I hear people talk about supporting the state of Vermont as we campaign to shut down Vermont Yankee.
I see no reason to support the state of Vermont regarding shutting down Vermont Yankee. For the past 40 years, some branch of the state government or another has historically allowed VY to operate with impunity, lies, and poisoning the water, air, and life of its surrounding area.
When Entergy bought VY and quickly petitioned the state for a 20-percent increase in power (translation, an increase in profits) and then for additional on-site storage (despite the testimony and objections of notable citizen watchdog groups like the New England Coalition, the Conservation Law Foundation, scientists, and nuclear engineers), the state gave VY the licenses that allowed the company to continue to poison citizens and the environment.
Although the Vermont Senate did vote overwhelmingly not to allow the Public Service Board to issue Entergy a certificate of public good to operate beyond March 2012, the state has done nothing to prosecute the 11 top executives of Entergy who lied under oath about the existence of pipes leaking tritium under the reactor. The state did nothing to shut down Vermont Yankee when a tremendously-over-the-legal-limit amount of tritium was discovered in the groundwater and now the Connecticut River.
The state has done nothing to stop known emissions of Strontium-90 into the groundwater and river where fish are now registering radioactive toxins that must have come from VY.
And of course, any of us could rant on and on about cracks, submerged cables, lack of fire-prevention standards, and continuing deficits of maintenance, transparency, integrity, and accountability.
The indisputable nail in the coffin of Vermont Yankee should have been the knowledge that VY is the same type of containment with the same problems as Fukushima's had.
Yet the state has not deemed it imperative that Vermont Yankee shut down now, as U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and many politicians, physicians, and environmental groups have urged, at least until studies and necessary remediation are completed to make sure that VY does not become the next Fukushima.
And, as we all know, there is no way to “make sure.”
Japan and Germany have both shut down their oldest reactors, and all those that use the GE Mark 1containment, the same design as those that failed at Fukushima.
I do not see any branch of the governing bodies of the state of Vermont - including Gov. Peter Shumlin, the Department of Health, or Attorney General William Sorrell - taking a proactive role in shutting down Vermont Yankee with any sense of urgency or immediacy.
I do believe if there were any other business or private entity poisoning the air, water, food chain, and people of Vermont in only a fraction of the quantities attributable to Vermont Yankee, the state would surely have imposed fines and insisted the business or private entity shut down until it cleaned up its act or ceased to operate.
However, Entergy and Vermont Yankee - with cynical, slyly-placed donations and false advertising throughout the state - continue to operate, while those attempting to shut them down get arrested for doing so.
So why support the state? As we should have learned by now, tomorrow may very well be too late. The day before the horrific accidents at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima, everything seemed fine. As we subsequently learned, everything was not fine.
This March 11 will mark one year since the beginning of the Fukushima disaster. Should we continue to have blind faith in the state of Vermont, believing that it may negotiate a 180-degree change of course as we saw German Chancellor Angela Merkel do?
As an anti-nuclear movement, we might be tempted to kick the can down the road and deny the obvious so that we do not have to put our bodies on the line. But the stakes are too high. We need to be in the streets now, when everything seems fine, before it is too late.
The Germans took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took note. I encourage all of us to see the terrifyingly dangerous dinosaur that threatens all we hold dear.
Maybe the state will surprise us - but can we depend on that? Should we risk waiting?
Why wait for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the state to pull the plug? Now is the time to shut it down.