It's not a good time to be living near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Built in 1972, it is an aging reactor that had a radioactive leak as recently as September 2003. A serious accident at the plant would force an evacuation of Bernardston, Leyden and Northfield and parts of Gill, Warwick, Colrain and Greenfield. More significantly, emergency plans include an "ingestion exposure pathway zone" for a 50-mile radius around the plant that would encompass most of Franklin and Hampshire counties. This means that, in the event of a serious accident, radioactive materials would be released to the air, and both water and land may become contaminated. This could have devastating impacts on every aspect of agriculture and the economy in our region: dairy farms, vegetables, feed crops, fruit, honey, water resources, soil — everything our local production and quality of life depends on.

That's bad enough. But it gets worse. Early this year, the plant's owners, Entergy Nuclear, were approved for a 20% uprate or increase in the production capacity of the facility. Not only would that mean more stress on the power plant's systems, it would also mean increase the amount of spent fuel that must be stored at a plant, putting it at increased risk for terrorist attack.

The news of the planned uprate made Rowe resident Deb Katz angry — very angry. So she mobilized her group, the Citizens Awareness Network (or CAN), into action to call for independent safety assessment of the plant.

CAN was founded in 1991 in the hilltowns of western Massachsetts by a group of concerned and frightened citizens, CAN is now a regional group with over 4,000 members in the Northeast. CAN holds regular meetings to strategize, organize and coordinate opposition to Vermont Yankee’s continued operation with other groups.

"We have to expand our understanding of evacuation in a post 9/11 world," Deb says. "Vermont Yankee, like other GE mark 1 and 2 reactors, is a especially vulnerable to terrorist attack because their fuel pools are 70 feet above ground level in a structure that was never designed to withstand a terrorist attack. Vermont Yankee has over 35 million curies of cesium in its pool. By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb had only 2,000. It is estimated that if the fuel burned 25,000 square miles would be unihabitable for decades! This would be catastrophic and a regional disaster. Radiation does not stop at any state border. Our homes, our businesses, our farms would be ghost towns."

On March 31st, their voices were heard when Franklin County residents joined their Vermont neighbors at a packed public meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Vernon, VT. Though no Franklin County legislators were present that night, the move for additional review has the support of Rep. Stephen Kulik (D-Worthington), Rep. Shaun Kelly (R-Dalton), state Rep. Christopher Donelan (D-Orange), Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst) and Sen. Andrea Nuciforo (D-Pittsfield), all of whom represent communities within Vermont Yankee's fallout area.

The state legislators sent a letter to NRC Commissioner Nils Diaz asking to have safety concerns about the plant assessed by an independent engineer before granting permission for the uprate. As Chris Donelan, the author's letter, put it, "We believe an independent assessment is in the best interest of Vermont Yankee and the citizens of Vermont and Massachusetts."

With the public meeting and subsequent letter, CAN made a great deal of progress on the uprate issue, which will likely be decided by the NRC (with an opportunity for additional hearings) by January 31, 2005.

But more troubling events were to follow.

On April 14th, Yankee Rowe declared an "Unusual Event" at the facility when hot metal from torch cutting activities ignited some plastic sheeting and wood materials that were inside an empty containment structure that is in the process of being dismantled as part of the decommissioning of the plant. While there were no injuries and the fire was extinguished, smoke was released from the containment building.

Then, on April 21st, Vermont and Massachusetts residents (as well as the whole world, since it was covered nationally) got the chilling news that two highly radioactive fuel rods that were removed from the Vermont Yankee plant in 1979 are missing. An NRC spokesman tried to allay public fears, saying that the two rods, one the size of a pencil, the other the thickness of a pencil and 17 inches long, were probably "still somewhere in the pool."

CAN's Deb Katz and Tim Judson, however, are not convinced. They say that the same thing happened at Entergy's Millstone plant in Connecticut three years ago. In that incident, the plant's owners swore at the beginning that the missing fuel rod was probably just in the bottom of the fuel pool somewhere. Though the plant was fined $288,000, the fuel was never found, and the plant stated later that it could have illegally ended up in a landfill or a low-level radioactive waste dump (fuel rods are high-level waste and there is no dump to legally send them to at this point). Entergy runs Vermont Yankee and four other reactors in the Northeast, as well as five in the south and one in Nebraska.

"It’s not clear whether this one is their fault yet," CAN's Tim Judson says. "It could have been the fault of the previous owner, VT Yankee Atomic Power Co. But how they deal with it will say a lot. Entergy doesn’t have a good record of taking responisibility for its mistakes, particularly where nuclear waste is concerned."

Vermont Yankee engineers are still searching the spent fuel pool for the missing rods, but in the meantime, CAN will keep the pressure on them to account for the loss.

But these Vermont Yankee issues affect more than this group of dedicated activists. They affect anyone living in the fallout zone. So what can we do to keep ourselves and our families safe? Deb Katz says, "It is important that people in our tristate community work together as never before to shut this reactor. Town resolutions to the NRC, elected officials, our governors are needed opposing the uprate and relicensing. This is a pivotal time for our communities and the nuclear industry. There is a window of opportunity to stop the uprate and stop nuclear power. Entergy needs the uprate to make relicensing profitable. It's all economics for them. 

Deb continues, "We must keep the pressure on the NRC and our elected officials. The NRC is hoping that all this opposition to the uprate will fade away and that we will passively await its gold seal of approval. Elected officials respond to pressure.

With others, CAN is organizing demonstrations in Brattleboro on May 8th and in Greenfield on may 15th to express outrage at Vermont Yankee’s mismanagement of its deadly fuel and to make it clear that citizens not only demand an independent safety analysis, but they also don't want the uprate, or relicensing or new nukes on that site.

In fact, Deb says, "We want Vermont Yankee closed."

Demonstrations are also planned for June. To find out more about CAN and its work, come to the May 15th Celebration of Peace and Justice at All Souls in Greenfield (see Event Watch). CAN will have a table.

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