Noted physician and author Dr. Helen Caldicott spoke last night at UVM, spoke Tuesday at Middlebury College, and will be speaking tonight in Montpelier and tomorrow night in Brattleboro.
Hear Dr. Caldicott tonight: April 9 5:30pm
The Chapel, Vermont College of Fine Arts, 36 College St, Montpelier, VT
I was lucky enough to have lunch with Dr. Caldicott yesterday and to be part of a panel discussion with her that was hosted by Margaret Harrington on CCTV Burlington yesterday afternoon. More about both those items in a later post.
Dr. Caldicott co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization
of 32,400 medical professionals committed to educating their colleagues to the
dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The international umbrella
organization, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, won
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
If you miss tonight's lecture, head to Brattleboro tomorrow, April 10 @ 7:00pm
Latchis 4, Latchis Theatre, 50 Main St., Brattleboro, VT (one door down from the main entrance)
Dr. Caldicott has spent 35 years as an advocate of citizen awareness regarding the world's nuclear and environmental crisis. Her international campaign strives to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior needed to prevent environmental destruction.
Trained as a physician and thoroughly versed in the science of nuclear energy, Dr. Caldicott is a knowledgeable and inspiring speaker. During the 1970's Dr. Caldicott was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and served
on the staff of the Children's Hospital Medical Center. One of the most influential women of the 20th century, she has received many awards for her
work. She is the author of seven books, including War in Heaven, (published in March 2007), Nuclear Power is Not the Answer (2006), If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth (1992), and Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do (1979). She
has also been the focus of several films, including Eight Minutes to Midnight, nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, and If You Love This Planet, which won The Academy Award for best documentary in 1982.
Dr. Caldicott's lectures are free and open to the public.
"Representatives from Vermont's Department of Public Service were heckled by anti-nuclear activists during a public meeting in Brattleboro last night.
The meeting was the last of four around the state that the DPS hosted to discuss the future of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
DPS Spokesman Stephen Wark was interrupted several times as he attempted to explain to the crowd of more than 100 people gathered at the Red Roof Inn the process behind the state's review of the power plant... the hearing in Brattleboro was meant to inform the Department of Public Service, the Public Service Board and the Legislature in its deliberations over Yankee's future."
It gets better.
"Off to the side, a pair of anti-nuclear activists performed a kind of street theater. A man wearing a placard reading "Public Service" and a woman wearing a placard reading "Nuclear Industry" mimicked a couple engaging in foreplay, bordering on sex.
At one point, Wark threatened to call the police to remove at least one of the loudest protesters.
"Some people here tonight are more interested in grandstanding than in participating," said Wark, after the crowd broke into five groups to discuss Vermont Yankee. "We're here for a period of time with a serious mission and that's to collect information for in-depth studies. We want to make sure we are hearing the people."
Wark said previous meetings in Burlington, St. Johnsbury and Rutland were not disrupted by protesters.
"This doesn't dissuade us from what we came here to do," he said.""
We need to really push right now on lack of faith in Vermont Yankee and its ability to maintain core safety standard. One way we can do this is to start pushing the Democratic/Progressive majority's energy plan NOW, before the legislature even gets back in session, to make it a top priority and make it politically difficult for Douglas to veto it again.
We need to start blanketing our papers with letters, not only talking about the dangers of nuclear power, but tying them in to three things:
The energy bill that Douglas vetoed and why it's more important to refocus our work on safe, clean and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power;
local economy and how when people are invested in their own community, they don't have to worry about their safety being in the hands of large corporations which see the surrounding communities in terms of profit and loss and little else;
that lack of regulation and supervision is a dangerous thing and if we can't adequately insure that VY is up to the task of maintaining their own equipment (be sure to mention the recent incident, the fire and the rods that they just couldn't find one day).
This is a big deal. We need to write letters about it. We need to make phone calls about it.
What you probably haven't seen or heard are descriptions of the cause of the problems or pictures of what the damage really entails. According to a filing yesterday by VPIRG, Arnie Gunderson, an expert on cooling towers,
the current damage and derate shares causes identical with the June/July 2004 fire, outage, and derate. Those identical shared causes are poor maintenance, lack of attention to detail in engineering, failure of aging management, and the impacts of extended power uprate (“EPU”).
VPIRG's filing also shows photographs of the failed cooling tower. The photos depict the wooden and metal wreckage of the cooling tower, with water flooding out of a huge broken pipe. It's pretty dramatic, and it certainly gives one pause about whether the MSM coverage has been enough to convey the scope of this problem.
Here's the most dramatic picture in the group:
Maybe, the next time we hear conservatives in the Douglas Administration bragging about Vermont's "clean" power portfolio, we should remind them of the costs of this "clean" power.
