Editor’s note: This commentary is by Amelia Shea, of Brattleboro, who serves on the board of the New England Coalition and has worked at Green Living Journal since 1991.
[P]aul Hawken, the author of the Ecology of Commerce, has written that the planet came with a manual of operating instructions which we seem to have lost. The instructions included: Don’t contaminate the soil or poison the water and the air, watch for overpopulation, and don’t turn up the thermostat.
There has been a movement afoot for some time to find that manual, to work to compensate for the damage that has already been done, and to develop what Hawken calls a new operating system for the planet. Businesses worldwide are moving in a more socially and environmentally responsible direction. There is the opportunity here in Vermont to be part of this movement and advocate for increased environmental stewardship of the land on which Vermont Yankee is sited.
Throughout time many cultures have lived more in accordance with the rules Paul Hawken references. The Great Law of the Iroquois, for example, wisely cautions us to think seven generations ahead in order to determine whether the decisions made in our time will benefit the children living in that future time. We have to wonder will the land at the Vermont Yankee site be clean enough for them? What about the water? Vermont Yankee sits on the Connecticut River over a watershed that feeds the farms, and the people of western Massachusetts and beyond. Radioactive waste must be safely isolated from the environment for thousands of years. Who will be responsible for it during that time?
Throughout the history of nuclear power, there has been a long chain of broken promises and false assurances about the safety of nuclear plants. We have witnessed the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and most recently, Fukushima. Vermont Yankee has also had its share of accidents and safety concerns over the years. One has to wonder why the corporate owners of nuclear plants would prefer to invest in legal fees to fight lengthy and costly court battles over whether they need to make necessary repairs rather than to invest the money initially into repairing the plants. This type of strategy does not seem to speak of corporate responsibility to the environment. It is wise to take this track record into consideration as we deal with the stewardship of the land in the decommissioning process going on now.
New England Coalition is advocating for the New England Standard at Vermont Yankee — namely that the cleanup be held to the same residual radiological standards as the three other decommissioned nuclear plants in the region. It is not just a matter of raising the bar on the cleanup but ensuring that NorthStar’s current plans to lower the standards will not be implemented. This would set a dangerous precedent for the decommissioning of other nuclear plants.
Maine Yankee, the nuclear plant in Wiscasset, Maine, was decommissioned as soon as possible after shutdown and to the safest possible cleanup standards known at the time, the New England Standard.
Vermont deserves no less.
