Petey Sweety's Prayer

Dear God,

I haven't prayed in a while. I hope you'll understand that I've been busy putting out fires (though not of the transformer variety). And I trust you've not been left lonely, what with all the prayers you are surely getting from Entergy officials who attended various hearings, conferences, and press conferences in Montpelier and Washington this week. January 27, actually, seems to have been the apocalyptic of day for us. On that day:

• At the invitation of Rep. Tony Klein, Lorraine Rekmans testified in Montpelier to the House and Senate Natural Resources Committees about the health and environmental devastation caused by uranium mining in her community. Rekmans is from the Elliot Lake region of Ontario, part of the Lake Huron watershed. Uranium from that area was used to fuel Vermont Yankee until 1996, when the mines closed. Rekmans said that ten lakes in her area are used "as cesspools for tailing waste." And she didn't seem to be exaggerating. I tooled around a bit on the Internet and found a website operated by the Southwest Research and Information Center's Mining Program. It included recommendations made regarding the Elliot Lake Tailings Management Areas. And get this, God. It said:
  

  
  The Elliot Lake Tailings Management Areas are among the largest uranium production waste sites in the world, surpassed in size only by sites in Southern Africa and Eastern Germany. The sites contain thousands of tons of hazardous radionuclides and heavy metals simply as a result of their sheer bulk, materials which present potential human health and ecological risk for hundreds to thousands of years, beyond the less than fifty year life of the production phase of the operations. While the radioactive material content of the TMAs is well recognized, the immense volume of heavy metals is less well understood. The Denison TMAs contain 15,000 - 30,000 tons of lead (assuming 250-500 ppm lead in the tailings in Denison EIS Table 3.1.17 and 60 tons for each one part per million for a 60,000,000 ton volume such as the Denison TMAs), 3000 tons of cobalt (at 50 ppm from Table 3.1.17), as well as 1500 tons of nickel, and more than 600 tons of chromium among other hazardous and radioactive constituents including 15,000 - 30,000 tons of thorium....
  

  
  Lordy, Lordy! Try to say all that three times fast while wearing a t-shirt that says "Safe, Clean, and Reliable."
  
  
• Also testifying before the Senate and House Natural Resource Committees, Kevin Kamps of the watchdog organization Beyond Nuclear warned that it is likely that Vermont Yankee's leaking radionuclides will drastically ramp up decommissioning costs.
  
  
• Meanwhile, also in Montpelier, the Public Service Board reamed out Entergy for what it perceived as a pattern of deception. This is the very same PSB that, only two shakes of a lamb's tail in the past, seemed very much in favor of Vermont Yankee's relicensure. The Rutland Herald reported that it appeared to James Volz, the Douglas-appointed chairman of the PSB, "that Entergy had given not just false sworn testimony to the board, but also to the Public Service Department, to the state's contractor, Nuclear Safety Associates, the state's Public Oversight Panel, the Legislature and the public." The PSB has re-opened its inquiry into the benefit if any that Vermont Yankee presents to Vermonters.
  
  
• And there's another "meanwhile" that my superiors at Entergy were praying about. Also in Montpelier, Arnie and Maggie Gundersen of Fairewind Associates in Burlington were in the midst of laying out to legislators in astonishing detail just what that pattern of deception had been when, apparently, they began to lose their audience. It wasn't that the Entergy officials and lawyers and legislators were uninterested in the Gundersen's well-documented testimony. It was that…
  
  
• The Governor had called an impromptu press conference in which he blasted Entergy and Vermont Yankee and asked for a halt in the process of relicensing Vermont Yankee. He gave a whole list of impressive reasons why, but I won't bore you with them here. You in your all-readingness read the papers. Though I must say that I, for one, wonder whether a post-NRC-meeting phone call from Senator Leahy, Senator Sanders, or Representative Welch precipitated Governor Douglas's hasty and apparently butt-covering announcement.
  

Well, after the Governor's announcement, Entergy Vermont Yankee officials from Montpelier to Vernon ran scurrying off to light votive candles and visit their confessors, and a few legislators did, too. Somehow the Gundersens still received an invitation to complete their testimony another time. So, as you can see, Lord, I've had good reason to believe that the artery that normally carries my prayers to you directly from Vermont Yankee was clogged this week with the prayers of my company superiors as well as those of certain denizens of Montpelier and Washington. In the meanwhile, I do want to make one remedial offering for having been so lacking in devotion. It's a prayer, but it's not actually by me, and I'm not even sure whether it's to you. It's by Petey Sweety at Green Mountain Daily. I'll just say the first few stanzas here, and then hope you will follow the link.

Entergy the Person Says

Please let us do our work in Peace
there is nothing to be alarmed about
we're making some technical adjustments

everything will be fine in a half-life
we're a human being here for God's sake
the Supreme Court just said so

a person like us has problems and feelings too
how would you like it if everybody attacked you?...

I'm sure you can see why I like this prayer, God. It strikes just the right tone. Please, read the rest of Petey Sweety's prayer here at Green Mountain Daily.

Amen,

Fake-Rob

PS: Woops! WCAX is reporting mucho bad news on the tritium front!