Well, at least 50 or so of us feel strongly enough about the Pilgrim re-licensing issue to get their bodies there to protest, 14 to get arrested in civil disobedience. Aside from this intrepid little band, what are the rest of us thinking about the idea of letting the already decrepit 40 year old plant go for another 20?
If there were ever an issue that should be decided democratically (town meeting style) by those who have to live with the consequences rather than by a federal commission, this decision is it.
Obviously, if there were enough anti-Pilgrim feeling, if thousands got all life-or -death about it, we could close it down. If the NRC grants a new license I have the feeling it will be not with our blessing but with a weary “whatever.” With the lack of a better idea.
There are serious issues h ere. It would be foolish to dismiss the possibility of an accident. If it happened in Fukushima, a reactor similar, we are told, to Pilgrim, it could happen here. Accidents do happen. That’s what the word means. —-happens.
For Cape Codders there’s the downwind factor, the counter-intuitive escape from the fallout of a meltdown by driving right at it in order to get off- Cape, the actual prospect of which is not much alleviated by the black humor bumper sticker evacuation advice, “SWIM EAST.”
There’s the dysfunctionality Pilgrim shares with all other nuke plants: the disposal conundrum. Terrific technology except for waste product, which stays lethal for anywhere from 10,000 to millions of years. Not a lot of waste for all the power produced, but no place seems to want it buried in their backyard, not even Nevada with it’s two dozen residents. Pilgrim remains not only a nuclear power generating plant but de facto radioactive waste dump.
There have not been a lot of accidents in the decades of nuke power history but the threat of radioactivity makes those few especially vivid. They’re still tallying the deaths, disease and relocations of the Chernobyl disaster of 25 years ago.
Nuclear power may not, as proponents point out, produce a lot of pollution of the usual sort, but when it pollutes it pollutes bigtime and in a particularly unpleasant way. There’s pollution of the usual sort and there’s pollution in the form of pervasive stress.
True, we have the reassurances of the good folks at the company, Entergy, based half the country away in New Orleans. Surely the NRC would not re-license if, the resemblance to Fukushima notwithstanding, there were any realistic chance of an accident? When the license is granted we will all breathe a great sigh of relief, right? Don’t worry, be happy. Perhaps not?
Nuclear power requires a huge amount of trust in people or institutions a lot of us are not prepared to trust right now. And huge amount of sober realism of the lesser-of-evils, better the devil- you- know variety.
It’s true you don’t see a lot of pro-nuke demonstrations. . But not massive protests either, given the potential for disaster. There’s just a lot more negative energy out there these days than positive, whether for nukes or wind power.
Maybe the silent majority is thinking, OK, you Pilgrim (or wind turbine ) protestors, you’ve made your point. There are serious issues. But what do you p ropose by way of an alternative? All energy sources have their big problems: miners trapped underground, oil spills, earthquakes from fracking. Climate change.
I keep coming back to the commonsense logic in the fear itself, of consequences that make all the unpleasantness, unsightliness and inconvenience of wind turbines, for instance, seem nothing by comparison. We are taught that indulging fear is a childish practice. But the tendency to instill fear in reasonable adults is itself a flaw in this technology. Even lacking alternative solutions, I’d vote no on nukes.
Maybe,as quixotic as it sounds, we have to start the energy future with the unacceptability of all current energy ideas except solar, done right, and conservation.
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