Forget Iran; Worry about Vermont

Although the thought of Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons is undoubtedly terrifying, another more imminent potential catastrophe deserves our attention. Before moving to Boston, I lived in southern Vermont, approximately five miles from the sleeper cell that is Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.

In an allusion to the opening scene of The Simpsons, two radioactive fuel rods (containing enriched uranium) were haphazardly misplaced for weeks. As if that were not enough, sporadic ignitions—of various transformers and of the reactor itself—have kept Vermonters on their toes. The volunteer fire department practically has its own parking space in the plant’s lot.

Aside from its idiosyncratic risks, Vermont Yankee also shares the risks posed by nuclear power plants in general. Built in the early ’70s, the plant seems ripe for a meltdown, yet like so many other plants nationwide, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has allowed it to increase its output by 20 percent. The plant should have expired years ago, but instead it was purchased and upgraded by Entergy, a company based out of conveniently distant Louisiana.

To convince nearby residents that they are not endangered by the ticking bomb, state and local emergency management agencies (overseen by the NRC) have created a contingency plan for dealing with a disaster. People living within the evacuation zone have received a potassium iodide pill that looks remarkably like Tylenol, which they must take if Vermont Yankee melts down (or blows up). The pill plan, reminiscent of the duck-and-cover Cold War contingencies, does not inspire much confidence.

The contingency plan doesn’t end with pills, however. During high school I spent a day rehearsing an evacuation. We failed miserably to execute the plan, but the higher ups were satisfied. The plan itself, however, is not satisfactory. Students are not allowed to leave the building, even if they have cars, until the designated buses arrive to take everyone to safety. The buses, however, are coming in from Keene, N.H., a 30-minute drive from my high school in Brattleboro, Vt. (This, of course, is assuming the bus drivers are willing to risk their lives to come at all.) Furthermore, the NRC’s own investigation of Vermont Yankee found that the alert system was inadequate in areas outside of normal siren coverage. Hurricane Katrina showcased the deadliness of a botched evacuation, yet the NRC does not appear to have learned from the mistakes in New Orleans.

Granted, the dangers faced by a few thousand Vermonters may not be panic-inducing, but the problems with Vermont Yankee are representative of the dangers of many nuclear power plants. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security has required nuclear plants to gauge their vulnerabilities to a terrorist attack. (NCR ran similar tests in the 1990s but the results were so embarrassingly bad that the tests were discontinued. Safety first.) Vermont Yankee is not alone in failing the mock attacks, but it does have the honor of having “the largest number of weaknesses of any reactor that has been tested,” according to NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

The problems with Vermont Yankee, and nuclear power, in general, go beyond the risk of immediate catastrophe. Nuclear energy is often championed as the solution to pollution because, unlike fossil fuels, it does not emit greenhouse gases. Yet in order to enrich the uranium needed to produce nuclear energy, huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the environment. Furthermore, even during normal operation, power plants emit radioactive particles, including gases such as krypton, xenon, tritium, and argon, all of which can cause genetic diseases and gene mutations, not to mention iodine-131 (which causes thyroid cancer), strontium-90 (which causes leukemia and bone cancer), and cesium-137 (which causes muscle cancer). Then, of course, there is plutonium-239, which is so toxic that just one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. The United States has over 100 nuclear reactors, each of which produce about 200 kilograms of plutonium-239 per year. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki used 6.2 kilograms of plutonium.

Hopefully it will not take another Chernobyl to finally convince people that something needs to change. It may seem as though the dangers posed by nuclear energy are as far away as Ukraine, but if the winds blow just right, radiation from Vermont Yankee may just float down to Cambridge to change your mind.



Leah S. Zamore ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Canaday Hall.