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Letter: Nuclear plant unsafe and unwanted here
Op-Ed · April 19, 2013
The April 11th Muscatine Journal article “Atom and Leave” stated that the General Accountability Office (the “Congressional Watchdog”) challenged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the inadequacy of its emergency planning for nuclear power plants.
The words “warning, panicking, evacuation, emergency, frightened, flee, escape, disaster, worry, contaminated, accidents, failure, and hazard” dominated the article.
On June 20, 2011, the Associated Press reported in the Boston Globe that federal nuclear regulators have worked to “keep the nation’s aging reactors within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards or simply failing to enforce them.”
On April 11, 2013, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reported “The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive limits in drinking water and soil following radiological incidents.” In relation to being in the soil, this means that the cancer rate would increase from a longstanding 1 in 10,000 persons to a rate of 1 in 23 persons who are exposed over a 30-year period. New limits have yet to be set for water.
Connect the dots — inadequate emergency planning, weakening of the safety standards, increasing allowable limits of radioactivity in our soil and water. These words shout “Nuclear is dangerous for Muscatine County and neighboring counties!”
MidAmerican Energy will report to the Iowa Legislature and the Iowa Utilities Board very soon to ask for approval for a nuclear plant in Muscatine County. Please phone Governor Branstad at 515-281-5211; state representatives Tom Sands, Bobby Kaufmann and Mark Lofgren at 515-281-3221; and state senators Tom Courtney, Chris Brase and Bob Dvorsky at 515-281-3371 to express your concerns. Make your call today. Tomorrow may not be soon enough!
Dwight Glenney, Saving America’s Farmland and Environment, Muscatine
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