Word: vermonter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Although the thought of Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons is undoubtedly terrifying, another more imminent potential catastrophe deserves our attention. Before moving to Boston, I lived in southern Vermont, approximately five miles from the sleeper cell that is Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant...
Aside from its idiosyncratic risks, Vermont Yankee also shares the risks posed by nuclear power plants in general. Built in the early ’70s, the plant seems ripe for a meltdown, yet like so many other plants nationwide, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has allowed it to increase its output by 20 percent. The plant should have expired years ago, but instead it was purchased and upgraded by Entergy, a company based out of conveniently distant Louisiana...
...endangered by the ticking bomb, state and local emergency management agencies (overseen by the NRC) have created a contingency plan for dealing with a disaster. People living within the evacuation zone have received a potassium iodide pill that looks remarkably like Tylenol, which they must take if Vermont Yankee melts down (or blows up). The pill plan, reminiscent of the duck-and-cover Cold War contingencies, does not inspire much confidence...
...safety. The buses, however, are coming in from Keene, N.H., a 30-minute drive from my high school in Brattleboro, Vt. (This, of course, is assuming the bus drivers are willing to risk their lives to come at all.) Furthermore, the NRC’s own investigation of Vermont Yankee found that the alert system was inadequate in areas outside of normal siren coverage. Hurricane Katrina showcased the deadliness of a botched evacuation, yet the NRC does not appear to have learned from the mistakes in New Orleans...
Granted, the dangers faced by a few thousand Vermonters may not be panic-inducing, but the problems with Vermont Yankee are representative of the dangers of many nuclear power plants. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security has required nuclear plants to gauge their vulnerabilities to a terrorist attack. (NCR ran similar tests in the 1990s but the results were so embarrassingly bad that the tests were discontinued. Safety first.) Vermont Yankee is not alone in failing the mock attacks, but it does have the honor of having “the largest number of weaknesses of any reactor that...