indian point nuclear power plant meltdown

#INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT MELTDOWN FULL#

The nearby Buchanan Verplanck Elementary School, located less than 4000 feet from Indian Point, lacks air, water and soil monitoring. He spoke of the scientific aspect that is required and noted his group hired a statistician to process the tens of millions of data points that were coming in. The data needs to be analyzed and tracked to provide a constant, reliable, and trusted source of information.” Having access to the site to recalibrate monitoring devices and routine maintenance is another item to request from the company in the decommissioning process, added Epstein.Įpstein strongly advised that hand-held monitoring units be made available to any schools in the immediate decommissioning area, and make sure they have real time readings.

“Independent radiation monitoring requires quality equipment, regularly calibrated, and located at scientifically based locations. In our 43 years, the best information has come from the people working at the plant,” he said. Speaking from his 43 years of involvement with Three Mile Island Alert, the organization he founded, Eric Epstein told of the need for independent air monitoring as a plant is decommissioning – and how crucial it is to build trust with the people inside the plant. She also noted the nuclear industry is especially powerful because it’s aligned with the nuclear weapons industry. Children are ten to twenty times more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of radiation than adults and little girls twice that of boys,” explained Dr. Doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, and that harmful impacts are cumulative. They focus instead on external radiation from sources outside the body.

They consistently ignore internal emitters - radioactive elements from nuclear power plants that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells. “Physicists talk convincingly about ‘permissible doses’ of radiation. She repeatedly encouraged citizens and politicians such as Harckham to demand testimony from doctors who treat people with cancer to speak to the decision makers around nuclear power plants being decommissioned, saying there is no way to smell, see or taste the elements being released into the air and water. Caldicott, speaking from her home in Australia. Nuclear power plants are carcinogenic factories,” said Dr. “Think about how hard we work to save patients with cancers. She described what happens to the body when exposed to those elements as they are released into air and water. Caldicott, who has been listed as one of the 20th century’s most influential women by the Smithsonian Institute, walked the viewers through just three elements that are produced when uranium atoms are split to create nuclear energy. You can monitor until the cows come home, but you can’t outrun cancer,” said Nobel Laureate Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician who has been advocating for rigorous medical standards to be included in testimony at hearings about where nuclear waste will go. All these regulations won’t do any good until it’s looked at as a medical issue. At the December meeting of the Decommissioning Oversight Board (DOB) a request for proposal to monitor the air was issued. The State Senator also noted that through public advocacy and forums hosted by the Hudson River Clearwater Sloop, his office, and the office of former Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, the Decommissioning Oversight Board was created – the first of its kind in the country. “And the DOB needs to hear from outside experts regarding health and safety,” said Harkham.

#INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT MELTDOWN FULL#

State Senator Peter Harckham, who sits on the Decommissioning Oversight Board (DOB) – whose members were appointed by the governor, told the nearly 300 webinar viewers that through the efforts of citizen advocacy, the DOB will be requesting a full time New York State employee onsite at the plant, a new air monitoring system, and for regular meetings to occur with federal officials. (All images are screenshots from the webinar.) Image from the slide presentation explaining what’s at stake with the decommissioning of Indian Point. Almost 400 people registered to watch the webinar on Thursday afternoon.

With the decommissioning of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan underway, grassroots citizen groups in the Hudson River Valley hosted the first session of a speaker series, with experts in their respective fields addressing important aspects of public health and safety that should be considered in decommissioning a nuclear power plant and the handling of nuclear waste. The best defense is a good offense – and citizen advocacy groups in the Hudson Valley are taking cues from lessons learned by watchdog groups in Pennsylvania and Massachuttes who are living through the decommissioning of nuclear power plants in their communities.

Indian point nuclear power plant meltdown