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Ok, so the crane broke when we tried to move a dry cask brimming with spent fuel rods. So what? The cask was only 4 inches from the ground, and it didn't actually fall to the floor. Even if it had, they've tested those things. Holtec dry casks can fall off a flatbed truck onto a paved road without springing a leak. You can do almost anything to those casks and they survive. The only potential problem that I know of is that no one has tested whether they would survive a sustained, super-hot, rapidly exploding tunnel fire like the kind that might happen if someone were to bomb a tunnel packed with gassed-up automobiles while the casks were being driven through it to a national storage site. But I'm not going to start worrying about transportation hazards now just because some dumb crane got all bumbly on us. And besides, everyone knows that Yucca Mountain will never open. Transportation disasters are the least of our worries.
Here's what I am worried about today. From the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate late last week:
WESTPORT- The Radiation and Public Health Project released reports yesterday suggesting that Fairfield County residents may face greater health risks because of their proximity to the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
In a press conference, Joseph Mangano, the group's executive director, discussed the findings of its Tooth Fairy Project, as well as a study of childhood death rates because of cancer in the region.
The RPHP tested 500 baby teeth from areas surrounding Indian Point, including 32 from Fairfield County.
Test results found the highest levels of Strontium-90, a radioactive isotope associated with bone tumors, were in counties surrounding the Buchanan, N.Y. plant, including Westchester, Putnam, Orange and Rockland.
The next highest level belonged to Fairfield County.
I'm no geography expert, Lord, but, extrapolating from that bit of news, this may mean that if we examined the teeth of the children across the street from the Vermont Yankee plant (they are all conveniently located weekdays, all day, at the Vernon Elementary School), we'd find that they, like the teeth of the children in Fairfield, Westchester, Putnam, Orange, and Rockland counties, hold terribly high levels of Strotium-90. Which of course means that they all might therefore be at elevated risk of developing bone cancer.
Another extrapolation: The teeth of kids in Newfane, Vermont and Keene, NH would probably also show a high level of Strotium-90. (Yes, children that far away could be affected. By far the majority of the children whose teeth were examined in the study by The Radiation and Public Health Project live outside the 10-mile evacuation zone surrounding Indian Point. The researchers even examined the baby teeth of children in New York City, 24 miles away, and they don't look so good.)
In and around Indian Point, has elevated Strotium-90 in baby teeth actually translated into elevated death rates? Well, ...
Mangano said that childhood and adolescent death rates for cancer in Fairfield County are 4 percent above the U.S. average, but the death rate for other diseases is 20 percent below the rest of the country.
You're right, Lord. That's not necessarily a causal relationship. (I love it when you get me to say words like "causal relationship." They make me sound like a critical thinker.)
Anyway, the Stamford Advocate article represents one big "Ouch!" for my efforts to convince Vermonters that Entergy Vermont Yankee has not been steadily damaging their health and the health of people in nearby Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Because, surely, news of The Radiation and Public Health Project study at Indian Point is going to "swim" north and hit the papers in Vermont. My problem as the plant PR guy will be to give the public a friendly, Entergy-supportive way to metabolize the news.
And so I've devised a game.
Take a revolver. Put bullets in only one of the six chambers. Drink a lot of vodka while you and your friends talk in hokey Russian accents. Then use the gun on your own head. If you survive, call us at Entergy Vermont Yankee and we'll suggest more fun games to play.
That's all from here, Lord! Thanks for listening to my worries. Sometimes I get scared and lose all perspective.
Fake-Rob
2 comments:
Suggest all sane, and interested parties peruse:
http://www.ctenvironmentalheadlines.com/2008/05/letter-to-editor-indian-point-advocate.html
Dear fake-Rob...
Let's continue your Russian Roulette scenario, a bit more realistically-(at a proletarian level).
First, Take VY & IP off line, permanently.
Await the next weather event that either makes us all cold or hot.
In the case of cold, a poor immigrant family is incinerated by a faulty kerosene heater they were using in their mobile home, because no electricity was available.
In the case of hot.... several elderly people die unnoticed in their houses, and are found days later by neighbors, killed by the lack of air conditioning, brought on by no electricity being available.
or.... in a more ongoing sense.... thousands of immigrant children begin suffering disease and malnutrition, because electricity is now a premium commodity, available only to the well-heeled.
I could go on, but we've pulled that trigger 3 times already, and the gun has gone off each time.
Yes, radicalism without good reason, is a dangerous mental aberration, akin to playing Russian roulette with one's own sense of proportion.
Have a nice millennium
Jeremiah S
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