School Story:
[From 50th Reunion Yearbook...]
Husband Paul; Children Henri, Marc, Daniel
Headline: Innocent Young Women at Liberal Campus Plot Revolution on Their Way to “Dummy”! Maybe it was the McCarthy Hearings, but Northfield was obliged to receive U.S. government investigators. I remember faculty outrage. Over supper, in Gould kitchen, Mrs. Osborn, domestic advisor, expressed her furor. Funny the things you remember.
Another is Mademoiselle Liniger’s French class. She was French-Swiss, as is Paul, my husband. For 7 years I worked, and then we married and started a family in that part of Switzerland. Remember how she taught French III? It was mostly dictation, not much discussion of text. I was with Paul when we ran into her on a steam boat on Lake of Geneva. So unexpected! I tried to say thanks. I don’t think she remembered me too well...
Question and Recommendation: Is there an opinion among you about whether or not the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Reactor license should or should not be renewed? Then let it be known, by writing Vermont’s Governor Douglas. He wants to give permission to Entergy, the utility, to keep it running 26 more years. That will make it 60 years old at decommissioning! NMH is inside the immediate emergency evacuation zone. Retired engineers, like Paul, are worried about this practice for aging reactors.
Conclusion: We could make an unspoken pledge to join watch-dog groups for the aging nuclear reactors upwind of us, or of our loved ones, of our NMH. A loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA), or a nuclear fire in the spent fuel storage pool, would be worse than Katrina. Genetic aberrations would linger virtually forever. FEMA had good warning of an imminent disaster in New Orleans. We now have ample concern posed by aging reactors. The uprate of power to 20% at the Vermont Yankee was completed in August, 2006, increasing the pressure and heat -- as well as the rate at which the spent fuel rods are removed to unsecured cooling pools. This uprate was done without the preliminary testing of the plumbing for the automatic cooling process. Speak truth to power. Email: New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution: necnp@necnp.org
Fears: Conquer fear, with knowledge: The Union of Concerned Scientist’s, Dr. Lochbaum, via the Internet, has helped me better understand what’s at stake. If there is reduction of pressure in the containment dry well there is danger of LOCA. There are about six ways that decrease could happen. Add that the 20% uprate was done too rapidly, i.e. without testing along the way.
Joys: 1. Our far-flung sons (Henri, Marc, Daniel), their wives and families. 2. The NorthWoods Stewardship Center next door, and finally, 3. A new-found friend, fluent in Parisian French, who lives, with her husband completely off the grid, no plumbing, a woodstove for cooking and heating, goats and chickens. We read and discuss recent French novels, take in a French video/DVD, and discuss a Quebec radio documentary, or show. (All through high school, French was very difficult, and now it’s a joy!)
Wisdom: is to know that it is calculated it would require one new nuclear reactor to come online somewhere in the world every 15 days, on average, between 2010 and 2050 in order to maintain the on-going burden of power. Wisdom would be to make sure the younger generation understands this and does not opt to continue nuclear power. The argument the sector makes is seductive but wrong! www.ucsusa.org, www.nrdc.org Ellie Ingram Gavin, East Charleston, VT elliegavin@adelphia.net, 802-723-6621
