BRATTLEBORO — Its time to fill in the blanks and correct some mis-information on the nuclear issue.
For instance, a recent writer to this paper affirmed that there were no deaths due to the meltdown at Three Mile Island, and he complained that people were not doing the legwork necessary to get the facts straight [“Getting the facts right: that's the morality,” Letters, May 9].
Apparently, this gentleman is also guilty of not doing his legwork.
Three Mile Island was not a meltdown. Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown with containment and a controlled release of radioactivity according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's account of the accident at www.nrc.gov.
A common misconception regarding a nuclear disaster is that people should be dropping dead like flies.
The truth is that a nuclear accident is not like a car accident: Bang! Four people dead, end of story. It's more like suddenly becoming a member of a crowded room full of people who have smoked 2½ packs of cigarettes for 20 years.
On the last day of the 20th year, people in this room won't be dropping dead like flies, but many of them will be well on their way to developing cancer.
The problem is that we are not talking about a room, but rather a large inhabited territory that has been unhealthy to live in for many, many years.
Face it: radioactivity causes cancer. It's a fact. Marie Curie, the French scientist who first discovered the radioactive properties of radium, died of cancer, and her daughter, also a research scientist working in the field of artificial radioactivity, did as well. When will we learn?
Two or three years before this paper was first published, an article about some cancer studies came out in another local paper.
One study noted that although Windham County, Vt. had a lower cancer rate in comparison to other counties in Vermont, there was a slightly higher incidence of leukemia in the six towns surrounding Vermont Yankee.
Interestingly enough, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, leukemia is known to be caused by strontium 90, a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of our beloved nuclear power plant, as shown by Vermont Yankee's own Annual Radioactive Effluent Report to the NRC.
Let's get out of this business!