PLYMOUTH, MA–– About fifty people demonstrated at the entrance to Pilgrim Nuclear Station in Plymouth, MA Sunday afternoon. Police and private security prohibited citizens from marching a document to the operator of the reactor, a letter entitled Citizens’ Demand for the Immediate Retirement of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. (The letter is reprinted below.)
Fourteen activists crossed a yellow gate onto the facility’s property in expression of nonviolent civil disobedience, and officers arrested them for trespassing.
It is a democratic duty “to protect public health and safety, not Entergy’s profits,” reads the citizens’ letter, coauthored by members of Cape Downwinders and Cape Codders for Peace and Justice, two activist groups concerned with the health and rights of Cape residents.
Entergy Corp. owns and runs Pilgrim Plant from Louisiana, a safe 1,500 miles away from any tragedies that could affect the near five million people who reside within 50 miles of the Massachusetts energy station. The GE Mark 1 design of the Plymouth facility mirrors that of Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
According to Cape Downwinders, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has indicated that an event like the Japanese socio-ecological catastrophe could happen here. The inept design “failed in every test – at the three reactors in Fukushima, Japan,” a group statement reads.
Many Cape natives deem the current evacuation plan, or lack thereof, an object of ridicule. At Sunday’s protest, one couple from Orleans sported T-shirts they’ve owned since the ‘80s, which quip, “Evacuation Plan: Swim East,” and depict the fallout radius on a map of coastal Massachusetts with evacuees hopelessly swimming eastward into the Atlantic.
Escape from the Cape by land in the event of a nuclear disaster would perforce entail refugees fleeing via the Bourne or Sagamore bridges, routes that both lead toward––not away from––Plymouth’s radioactivity.
The 40-year license of Pilgrim Plant expires June 6, and though Entergy Corp. seeks a new 20-year licensure, activists and political leaders, including Gov. Deval Patrick, are pressuring the NRC to justly assess the controversial policies of Entergy.
Eleven local communities recently passed citizen referendums requesting improved safety at Plymouth’s “Fukushima-style reactor and nuclear waste dump,” according to David Agnew, coordinator of Cape Downwinders and coauthor of the letter.
Agnew notes a global democratic trend moving away from Big Nuclear and toward sustainability. “Japan, Germany, Italy and Switzerland have 
learned the lesson and joined Australia, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, New Zealand, and Norway to proclaim nuclear energy is dead in their lands. The people here are catching on that Pilgrim benefits no one except its investors. We’ll have to fight very hard to win this, but we will fight and we will win.”
The Plymouth case has been in litigation for over six years––the longest in the history of the NRC.
Pilgrim Watch, a grassroots organization attending to the public interest, cites the structural assessment of former Nuclear Safety Engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists David Lochbaum, who observed that the NRC has “prioritiz[ed] business at the expense of safety.”
For example, Pilgrim Watch Director Mary Lamprey explained how Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard neglected to finance a $3 million filtered containment vent (a stance “judged unsafe by all regulatory agencies outside the U.S.”) because it would not be “cost effective.” But the CEO evaluated cost in terms of what routinely earns him a spot on Forbes’ list of richest people, not in terms of the cost to the basic health and safety of local populations, Lamprey analyzed.
The corporate nuclear industry is “astronomically expensive” and “the risks are unacceptable,” she told the Occupier, after speaking to supporters.
Agnew elaborated, “The federal government guarantees loans with taxpayer money. A severe accident would bankrupt the entire industry if they had to pay, so they’re protected by the Price-Anderson Act” though “millions of citizens would lose their health, their lives, or their property. Even operating a reactor would be economically impossible were it not for seven decades of taxpayer subsidies which continue today.”
Activist Debbie McCullough, a registered nurse who also spoke at the protest, hopes the Occupy Movement can help engender a wave of mass democratic support that will awaken the public eye to such key issues. A local harvester skeptical of large food industries, she finds the prospect of radioactivity tainting her home garden intolerable. “All the issues are intertwined,” she reasoned, noting, “At the root of it all is big banks.” Occupy’s radical direct action is vital, as it “really does bring people together.”
The Occupier will continue to follow this story as it develops.
• • • •
Republished:
Citizens’ Demand for the Immediate Retirement of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, May 20, 2012
Mr. Robert Smith
Vice President and Site Vice President
Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc.
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
600 Rocky Hill Road
Plymouth MA 02360-5508
On behalf of the children, current residents, and future generations of New England, and with concern for all beings of the biosphere, we demand that Entergy Nuclear Corporation (ENC) immediately cease the splitting of atoms and the generation of nuclear waste and effluent from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The ongoing man-made disaster in Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan is a wake-up call to action. The four reactors which exploded and released vast amounts of radionuclides are the same GE Mark 1 design as Pilgrim. For forty years, the nuclear industry and its regulators have known that this design is incapable of containing a serious accident. One of every eight Mark 1 reactors has exploded and released massive amounts of radionuclides. Pronouncements by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the risk of an accident is one in a million is testament only to their hubris. The continued operation of this relic, which was designed in the 60′s to last 40 years, in the shadow of the Fukushima catastrophe is a reckless act, a threat contemptuous of all life.
Significant loss of water from Fukushima’s Unit 4 waste pool would release ten times the amount of cesium that was scattered by Chernobyl and force the evacuation of 35 million people from Tokyo,175 miles away. Pilgrim’s pool, which contains nearly 2.5 times as much waste fuel as Unit 4, is 195 miles from New York City. Experts for the Massachusetts Attorney General testified that Pilgrim’s nuclear waste is vulnerable to a catastrophic fire from loss of water that could contaminate over 100 miles downwind and cause up to 24,000 latent cancers and $488 billion in damages.
The first duty of our elected and appointed officials is to protect public health and safety, not Entergy’s profits. There is no safe dose of radiation, and exposure impacts the health of both current and future generations. The NRC’s cynical standards for legally-permitted daily releases by ENC are based on the amount of cancers they will cause in the most-resistant (adult) population, willfully ignoring the far greater risk posed to children. Current monitoring is insufficient to determine the path of a radioactive plume, and thus populations may be evacuated to heavily contaminated areas, as they were last year in Japan. The NRC called for evacuation of American citizens within 50 miles of Fukushima; a 50-mile radius around Pilgrim includes all of Cape Cod, Boston, and Providence. The people of Cape Cod, who would have to travel towards an accident to escape it, have neither a radiological emergency plan nor a single study to show that Pilgrim’s radioisotopes are not the cause of their greatly elevated breast cancer rates. We find the continued operation of PNPS an unacceptable threat to public health and safety.
Pilgrim’s joint federal–state Clean Water Act permit expired 16 years ago, and its state coastal zone management “federal consistency certification” is invalid. It sucks in over 350,000 gallons of water from Cape Cod Bay each minute, killing plankton, larvae, fish, fish eggs, and other marine life, including protected river herring. It’s antiquated “once-through” cooling system regularly violates federal limits on chlorine discharges, and it operates without an approved marine monitoring plan. PNPS discharges polluted water, heated between 32 and 120 degrees above the ambient temperature. The full extent of the pollution from metals, biocides, corrosion inhibitors and radioactive material is unknown, as is the impact to endangered species such as the Roseate Tern and the Right Whale. We find the environmental impact to Cape Cod Bay unacceptable.
We demand that Entergy Nuclear Corporation withdraw it’s relicense application, immediately close the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, store the waste fuel in dry casks as soon as possible, and implement economic conversion plans to protect its employees. We also call for Cape Cod to be included in an emergency preparedness plan as we are citizens who will remain at risk long after final shutdown.
Signed,
David Agnew, Coordinator
Cape Downwinders
18 Marthas Lane
Harwich, MA 02645
Diane Turco
Cape Codders for Peace
and Justice
157 Long Rd.
Harwich, MA 02645
Sarah Thacher
Cape Downwinders & CCPJ
1363 Rt 134
Box 1509, Drawer J
E. Dennis, MA 02641
CC:
Governor Deval Patrick
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State House, Rm.280
Boston, MA 02133
John Auerbach, Commissioner
Department of Public Health
250 Washington St.
Boston, MA 02108
Kurt Schwartz, Director
Massachusetts Emergency Management
Agency
400 Worcester Road
Framingham, MA 01702 -5399
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
One White Flint North
11555 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD 20852-2738
Martha Coakley, Attorney General
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108
Senator John F. Kerry
One Bowdoin Square, 10th Floor
Boston, MA 02114
Senator Scott Brown
2400 JFK Federal Bldg
15 New Sudbury Street
Boston, MA 02203
Congressman William Keating
297 North Street, Suite 312
Hyannis, MA 02601
Congressman Edward Markey
188 Concord Street Suite 102
Framingham, MA 01702
Senate President Therese Murray
State House Rm 332
Boston, MA 02133
Senator Dan Wolf
State House, 5116
Boston, MA. 02133
Representative Sarah Peake
State House, Room 195
Boston MA 02133
Representative Cleon Turner
State House, Room 540
Boston, MA 02133
Representative Demetrius Atsalis
State House, Room 26
Boston, MA 02133
Representative David Vieira
State House, Room 167
Boston, MA 02133
Representative Timothy Madden
State House, Room 167
Boston, MA 02133
Representative Randy Hunt
State House, Room 136
Boston, MA 02133
Representative Matt Patrick
Box 3252
Waquoit, 02536
Mark Stankiewicz, Town Manager
Town of Plymouth
11 Lincoln Street
Plymouth MA 02360
Richard R. MacDonald, Town Manager
Town of Duxbury
878 Tremont Street
Duxbury, MA 02332
Chief Kevin M. Nord
Fire Chief & Director DEMA
Town of Duxbury
688 Tremont Street
Duxbury, MA 02331
George Baker, Mashpee Fire Chief
Barnstable County REPC
20 Frank Hicks Drive
Mashpee, 02649
George Heufelder, Director
Barnstable County Department of Health
and Environment
3195 Main Street
Barnstable, MA 02630
Richard Delaney, Chair
Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory
Commission
99 Marconi Site Road
Wellfleet, 02267
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