Meltdowns and Waves

Blog post #2: Nuclear Now, and Forever

“PPL is a piece of shit company” Lorenzo Realnáme puts down the tape recorder, content with the certainty that we’ve captured his sentiment. Scattered obscenities lace the torrent of hate speech that Lorenzo expounds for Nuclear power. He ignores the obvious fear-mongering speech of death and destruction by way of nuclear meltdown, when prodded he even acknowledges that safety procedures are far more sophisticated today and the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Committee) upholds very high standards.

Interestingly he doesn’t believe the paramilitary force of ex-marines armed with fully loaded M-16’s, with their three point security biometric scan, full body scanners, and radiation detectors behind two concrete barricades are sufficient. He tells us he’s walked onto the island fishing at night. Somebody could fire an RPG at the island, he cautions. We point out to him that the reactors are built to withstand an airplane crash, but he insists the real target would be spent fuel rods lying in pools around the reactor.

This he feels is the greatest problem with nuclear power, they have no way of disposing of these horrifically radioactive fuel rods, they have no permanent storage solution at the island and nobody will take them. Lorenzo insists the plant will shut down when it becomes inundated with spent fuel rods and nowhere to send them. He insists there is no way that nuclear power plants can remain economically viable in the long term. We point out that three reactors have been approved for planning in the last five years, but he insists these are just PR symbols and will likely never be built. In fact when it is pointed out that Three Mile Island is licensed to operate until 2034, he calls it a fantasy that they would stay in business that long.

Is Lorenzo a conspiracy theorist, so deluded by what he strictly believes to be moral that he cherrypicks truths to agree with his crusade against nuclear power? Or is he a visionary energy expert, and one of the select few brave enough to speak out against Big Nuclear? Before we leave he walks us to the street where the four titanic cooling towers loom ahead of us, only two still spewing steam. He points out the cherry trees around us, the plaques revealing cooperation in cleanup with the Japanese, from whom the cherry trees are a gift. We take a few pictures and walk toward the cars, a white Dickinson Toyota minivan and beat up old Buick sedan.