Happy Retirement Vermont Yankee!

At last! At the end of December Vermont Yankee finally retired! Please join me in signing a card for a safe retirement

Shutting down Vermont Yankee has been a personal crusade for me. I know too much about the fear and uncertainty radiation from a damaged nuclear plant can create. On April 26, 1986, the day Chernobyl melted down, I was living 800 miles away in Southern Germany, the mother of a four-year-old son and newly pregnant with twins. Four days after the disaster, the radioactive plume blew over my village where I was caught in a heavy rainstorm that pelted my family and me with dangerous radioactive isotopes. The following weeks were the most terrifying of my life, not knowing what would happen to my son and my unborn children due to this radiation exposure.

When I moved to Montpelier in 1989, I was well aware that I was moving much closer to a nuclear plant than I had been in Germany. I was uneasy about putting my children at risk of unnecessary and dangerous radiation yet again, and my unease grew as Vermont Yankee continued to age and suffered from myriad problems, making it one of the oldest and most dangerous nuclear facilities in the country. It was clear that Entergy Louisiana could not be trusted to safely and reliably operate Vermont Yankee past its original retirement date of 2012. It even won a Dirty Dozen award! [1]

Now finally, thanks to efforts of Toxics Action Center organizers, Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance activists, and many others, Vermont Yankee has powered down for the last time. We still have many concerns about the plant's safety, and we will be watchdogging the decommissioning process carefully. But we are so excited that Vermont Yankee has finally retired.

Join me in signing a retirement card to Vermont Yankee!

Onward,

Susan Ritz
Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance activist
Montpelier, VT

[1] Lecuyer, Cate. "VY makes 'dirty dozen' polluters list," Brattleboro Reformer, November 29, 2006.

2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25nuke.html
[3] http://healthvermont.gov/enviro/rad/yankee/tritium.aspx
[4] http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100202/NEWS01/2020361/1002/NEWS01
[5] http://www.reformer.com/headlines/ci_9291800

 

 

Toxics Action Center 294 Washington St, Suite 500, Boston, MA 02108, (617) 292-4821 Facebook | Twitter