Some environmentalists, in reference to the current practices of factory farming, overfishing, and methods for energy extraction such as fracking, have called the Western industrialized view of the environment a war against nature.
This view applies to the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon as well. Over its 42-year history, tons of radioactive waste have been stored on the land there and the Connecticut River has been used as a repository for VY's heat and waste.
In terms of environmental stewardship, VT has an opportunity to raise the bar on the endgame of the site.
The New England Coalition is concerned that the Vernon site, having apparently been written off as a used industrial site, is not being accorded appropriate respect and long-term vision. All of the radionuclides that polluted Chernobyl and Fukushima are present.
Since the inception of the environmental movement with Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, there has been a concerted effort on the part of special-interest groups and related corporations to discredit and intimidate environmental and watchdog groups like the New England Coalition - and to mislead the public by disseminating...
One of the common misconceptions about nuclear power plants is that once they are “shut down,” the work in ensuring safer conditions on the site is over. In fact, that is not true. The decommissioning process - now in progress at Vermont Yankee - is often the most dangerous...
There seems to be some confusion over the recent denial of the permit for Energy Transfer Partners to continue its drilling for the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, where demonstrations organized by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe have been taking place. The Water Protectors have been trying to defend from drilling by the oil company a body of water that serves not only the Standing Rock reservation but also 18 million people downstream. In the past 20 years, 9,006...
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently cited Vermont Yankee for a security violation that occurred in February. The NRC spokesperson stated that the nature of the problem will not be released to the public due to post-9/11 security concerns. Though the NRC has made it difficult to assess how dangerous this particular incident was, it is not difficult to assess how dangerous the ongoing operation of the plant continues to be. This aging and deteriorating plant (one of the oldest...