31 Days - Fried Fish on 12 & 13

The past few days got away from me.  I'll post the new little painting when it's finished, but today, we had bigger fish to fry.  Hopefully we won't be fried fish before the needed changes happen.

Entergy, the absentee landlord of our local decrepit, failing GE Mark 1 nuclear reactor is bailing out and promising to shut down the nuke sometime before June 2019.  Of course, our first thought after trying to get the thing closed for 40 years, is YAY, FINALLY!  But not so fast...
Here's the skinny from Bill Mohl, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities 
The reason why Energy will be closing the plant is because it's losing money, NOT because it's ranked the LOWEST IN SAFETY of all nukes in the nation and should not be running at all.  The NRC should have forced its closure by now if they did what they're charged to do in the name of nuke regulation and public safety. 

So, what does this mean?  It means Energy will continue to run the dirtiest, unsafest plant in the nation, same GE Mark 1 design as Fukushima (that is dependent on external power to keep its shit cool) and won't want to be spending any more money on repairs and safety.  It is a huge public safety threat as it is, and now the threat is even bigger.

Oh, did I mention they had to shut down this summer because the bay water was too hot to cool the reactor?  Oh, and last winter's storms shut them down, too.  That plant has been shut down a lot lately.

Another time this summer a 1/4 inch copper pipe was the reason it had a SCRAM - emergency shutdown.  You can learn about SCRAMs here.

And just a few days ago, we see this report from the EPA.  Not sure what it means but this type of spike seems to happen with regularity, and there is only one other possible source in the Commonwealth, and that would be MIT's little reactor.

And here's a few months' worth

Hmm, I wonder if those spikes can be related to the shutdowns...

So hearing about this very quiet press conference today at the Radisson in Plymouth, I went and found my sign, and went over there.  

Of course, no one but the press was allowed in the room.  My friend Mary (Pix) Lampert had to have the Duxbury town manager call the security guys to prove she was on the Nuclear Matters committee before they'd let her in. And once she was in, she could only listen and take notes and not ask any questions. 
That meant some really important questions about public safety went unanswered.  But we made sure the press got to hear our concerns when they emerged from the conference.

Peeps from the Pilgrim Coalition came up from the cape

You can read more about "This Old Nuke" here at this terribly outdated site.