The Shundahai Network :A Decade of Resistance

Columns
Harvey Wasserman

Did Turkey Point again take Florida to the radioactive brink?
February 27, 2008

As many as two million Floridians were blacked out yesterday by a series of grid malfunctions that forced shut two old atomic reactors south of Miami and renewed nightmares of a radioactive catastrophe. The chain of events should serve as yet another serious warning to those who would build still more atomic reactors in Florida and elsewhere.

The wide-ranging blackout apparently started with an accidental trip at a substation. That sabotage has been ruled out may not be all that reassuring. Countless homes and businesses were affected from the Florida Keys to as far away as Tampa, Gainesville and Daytona Beach. Frightened Floridians were trapped in elevators or abandoned offices by making their way down dark, sweltering stairwells. In Miami-Date along at least forty traffic accidents piled up as signals went dark.

This blackout’s reach was limited by steps taken since a 2003 reactor-related grid failure in Ohio led to a massive blackout that left 50 million people without power.

But the two large reactors at Turkey Point did trip from the loss of off-site power. (For safety reasons, vital cooling systems and other critical components rely on electricity coming from sources other than the reactors.)

A far more tense shut-down came when off-site power was lost during 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, whose eye passed directly over Turkey Point. At the height of the storm, communication from the control room was also dangerously lost. Tools and equipment valued at around $100 million were destroyed or simply blown away.

Andrew’s epic devastation made it clear that south Florida could never be evacuated in the wake of a melt-down amidst a hurricane. After the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, the NRC adopted specifications for evacuation procedures that were simply shredded by Andrew.

But Turkey Point re-opened three weeks later. To this day, no procedures are in place that could reliably evacuate south Florida’s burgeoning human population if radiation releases occurred even under optimum weather conditions, let alone amidst a major wind event.

Nonetheless, Florida Power & Light now wants to build two more reactors at Turkey Point, at a cost of some $20 billion. The generators could not come on line until sometime between 2020 and 2025.

A request for “Construction Work in Progress” (CWIP) is now before the Public Utilities Commission. CWIP would force state ratepayers to cover the cost of the reactors as they are being built. The PUC could make a decision within a month.

FPL may also seek federal loan guarantees, $18.5 billion of which were noticed in the federal Appropriations Bill passed in December, 2007. The Lieberman-Warner Global Warming bill, soon to be debated in the US Senate, may also come with hefty subsidies for projects like this one. Two more reactors have been proposed by Progress Energy for a site near one reactor already operating at Crystal River, near Tampa.

Little if any private financing is likely forthcoming for the proposed Florida reactors. But if CWIP or federal loans come through, they may be hard to stop.

New reactor construction at Turkey Point would have substantial environmental impacts on the nearby Everglades National Park. Serious questions remain about pressure put on water supplies, damage to nearby wildlife habitat, and much more. A wide range of local and national environmental groups have begun to intervene against the project.

This blackout and reactor shut down happened on a clear, calm Florida day. Had the state been getting its power from solar panels installed on buildings, a blackout like this one could never have occurred.

But with still more reactors on the drawing board, it may be only a matter of time before Florida’s reactors finally do take the sunshine state into the radioactive abyss.

--
Harvey Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth (www.solartopia.org)

Navajo plan to govern land use

By John Christian Hopkins
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — With a special session today to vote on the Navajo Nation Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, the council spent Monday asking a myriad of questions on the proposed law.

Whether or not NNCERCLA passes remains to be seen, as delegates seemed evenly divided on the issue; some felt the law was needed, others saw it as redundant to federal environmental laws.

“Anyone doing land disturbance activities needs to know there are criteria,” said Navajo Environmental Agency Executive Director Stephen B. Etsitty.

The purpose of the NNCERCLA is to address issues of hazardous waste release, provide funding for site cleanups and regulate the redevelopment of Brownfield sites.

“This law is a good law to have on the books,” Etsitty said.
“It is time to step up to the plate,” said attorney David Taylor, of the Navajo Department of Justice.

The act is needed on the reservation, said attorney Jill Grant of the Nordhaus law firm. The federal EPA regulations are geared more toward larger sites, near heavily populated areas, Grant said.

Often, on the reservation, the former sites are not close to heavily populated areas, she added.

There are about 1,000 abandoned uranium sites on Navajo — most too small to be covered under federal law, Grant said.

Another advantage for Navajo to have this act is that it would be able to move quicker to address hazardous spills and cleanups, Grant said.

Delegate Leonard Tsosie said the NNCERCLA mimics the existing federal law. But the federal law does not include petroleum, so would the federal government provide funds if Navajo wanted to clean up a petroleum spill, Tsosie said.

“This law is too broad and will apply to the Navajo person working in a rundown garage, who has several buckets of motor oil in his yard,” Tsosie said.

The act needs to be specific, and clearly spell out what the Nation does not want the law to do — such as be used to target individuals in their own yards, Delegate Lorenzo Curley said.

Many Navajos transport small quantities of petroleum for use in their homes, Delegate Elmer Begay said. But he thought the new law would be geared toward businesses, and not target individuals.

While NNCERCLA closely resembles the federal EPA law, there are differences, Grant said. In addition to listing petroleum as a hazard material, the Navajo act would also cover uranium clean up on the reservation, she said.

“It sort of creates more red tape,” Delegate Johnny Naize suggested.

The NNCERCLA would only strengthen the Nation’s position if it takes legal action regarding hazardous spills, Etsitty said.

“A law like this gives us another set of tools,” Etsitty said. “We’re not out there to kill projects or squash development.”

 On July 5, 2007, what would become the biggest fire in Utah's history hadn't yet started.  It would start the next day, on July 6 at 3:45 p.m.   Yet, on July 5, an atmospheric and radiation monitoring station in the town of Milford, Utah, picked up abnormally high levels of gamma radiation - the radiation was off the charts and continued that way for over a week.

Officials from the Department of Energy, which operates the monitoring station in Milford, first believed that the radiation spikes were caused by radon gas being released by the Milford Flat Fire, the wildfire that didn't start until the next day!   The DOE later couldn't prove their theory about radon gas and in October 2007 reached another conclusion: that the radiation spikes were caused by  a warped electronic component within the monitoring equipment; the cause of warping was unknown

"If you or someone you know was traveling on Interstate-15 in central
Utah between  Scipio and Beaver, or on I-70 from Cove Fort (I-15
junction) to Richfield, Utah, on Saturday, July 7, 2007, and meet
these conditions - (1) experienced exposure to heavy smoke from the
Milford Flat fire and (2) have persisting health problems since that
exposure - please contact us by visiting www.idealist.ws .  We can
put you in contact with others who have experienced property damage
or bodily harm from the fire/smoke exposure and are seeking remedy.


"The Milford flat fire jumped I-15 near Cove Fort, Utah, on Saturday,
July 7, prompting closure of a part of the interstate system by
Saturday afternoon; the resulting traffic snarl and poor visibility
due to smoke density was blamed for a fatal accident that killed two
motorists.   The smoke from the Milford Flat fire contained hundreds
of toxic compounds that are normally found in wood smoke; those
substances typically don't affect health in the long term.  Any
long-term effects from smoke exposure may be attributed to
radiological substances - i.e., nuclear fallout resuspended by the
fire.  Visit idealist.ws for more."

[complete message follows:]

- - -
To: idealist@lists.riseup.net
From: <info@idealist.ws>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:22:15 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [idealist] Sharing motivation in antinuclear activism

There are many reasons why one becomes an anti-nuclear activist.  For me, it
was from meeting downwinders when I lived in Utah during the Divine Strake
episode.  If you remember the downwinders who protested Divine Strake, you
probably remember witnessing a certain look on their faces, or sentiment
expressed with words, of utter disbelief.  How could the government, after
poisoning countless people decades ago with fallout and barely lifting a finger
now to improve RECA (the government act to compensate downwinders from cold war
testing and uranium mining),...how could they just go ahead and 'do this'?
Divine Strake was cancelled, thanks to the untiring efforts of so many citizens
and groups across the country.  Another generation of downwinders that could
have been created from the proposed Divine Strake test was prevented.

Fast forward to the present day: people are still dying, yes, from
fallout-related diseases.  Their fight for RECA expansion is an uphill battle.
There are countless other fights that anti-nuclear activists across this nation
and world are fighting to slow and ultimately stop the nuclear war machine in
the United States.  These people believe in a world without nuclear power and
nuclear weapons.  The latter, they believe, is not necessary to bring about
world peace, because nuclear weapons can never 'force' peace.

How do we get there?  What is the best path to a nuclear free world and justice
for downwinders?  As I have written in my essay 'Our Nuclear Future' on
Idealist.ws, 'a nuclear-free future will not come about through the
dissemination of facts or the ratification of treaties or the coordination of
movements.  It will come about through a transformational change in the way
people think.'  I believe that the quickest path to change lies in the
contagion of compassion.  It is too difficult for the layperson to assimilate
tons of facts and analyses to adopt an anti-nuclear stance.  I think that the
key is how we relate to other humans (and animals) who have suffered from the
harm that has been caused and is being caused by global (not just U.S.) nuclear
mistakes.

As I have written elsewhere on Idealist.ws, a secret nuclear war has come and
gone.  Nuclear bombs were detonated.  Thousands and thousands of times on soil
on lands of nearly every continent.  It wasn't called a nuclear war.  Yet it
was.  You call it a cold war, but people died by the millions and millions more
will die.  It is the survivors of the nuclear 'wars' of our past that move me
the most.  There is one woman I met last year who 'survived' the Milford Flat
fire.  That 'event' wasn't related to an actual nuclear explosion.  The
tremendous fire, I believe, resuspended nuclear fallout lying dormant in the
soils of the Utah landscape.  This woman is still very sick, seven months
later, from 'something' she breathed in.  And her best chance of getting help -
legally and, ultimately, medically - is by connecting her with other Milford
Flat fire downwinders.  Please send along this below passage to other people
who it might apply to.  Thank you for reading about my motivation; I encourage
you to recall the reason you joined this movement and share that motivation
with me and others.
Vist this link for more info Milford Flat Fire