AMHERST – At the end of the Institute for Nuclear Host Communities one-day conference at the University of Massachusetts Wednesday – focusing on the challenges communities face when the nuclear power plants in their backyards close – panelists strained to put a positive spin on what they had heard over the previous eight hours.
During the day the assembled experts had been informed that, among a plethora of bleak truths, that an official plant decommissioning process does not actually exist, that in the discussions between plant owners and the federal government (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) local government doesn’t have a seat at the table and that the question of what’s to be done with spent fuel is preventing communities from re-purposing plant sites.
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John Mullin, whose study of the closure of Yankee Rowe more than a dozen years ago might be said to represent the origin of this new area of planning, said that he feels taking care of these communities is a patriotic duty.
Mullin remembers as a boy excitedly following the nuclear exploits of the Navy, the adventures of the Nautilus and the first nuclear powered Naval ship, the Savannah.
“I felt a patriotic duty to support nuclear, and if my government is asking me to do something, then it goes the other way as well. I want my government to protect me. It’s an ethical challenge,” Mullin said, “but it’s worth the effort.”
Read more at NUCLEAR PLANT CLOSURE CONFERENCE: ‘That fuel is going to be here as long as the pyramids’
