Shut It Down Affinity Group Arrested at Vermont Yankee
Dec 20th, 2007 by admin2
Shut It Down Affinity Group implores Vermont Yankee to consider safety
concerns
contact: Marcia Gagliardi
VERNON, Vermont. State and local police arrested six women of the Shut It Down Affinity Group Tuesday as they implored Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant officers to allow them to present safety concerns to newly-appointed safety officer Ricardo Fernandes and his counterpart Beth Sienel.
The Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor is operated by the Entergy
Corporation and is scheduled for decomissioning in 2012. A series of
accidents has undermined public confidence in the aging reactor. The
collapse of a cooling tower was documented in several photographs that
caused the Vermont Public Service Board and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to call for an independent safety assessment at the reactor.
Vermont and Massachusetts public officials including United States
senators and representatives in Congress, state legislators, mayors,
selectboard members, attorneys general, and others called for the safety
review or, in some instances, to shut down the plant.
When security guards, Vermont state troopers, and the Vernon police
chief told the women to leave the gated area at the power plant or face
arrest, they read their list of hazards aloud. They carried two oil-painted
banners of white elephants representing the aging nuclear power plant with a pile of elephant dung labeled “nuclear waste.”
The six women include Julia Bonafine, 39, of Shrewsbury, Vermont; Paki
Wieland, 64, and Frances Crowe, 88, of Northampton, Massachusetts; Ellen
Graves, 67, of West Springfield, Massachusetts; Hattie Nestel, 68, and
Marcia Gagliardi, 60, of Athol, Massachusetts.
Originally, the women arrived at what has consistently been designated
Entergy headquarters on Old Ferry Road in Brattleboro and used a telephone in the vestibule to contact Entergy officials in order to deliver their list of concerns to Fernandes and Sienel. An Entergy employee who would identify herself only as Nancy told them that executives’ offices had moved from the Old Ferry Road site to the power plant.
When the women arrived at the power plant, the Vernon police chief and
Entergy security guards and other officials barred them from the gate and
asked them to leave. They were arrested about a half hour later, booked at
the Vernon police station, charged with unlawful trespass, and ordered to
appear in Windham County District Court to answer the charges on February 19, 2008.
The women asked that the safety officers stop the emission of radiation
from the facility, stop the flow of hot water from the plant into the
Connecticut River, stop misleading advertising about nuclear energy, stop
storing nuclear waste on the power plant site, and stop the transportation
of hazardous nuclear waste from the plant through Vermont and Massachusetts and on public roadways. They asked the officials to shut down the dangerous power plant.