Public Information Meeting On Vermont Yankee and its Tritium Leak
On Monday, April 12, 2010, Entergy hosted a public information meeting in Brattleboro, VT about the tritium leak at Vermont Yankee and the actions taken to find and stop the leak. The meeting was set up like a science fair or trade show, with booths and posters with informative displays and knowledgeable people to answer questions. I do not want to steal Meredith Angwin’s thunder, she attended the meeting and will probably be blogging about her impressions of the event at Yes Vermont Yankee later today. I hear through the grapevine, however, that the event was well-organized and well-received.
Update: (Posted on April 14, 2010 at 1:21 am) You can find photos and report of the event on Yes Vermont Yankee titled Real Information at a Real Meeting. As Meredith points out in her report, one of the important aspects of this meeting is that it was far more like a science fair, where the booths are manned by the people who actually did the work or experimentation and created the displays in an attempt to share what they learned, than like a trade show where set up is similar but the booths are created by sales and marketing teams and manned by attractive professional communicators who often cannot answer any questions about the technology behind the products being advertised.
Using the English language that I studied, only the latter situation employs “shills”; the former one employs people based on subject matter expertise rather than physical appearance and conversational skills.
Rod. I’m gonna post! I’m gonna post! Thank you for this. I appreciate it!
The first news clip on the event gives equal time to Deb Katz, without happening to mention that she is president of Citizen’s Action Network (might have the name wrong), a group with a paid lobbyist against Vermont Yankee. She was also the potty-mouth debater for the fake debate in Putney. In this news clip, she’s just an ordinary citizen, far as anybody can tell.
http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/local/vermont-yankee-holds-info-session
Rod. I posted it. Hope you like it and it is helpful
http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2010/04/real-information-at-real-meeting.html
I think this is a great response by Entergy – people like transparency and dialogue, as it shows respect. I think things along this line – for instance, I know that there are some towns aside from Vernon who have passed anti-VY resolutions at town meetings – if you were to arrange to come out there prior to Town Meeting time, and have a “meet the engineers” session, and answer their questions – they would probably be:
1. gratified to see you come, even if, in the somewhat uptight New England fashion, they pretend they aren’t.
2. interested in what you have to say, especially if you’re willing to discuss their tough questions with straight talk.
I would do it in a sort of science fair format. Perhaps I would also offer to have representatives – perhaps engineers – go to the town meeting – and answer the town’s questions, and ask them to retract their resolution to close VY.
One thing that would kind of be cool is if there was a map of the EPZ, along with pushpins for employees who live within it (different colors for different departments), so that you would be able to make the argument, ‘Why would all of these people who know all the “secrets” of Vermont Yankee live within the EPZ with their families if it was a “threat”?’ ‘Why are all these people who know the “secrets” of Vermont Yankee O.K. with their kids going to a school within 1500 feet of the reactor, if it’s such a big “threat”?’
I would also give local dignitaries and legislators opportunities to “inspect the facility”, e.g. give local Boards of Selectmen as well as state legislators the “whole 9 yards” tour of the facility if they would like it. If there’s an upcoming outage, then perhaps at the beginning and the end of the outage, you could show these small dignitary tour groups the figurative “meat” of the plant (the interior of the wetwell/ drywell). If you got enough people, it might be worth adding a day or two of cold shutdown just to show them around.
Something to look for – I do not know if it is still the case but when I was working at Marble Hill at least a dozen of the “local” protesters that were against the startup were the exact same people as those that were at all of the TMI-I restart meetings. Three years later I again see many of the same familiar faces passing themselves off as “local residents” or “concerned residents” again for the third time at Rancho Seco. Some of the senior NRC officials knew them by name! (I wonder how they make a living!)
Hi Rod and Dave and Rich
You are so right about so many things at this meeting. First of all, the people behind the booths work at the plant. I am sorry I did not get the name of the woman in charge of the booth explaining the off-gas system, but she was a licensed reactor operator at the plant. I think having the REAL EXPERTS there was effective.
And yes. The usual anti-suspects were there, indeed. Deb Katz. Clay Turnbull, Gary Sachs (already named in my blog). And more that I know.
How do they show up so often and so many places. Um. Some of them earn a living this way. Start a small not-for-profit. Sell fear. Really, fear-mongering pays! “Give me money to combat this terrible threat!” Then, pay yourself. Deb Katz’s organization pays at least three people:Deb Katz, Chris Williams (a professional activist who moved to Vermont to combat Vermont Yankee. He was somewhere in the midwest earlier) and Bob Stanton, the People’s Lobbyist in Montpelier.
That’s why you see these guys so much. They’re out there making a buck. Like Paul Gunther, Arnie Gundersen, etc.
Sometimes I feel like Miss Marple.She figures out the big picture because “everything happens in a village” and so she knows how people behave. Vermont is a tiny state. Counties in the San Francisco Bay Area have more population. This is the village. This is the place where everything is small scale, and you can figure things out.
Meredith
“Vermont is a tiny state. Counties in the San Francisco Bay Area have more population.”
Yet, surprisingly, they both have roughly the same number of loons. 😉