[ RadSafe ] People who like nuclear power plants in their backyard

Tue Aug 16 14:13:54 CDT 2005

>From the Washington Post at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/12/AR2005081201558.html

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Calvert Residents Content In Nuclear Plant's Shadow
Jobs, Fishing Outweigh Potential Fears

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 13, 2005; B01

The orange-and-white buoys, bobbing slowly in the
waters in front of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power
plant, are covered in block letters that read "DANGER"
and "KEEP OUT" and "RESTRICTED."

Pete Dahlberg barely glanced at the signs as he
floated a few hundred feet from the plant in his
21-foot motorboat, Runaway Ruthy, with his 8-year-old
son, Nick, in tow. They hooked six-inch, neon-green
lures onto their poles and cast them into the
Chesapeake Bay in search of rockfish.

"You can't beat the nuclear power plant as a fishing
spot," said Dahlberg, 41, a fishing guide who goes by
the name Walleye Pete and has lived for five years in
Calvert County, home of the plant, 50 miles southeast
of Washington. "It's the perfect place to bring the
wife and kids."

Such warm feelings for the plant have transformed
Calvert into something of a national anomaly: a
community that has developed a love affair with what
hundreds of other cities and towns have long regarded
as, at best, an eyesore and at worst, a
life-threatening menace.

Residents of this Southern Maryland county like the
plant's two reactors so much, in fact, that they want
another. The Lusby facility is on a short list of six
sites that could become the location of the first
nuclear energy reactor to be built in the United
States in 30 years.

Locals here quickly rattle off the plant's benefits:
It's the county's largest taxpayer, biggest private
employer and, of course, a top-notch fishing hole.

Almost no one worries about the possibility of
accidents or radiation leaks. "It doesn't even, like,
cross my mind," said Roxanne Arellano, 18, of Lusby.
"You kind of don't think about it. It's just there, I
guess."

That sort of blase attitude might seem strange to
those who began to fear nuclear plants after the 1979
Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania and the
1986 disaster at the Chernobyl facility in Ukraine.
The most famous plant for many young adults is the
comically dysfunctional plant on "The Simpsons" that
spawned a mutant three-eyed fish named Blinky.

But those negative images couldn't seem more off base
to Arellano and the other 60 or so locals who spent a
recent scorching afternoon at a swimming pool for
Calvert Cliffs employees and their families on the
nuclear plant's 2,300-acre grounds. Babies in diapers
tottered by the edge of the 82.5-foot-long pool, which
is ringed by a barbed-wire fence. Girls in bikinis
baked in the sun. Arellano slid into the pool to teach
the children of plant employees how to tread water and
do the backstroke.

The kids splashed in the water, seemingly unconcerned
about the two nearby reactors spitting out 1,700
megawatts of power. Eight-year-old McKenzie Turpin,
though, had a gripe: She is not allowed to go to the
plant on Take Our Daughters to Work Day with her mom
because of extra security since the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks. "She doesn't like it that President Bush
won't let mommy take her to work," said Raeann Turpin,
33, a computer analyst at the plant who lives in
Huntingtown.

Few people in Calvert County are even that critical of
the nuclear plant. Instead, most praise the facility
for reversing the economic fortunes of this
once-impoverished county.

When Calvert Cliffs went online in 1975, the county's
total budget was $6.6 million. The plant's $6.8
million tax payment the following year more than
doubled Calvert's revenue.

"We went almost overnight from being the
second-poorest county in Maryland to being one of the
richest," said Kirsti Uunila, the county's historic
preservation planner.

The nuclear plant, which is owned by Baltimore-based
Constellation Energy, pays about $15.3 million in
property taxes -- about 10 percent of the county's
revenue -- and employs about 1,000 workers. A third
reactor could add as many as 400 jobs and millions in
tax revenue.

That's why county officials were thrilled to learn in
May that Calvert Cliffs is one of six sites that the
nation's largest consortium of nuclear power companies
is considering for a new type of advanced reactor. The
consortium, NuStart Energy Development LLC, plans to
narrow that list to two sites by Oct. 1 and apply to
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for licenses to
build and operate plants there. The group hopes the
reactors will be operational by 2014.

Sipping from a marble-colored coffee mug emblazoned
with the Constellation logo, Board of County
Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings)
called for a resolution last month in support of a
third reactor in the county. It was approved
unanimously by the five-member board. Not a single
person spoke in opposition.

Board members also praised the plant's outreach to the
community. Calvert Cliffs said its employees raised
$330,351 for local charities last year and volunteered
4,300 hours of time, many of which were logged
teaching public school students about the plant.

"I do a pro-nuclear power session," said Elizabeth
McAndrew, 26, a senior engineer at the plant who is
one of 32 Calvert Cliffs employees who tutored and
taught in the county's public schools.

The nuclear plant also distributes coloring books
about electricity to elementary school children.

As they drifted in the Chesapeake Bay in front of
Calvert Cliffs, the Dahlbergs were a lot more
concerned with fish than the mechanics of nuclear
power. Over the years, Pete Dahlberg has gotten his
fair share of jokes about glowing in the dark and
three-eyed fish, but he still doesn't understand why
outsiders don't trust his friends and neighbors who
work at the plant.

"Do they think that Homer Simpson's up in the place
running it?" he asked.

Whatever their view of the plant, outsiders continue
to come for the fish at Calvert Cliffs -- some from as
far as Boston. During February and March, when the
rockfish are biggest and most plentiful around the
plant, dozens of clients come to fish there with
Dahlberg, who casts his lures near the plant every
day.

On a recent morning when temperatures pushed past 84
degrees, the Dahlbergs pulled up to the huge stream of
water being discharged from the plant, which local
anglers have nicknamed "the river" or "the rips." It
reeked of sulfur.

The boat's electronic fish finder lit up. "Look at
that. That's fish!" Dahlberg yelled to Nick. "They're
thick under the boat, buddy. You have about a
20-incher chasing your lure!"

Suddenly Nick, in a tiny, red life vest, lurched
forward as he began reeling in a catch. "Good job,
buddy," his father shouted. The two high-fived in the
air.

"It's fun here," Nick said. "It's easier to catch fish
than other places."

Then Nick pointed at the nuclear power plant and
asked: "Dad, what do they do in there?"

"They make electricity, so you can play your
PlayStation," Dahlberg replied.

Staring down at his untied white sneakers, Nick said,
"Ohhhhhhh." Then he grabbed a shiny lure off the deck
and tried to catch another rockfish.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

+++++++++++++++++++
"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea and never shrinks back to its original proportion." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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