Shoreham – The Video
Some of you who listen to The Atomic Show might remember episode #132 titled The Atomic Show #132 – Ray Squirrel Interviews (Atomic) Rod Adams. That show was a lengthy interview conducted via Skype during which a journalist asked me a whole bunch of questions. A few of you know that the interview was conducted as part of a video project. At least one of my regular readers is quite familiar with the project because she was also interviewed since she both protested against Shoreham and later wrote a book about her journey of discovery of the truth about nuclear energy. The below is a trailer designed to whet your appetite for watching the whole video, once production is complete.
Rod, you need to update the filmmakers on that scare ad about Shoreham that the oil people ran during the controversy over the plant opening. Or maybe you already have shown it to James. Talk about a smoking gun!
Gwyneth – actually, James and Ray were the ones who found it and shared it with me. They discovered it during their library document searches.
I think that the final product is going to be interesting and useful. Harvey and Karl do an excellent job of playing themselves and demonstrating the foolishness of their positions. You, on the other hand come off rather well as a person with critical thinking skills who is willing to change her mind when provided access to better information.
Hi Rod,
I’m a newbie to your blog. I was a consultant to (and former employee of) GE on the Shoreham Project after the ill-fated decision to not proceed beyond hot testing. The fuel had to be removed before complete decommissioning. We actually took the slightly irradiated fuel and made pioneering shipments of it by truck, barge and rail to the Limerick Station in PA for reinsertion and use. That series of shipments remains a model for the intermodal movement of this material. In this case there was a need to preserve the mechanical integrity of the assemblies since they were going back in-core in. I wrote a complete report on the entire operation for the DOE – OCRWM. Was a great project even though the demise of Shoreham was a huge waste.
Robert – welcome to Atomic Insights and thank you for sharing your thoughts on Shoreham.
It is definitely a story that continues to influence the progress of the nuclear industry; one of the reasons that it is difficult to finance a plant is that financial people in New York are aware of the fact that the plant was very contentious during construction, received its operating license, but was never allowed to operate and produce revenue to repay the loans.
A large fraction of the financial industry is probably still personally writing checks every month in their electric bills to pay off those loans, even today.
It is important for the nuclear industry to really understand what happened and why it happened so that they can avoid its recurrence.