VERNON — The SAGE Alliance is coordinating a three-day series of events marking the second anniversary of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility explosion in Japan that began on March 11, 2011.
Last year, hundreds of residents participated in a mock evacuation from Vermont Yankee to honor the Fukushima evacuees. This year, a solemn vigil at the gates of Entergy Vermont Yankee, 546 Governor Hunt Rd., is planned for Sunday, March 10, from 11 a.m. until noon.
SAGE organizers say they will be taking to town commons, farmers' markets, and street corners around the region to promote the vigil.
Supporters say they will adopt a Fukushima sister city for a day and share the evacuation stories that critics say are being suppressed. Putney, Wilmington, Hanover, N.H., and towns in Western Massachusetts such as Amherst and Northfield, are each adopting a different town in Fukushima's exclusion zone.
Brattleboro, five miles from Vermont Yankee, is adopting the town of Namie, in Futaba District, Fukushima, Japan. SAGE says families from Namie have relocated four to seven times since March 11, 2011, and most the the town's residents are scattered across 44 of Japan's 47 prefectures.
“Fukushima is not the worst nuclear accident ever but it is the most complicated and the most dramatic,” said James Acton, Associate of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as quoted in the International Business Times last April.
“This was a crisis that played out in real time on TV. Chernobyl did not. This crisis just goes on and on,” Acton said.
SAGE Alliance is a collective of citizen groups organizing to close Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee through nonviolent direct action.