By: Aragon on 1/23/10
Co-sponsor of this Senate Bill, Senator Wointers, represents people who are downstream in surface waters of the Mississippi and sub-surface waters of the Mississippi River Embayment. In particular the people of Hickman and Fulton County and most of Senate District 1 who draw their drinking water from this aquifer. The D.O.E and U.S.E.C records are replete with reports of plumes of dangerous materials reaching the Ohio River and migration into sub-surface waters. Next, as before, Steven Rudy will likely turn his back on the people in Ballard, Carlisle, Hickman, and Fulton by introducing the Leeper Permission Slip for more nuclear problems for current and future generations in the Kentucky House of Represenatives as a Bill sponsor..

By: Craig on 1/25/10
A few points....

Contrary to the article above, the ongoing cleanup at the PGDP is NOT supposed to be completed this year. It will take many decades if ever.

Furthermore, few if any articles on this issue ever mention the devastation in health and property experienced by the families that live near the plant itself.

Nearly every home has had an incident of rare cancer as well as other health issues related to their proximity to the plant. Their water is now trucked in at the expense of DOE because of their polluted wells. The largest plume of polluted water in the nation lies underneath the PGDP and is moving a foot a day toward Metropolis/Massac County, Illinois.

Leeper will live in infamy if his bill to enrich the nuclear industry is passed. He is definitely not representing the best interests of his constituents on this particular issue.

By: wmurphy on 1/27/10
The contaminated water aquifer referred to in one of the earlier comments contains trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial degreasing agent. This TCE is used in many industries unrelated to nuclear power. Its accidental discharge into the aquifer was not a direct consequence of processing of nuclear materials at the PGDP. If the community does not want any industries in the region that use hazardous chemicals that can cause cancer, then we should be prepared to not allow any automotive, steel, aluminum, chemical, paper, tire, or electric power plants to locate in the area either. There are many large contaminated sites around the country unrelated to nuclear power. Does the coal slurry dam break in Tennessee mean that we should insist that TVA close down the Shawnee plant? Do the coal miner deaths every year mean we shut down all the mines? The widow of a coal miner killed in the mines may feel just as strongly about the coal industry as the families of people affected by the PGDP. Should we shut down all the coal power plants in Kentucky so no more miners have to die? You use the best practices that are available and learn from any accidents to make those practices even better so the same accident doesn't happen again. Current building codes produce far safer buildings today than they did in the 1950s, but many people still live in buildings constructed in the 1950s. Cars with air bags, crumple zones, and other accident avoidance technologies are far safer than older cars, but not everyone drives a car with these features. Today's nuclear power plants are far safer than the early generation of nuclear plants. Because people were harmed in the past, does that mean we stop all nuclear power, or stop driving cars, or stop building houses, or stop mining coal? Everyone involved with the PGDP has learned a great deal from the past practices and the current plant operations are models of industrial safety. To paint the entire nuclear industry with a brush from the 1960's is to ignore all the progress in improving safety that has been made since then.

By: admin on 1/27/10
Thank you for your opinion, wmurphy and of course we cannot live in a cocoon. But the improvements you cite didn't come about because the offending industries felt the workers' pain or sympathized with injured consumers. They had to be forced - in court sometimes and with picket lines in others to do the right thing.
Nuclear waste storage is not safe for our region. We don't have the topography for it and we have too much to lose to become someone else's dumping ground. Industry's record for safe storage is abysmal- from chemicals to nukes, industry makes messes and then expects the government to clean up after it.
For a senator from that area to argue otherwise flies in the face of the ongoing clean up at PGDP.

By: wmurphy on 2/18/10
Admin, perhaps you could tell the readers what nuclear waste you are referring to that would make western Kentucky someone else's dumping ground if a nuclear power plant was permitted to be constructed in the area? There are 104 commercial nuclear power plants in the United States. Since there is no permanent long term storage facility (which is what Yucca Mountain was intended to be), they all have stored and continue to store their spent fuel on their plant sites. Can you please provide data to your readers about the injuries that these spent fuel storage facilities have produced. That is what we are talking about, not a nuclear dumping ground for the entire country as you suggest. Can you cite some of the instances of the abysmal nuclear waste storage record you refer to at these 104 operating nuclear power plants? And I suppose you will advocate unseating President Obama since he is actively promoting nuclear power as a green option for the United States (On 2/16/2010, President Obama announced government loan guarantees for two new nuclear power plants in Georgia).

I am sure you are aware that it was the government's own requirement that they be in charge of the disposal of nuclear power spent fuel. Since the very first nuclear plant came on line, the federal government has levied a tax on every kWh of nuclear power generated specifically for the ultimate disposal costs of the spent fuel. They have collected many, many billions of dollars in these disposal taxes, and yet the power plants still have to store their spent fuel on their plant sites. This regulation was so that individual power plants would not dump their spent fuel wherever was convenient, but in the process it makes the industry dependent on the government to get rid of the spent fuel. This was the process mandated by our federal government, not a case of the nuclear industry "making messes" and then expecting the government to come clean it up.

I reiterate my statement that to constantly refer back to the PGDP cleanup of problems produced 40 years ago, much of which were unrelated to nuclear fuel processing, and not recognize the current safe operating conditions of the plant flies in the face of all the progress that has been achieved. It is like citing highway accident death statistics before seat belts and air bags were installed in cars as a reason to ban driving.