[act-ma] March 10, 7pm, Hattie Nestel on the Dangers of Nuclear Power

Fri Mar 4 10:51:10 PST 2011

Hattie Nestel, Anti Nuclear Activist, 
Presents a 40 min Power Point presentation, 
followed by a question/answer session.

When: Thur March 10
Where: Peter Ames' Home, 

90 Ivy St. Brookline, 02448  
Peter's telephone number is 617 731-0512
Sponsored by Brookline PeaceWorks
Amy's telephone number 617 738-8029

T Directions:
Cleveland Circle Green Line, get off at St Mary's stop,
the first stop when you come up from underground,
Walk 2 short blocks up St Mary's Street, towards Cambridge,
and turn left onto Ivy Street. Peter's home is 1/2 block down.
(for driving check http://www.mapquest.com)

Did you know:
if there was a Chernobyl type melt down at Vermont Yankee, the Quabbin Resevoir would
be irradiated and would not be able to supply water to the city of Boston?

Hattie with Francis Crowe and the Women of the Shut It Down
affinity group of Citizen's Awareness Network,
offering their reasons for shutting down 
Vermont Yankee at Windham County Court. 

Hattie is an activist extraordinaire, participating many times in
civil disobedience at Vermont Yankee, as well as peace walks
through Vermont cities, and an Interfaith Peace Walk
Towards a Nuclear Free Future, from London to Geneva,
April to June 2008. 

See her website for more info:
http://peacehq.tripod.com/OSHN/hn-home.html

>From Hattie:

My talk will acknowledge  some of the worlds major heroes of the Renewable Energy movement like the German Economist and Parliamentarian Hermann Scheer, whose brilliant and tireless work over three decades helped make Germany the world leader of renewable energy. I will also discuss  two whistleblowers. Great Britain's physician and epidemiologist Alice Stewart, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award brought worldwide attention to the health effects of low-level radiation in an acclaimed study released in 1957 . University of Berkley Professor John Gofman, who began his career with the Manhattan Project and later jumped the fence and devoted the rest of his life tirelessly opposing nuclear power. He publishing numerous books and articles and testified to Congress about the catastrophic dangers of the regular releases of radiation from the nuclear power industry that will be remain as a toxic burden on thousands of future generations. 

I will also share information about the economic failure of the nuclear power industry that has stopped any new nuclear power plant from being built since 1973. I will talk about the corporate and governmental economic incentives and lobbying campaigns to promote a nuclear renaissance that, if funded to the tune of $54 billion as proposed by the Obama administration, could bring us another financial disaster and put the brakes on subsidies for the existing technologies  of wind, solar and efficiencies that we need subsidize to give us the carbon/free and nuclear/free energies we need to achieve a vibrant and sustainable economy with zero-CO2 emissions in the shortest possible time.

The good news is this is already happening. The "Historic Crossover" has already occurred as cost estimates for nuclear power have risen 37 per cent in 2010 and solar energy fell by 10-25 per cent according to study released by the Energy Information Administration. The patrick administration also is working on creating Green Communities and giving them money to go GREEN!

Hattie Nestel
____
Hattie Nestel
hattieshalom at verizon.net
  "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
-Albert Einstein

More Info:

====
 Obama's $36 Billion Nuke-Powered Giveaway, by Harvey Wasserman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-wasserman/obamas-36-billion-nukepow_b_823262.html

====
Independent.co.uk

Fears over new leak at Chernobyl spark plea for radiation shield 
By Shaun Walker in Chernobyl
Monday, 28 February 2011 

Fears that the destroyed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl could collapse and again leak deadly radiation have prompted European agencies to seek hundreds of millions of pounds to fund the construction of a vast steel building to encase the site.
As the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in history approaches, there is a funding shortfall of ?740m (£631m) for projects to build a "shelter" over the destroyed reactor and to safely store nuclear fuel from the other nuclear reactors at the site.

The new shelter for the destroyed reactor is being funded by the European Union and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in co-operation with the Ukrainian government, but European officials say they urgently need countries to pledge money for the project, which is under way but underfunded. They hope that a conference in April, ahead of the anniversary of the disaster, will see governments donate the missing funds. 

Jean-Paul Joulia, the head of the EU's Nuclear Safety Unit, said during a visit to the site last week that the EU had contributed about ?500m to various projects at Chernobyl, more than half of that for the new shelter. The alliance is now hoping that individual European governments, and Russia, will stump up more cash for the project. 

The explosion at Chernobyl's Reactor Number Four occurred on 26 April 1986. About 30 people were killed instantly, and it is estimated that another 4,000 died prematurely in the aftermath, while many more still suffer health effects from the radiation. In the months after the accident, a "sarcophagus" of concrete was hastily erected over the destroyed shell of the reactor, with many of the workers involved being subjected to life-threatening doses of radiation to get the work done. 

In recent years, the structure has become extremely unstable, with experts warning that if it collapses, a catastrophic amount of radiation could be released into the atmosphere. Stopgap stabilising work on one of the walls of the sarcophagus has reduced the chances of collapse and extended its life by around 15 years, but this might not be enough to prevent a disaster.

...Even today, there is a 20-mile "exclusion zone" around the Chernobyl power plant where inhabitation is prohibited. The other reactors at Chernobyl remained in use until 2000.

Mr Dodd said that once the shelter was in place, work would begin using cranes and other automated technology to dismantle the old reactor inside. He said human intervention would be kept to a "strict minimum" but admitted that some people would nevertheless be subjected to dangerous doses of radiation. 
==============
>From the Valley Advocate (Northhampton)
...Vermont Yankee is a case in point. Soon after Entergy purchased the plant, they pushed for an "uprate," meaning that Vermont Yankee has been operating at 120 percent of its intended capacity to produce power. In this time, we have seen the cooling tower collapse, the leak of radioactive water from a crumbling underground piping system, a condenser that needs a very expensive replacement, and countless other problems. This plant has the potential for a catastrophic event.

The huge volume of highly toxic radioactive waste on the shores of the Connecticut River is another potential source of a massive environmental disaster. Many areas have seen 100- or even 500-year flood events as climate changes occur and water levels rise. Do we have any assurance that the "temporary" storage for the tons of the most toxic substance on earth will never get into the river water in the case of submersion?

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to have the exclusive right to monitor safety issues at nuclear plants. We are not comforted by the fact that they only seem to regulate after something bad happens, and then the regulation consists of hollow words. The operating license of Vermont Yankee describes how the plant will not release unmonitored discharges of radioactive water. Yet when Vermont Yankee and other plants do just that, there are no negative consequences except when they are caught and exposed by concerned citizens and the media.

Let us learn from the nightmare unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. We do not need to endanger the future of our children and our planet to power our lifestyles. Our society can make a decision to use power that does not threaten whole species, the oceans, the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food, and the rivers that sustain life. Even if the entire United States is slow to grasp this, the people of Vermont can and must repower our state and lead the way. We can use solar, wind, hydropower, and conservation and successfully shut down Vermont Yankee before we live through another disaster that defines the folly of nuclear power.

Nancy Brau

Brattleboro

And by Hattie:

Understanding the Connections between Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons

http://peacehq.tripod.com/OSHN/docs/hn-doc0016.html

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