Columns

Suffolk Closeup: A message from Fukushima

Because Long Island — specifically Suffolk County — was being eyed in the 1960s for what the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission called a “nuclear park,” as a journalist I became deeply involved in learning about nuclear technology.

Having investigated nuclear technology now for decades — writing books and many hundreds of articles and columns, hosting TV programs and giving presentations widely, recent days have been very active because of the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan. My articles on it have run on the Internet on the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Common Dreams and elsewhere, and I’ve been busy being interviewed.

I’ve pursued the nuclear issue locally and beyond, and there are strong connections. For instance, Fukushima Unit 1, the reactor that was  the site of an explosion Saturday, was manufactured by General Electric and is the same GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor model that went up at Shoreham. It was to be the first of 7 to 11 nuclear plants in Suffolk.

Nuclear power development began in Suffolk because of a failed attempt by Consolidated Edison to build a nuclear plant in the geographic center of New York City — in Ravenswood, Queens. The next time you’re on the LIE overpass leading to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, look to the right and you’ll see power plant smokestacks. That’s where Ravenswood 1 was to go. It was 1960 and early opponents of nuclear power fought the scheme, causing a bill to be introduced in the City Council barring the siting of a nuclear plant within the city.

So Con Ed abandoned its venture. And that’s where Suffolk came in. The Atomic Energy Commission was beginning to believe that maybe nuclear plants shouldn’t be built in the middle of cities and began urging they go instead in “low-density zones” in population. Suffolk fit that description, relatively. Further, it was surrounded by water which could serve as coolant. A big nuclear plant requires a million gallons of water a minute as coolant.

An early-70s TV program I did on nuclear power was a documentary for WLIW-TV/21 that included interviews with scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), who declared that an accident at a nuclear plant was extremely unlikely, that maybe over many years a minor one might occur. BNL was established in 1947 to do research on nuclear science and also promote civilian development of nuclear technology. BNL personnel worked closely with the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) in the plan to build many nuclear plants here. LILCO’s last chairman and CEO was William Catacocinos, a former BNL assistant director.

I began research on what became my first book on nuclear technology, “Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power,” after the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear plant in 1979. The documents on which much of the book was based, some long-secret, are shocking. I reprinted many in the book.

Despite the intense drive of those at the national nuclear laboratories and others in government and the nuclear industry to push nuclear power, major accidents have brought home the reality of how lethal it is. There was the TMI accident in Pennsylvania and then the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Last week, I was in Washington interviewing Dr. Janette Sherman, contributing editor of a book published last year by the New York Academy of Sciences about Chernobyl, for a forthcoming TV program. Her book finds that based on now available medical data, 985,000 people died worldwide as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe.

The earlier TMI accident was pivotal in motivating Suffolk County government to position itself to oppose the many nuclear plants planned for here. The Chernobyl disaster was a large factor in preventing Shoreham from going into commercial operation. Two more nuclear plants at Shoreham, four at Jamesport and four more in between never got off the ground.

In recent times, there’s been a major drive nationally and internationally to “revive” nuclear power. I’ve been concerned that if it succeeded, there might be a renewed push for nuclear power in Suffolk. After the nuclear disaster in Japan, I think this drive is in huge trouble. It’s terrible that it usually takes disasters for humanity to learn lessons. The survival instinct, meanwhile, remains operable. Nuclear power plants represent the most dangerous way to boil water ever devised. Wind, solar, geothermal energy and other forms of safe, clean power that cannot cause massive and deadly damage are the energy future we must pursue.

Long-time Southampton College environmental studies Professor Ralph Herbert, currently running a program for Long Island University in Australia, emailed me this weekend: “If this doesn’t alert the world to the risk and insanity of nuclear power then there is no hope for any of us.”