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Killing the Nuclear Beast by Saying No

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Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Hudson River Without Indian Point 2 and 3
 
The Hudson River Without Indian Point...Let's Go Back To The Future
Entergy wants to relicense for another 20 years its creaking, dilapidated reactors known as IP2 and IP3, or collectively the Indian Point Energy Center. Those reactors are leaking strontium 90, tritium, cesium and other radiological poisons into our environment, into the Hudson River. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided it is acceptable for some of us to die from horrid cancers with each passing day, month and year that Indian Point continues to operate. They spout out formulas, and speak about vague idealistic concepts like Acceptable Risk. Acceptable Risk by what standard? ALARA, where the licensee can state they are doing the best that they can, and the NRC says that is good enough?

Have you, your mother, your daughter, even your grandmother suffered the tragic pains of breast cancer? Has one of your children or relatives been struck down with leukemia, or gone through the painful process of being treated for thyroid cancer? If you can answer yes to any of these, you need to look UP RIVER to Indian Point each and every time you flip your light switch, or turn on a lamp...are those kilowatts of electric power worth it? Should we instead be looking at other alternatives such as conservation, wind, hydro, and as yet unknown and under funded alternatives to a power source that indiscriminately kills?

We have choices, alternatives to a radiological death knocking indiscriminately at the doors of our families, our neighbors. We can choose as a community to tell the NRC no to the Grime Reaper living among us, its strontium 90, tritium spreading cancer like some silent plague can be vanquished. Imagine a Hudson River without these two spires of death rising into the air. Go back to the future, remember the view before those towers rose into the Sky, and then demand in unison that the NRC deny Entergy's License Renewal Application.

New York's future is OURS TO DECIDE. We have the power to take back our choices by marching on Entergy, by taking back the Public Regulatory Process, by demanding accountability. A few weekends where tens of thousands of concerned citizens camped out in front of Entergy, would give the NRC pause for thought. A few hundred protesters showing up in front of Hilary Clinton and Chuck Shumer's district offices would force them to give us more than lip service and a few false promises.

Saying no to $50 Billion in loan guarantees is only a part of the answer. We need musicians, politicians and average citizens to stand up for the 67 American communities being forced to continue hosting dangerous old reactors. We as a nation need to demand that Washington ABOLISH the Price Anderson Act. We saw what happened to the citizens of New Orleans...should we see hundreds of thousands of Americans loose everything in a nuclear incident or terrorist attack on a Nuclear Reactor because our government has given the nuclear industry a FREE FROM LIABILITY CARD? Should Americans be denied the right to insure them homes for the losses that would occur as a result of one of these old reactors visiting a Chernobyl on our communities?

Please, if you live within the 50 mile circle of death that is Indian Point, if you live in New Jersey, New York or Connecticut join the fight to close these dangerous facilities. It takes a village to raise a child, it takes two aging nuclear reactors to kill thousands of those same children.

 

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Sherwood Martinelli Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Anti-Nuclear and environmental activist, publisher of two blogs on the subject of nuclear energy. Living less than three miles from Entergy's Indian Point, which is leaking tritium and strontium 90 into the Hudson, I write in the hopes of (more...)
 
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