Wasserman: Astonishing Tower Collapse Screams: "NO NEW NUKES!!"

[mod mom]

Astonishing tower collapse screams "No New Nukes!!"
August 27, 2007

A cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant has collapsed.

A broken 54" pipe there has spewed 350,000 gallons per minute of contaminated, overheated water into the Earth. "The river water piping and the series of screens and supports failed," said a company spokesman. They "fell to the ground."

The public and media were barred from viewing the wreckage for three days. But when a Congressional Energy Bill conference committee takes up Senate-approved loan guarantees for building new nukes this fall, what will reactor backers say about this latest pile of radioactive rubble?

This kind of event can make even hardened nuke opponents pinch themselves and read the descriptions twice. Who could make this up?

Vermont Yankee has been in operation---more or less---since the early 1970s. Its owner is Entergy, a multi-reactor "McNuke" operator that last year got approval to up VY's output by 20%.

-snip


http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1595

[TheWraith]

1. What an unmitigated stack of ignorance and lies.

For starters, it's worth noting that the author of this article is one of the delirious people who thinks that solar power can supply all of our global energy needs, going against all scientific reality and decades of established history. Just look at his history of articles to get a feel for the shrill, repetitive, and frankly absurd kind of rhetoric this guy specializes in.

Second, this article is so filled with BS and scare tactics that it's not even funny. Coolant water isn't "contaminated" unless you consider it so simply by virtue of having been used by a nuclear plant. There's no radiation involved, and no "radioactive rubble." A hot water pipe broke, and this guy is trying to make out like it's a nuclear accident.

[bananas]

2. The NRC and Entergy tried to cover this up.

You're doing a heck of a job, NRC!

"I was flabbergasted when I first saw them," he said of the photos. "I had thought, from the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy had described it, that the damage was confined to the interior of the tower."

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS01/708240311/1009/NEWS05

<snip>

Also of concern were photographs of the collapse that were circulated on the Internet on Wednesday evening.

<snip>

Whoever took the photos must have been close to the structure at the time, Shadis said. If the photographer was someone who had managed to get onto plant property without permission, that would represent a "complete security failure," Shadis said.

"I was flabbergasted when I first saw them," he said of the photos. "I had thought, from the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy had described it, that the damage was confined to the interior of the tower. That pipe was a half-inch thick and it just snapped."

<snip>