In fact, the advocacy role of MIT on behalf of the industry is boldly apparent in this description of a research grant program:
“Scholarship for Nuclear Communications and Methods for Evaluation of Nuclear Project Acceptibility” will develop a model to characterize the factors affecting social acceptance of nuclear projects by potential stakeholders. The nuclear enterprise has long faced difficulties in gaining broad social acceptance for success… Reliance upon public education efforts continues to be the main, and largely unsuccessful, tactic to achieve success…”
Returning to my original intention to survey the more eccentric nuclear news, I found this curious news piece out of Woodridge, Illinois, where the senior reactor operator of the Dresden Nuclear Power Plant in Morris, Illinois has been charged with hijacking an automobile at gunpoint.
Michael Buhrman who wore a Halloween mask when he confronted the female car-owner in Kohl’s parking lot and ordered her to abandon her vehicle, was spotted by a witness and apprehended in short order.
Buhrman later told investigators the carjacking was a “stupid thing” to do and that he was only looking for a thrill, authorities said.
‘Good thing he didn’t act out his fantasies at work!
From the NRC’s own incident reports we have the tale of an external power interruption disrupting normal operations at the Ginna Power Reactor in upstate New York. Investigation revealed that this interruption had most likely been due to “wildlife, eg. racoon.”
This is a good illustration of the sort of incidents that can plague even non-operative reactors during the long periods before total decommissioning, when constant cooling must still be maintained to prevent meltdowns.
Once a facility is no longer generating income for the operators, the temptation will always be there to cut back on monitoring and maintenance staff, which could result in dangerous situations going undetected until they result in an emergency.
…And to top off the crazy, there are the efforts by NRC insiders to push licenses up to 80 years so as to skew the math, making nuclear appear more cost-efficient.
When I was a child in the sixties, the most frightening idea was the threat of nuclear war. Now it seems we have as much to fear from nuclear peace.