Brinkley and Millstone

[Norman & Karen Cohen <norco@bellatlantic.net>]

FYI
Norm



> HREF="http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/05/07/stifgnusa01001.h
> tml">http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/05/07/stifgnusa01001.ht
> ml</A>
> ========================================================
>
> May 7 2000
>
> Uptown Girl fights upwind nuclear plant
>
> Tom Rhodes, New Jersey
>
> WHEN Christie Brinkley, the model, left the exhaust fumes of New York for the
> seaside charm of the Hamptons more than 14 years ago, she imagined spending a
> bucolic life with her children far from the horrors of pollution.
> Instead, she fears they may be harmed by emissions from a nuclear power
> station that could soon be bought by a British firm.
>
> The Uptown Girl of Billy Joel's song has joined a group of celebrities,
> including her former husband and Alec Baldwin, the actor, in a campaign to
> close the Millstone plant, which lies across the water in Connecticut, upwind
> of their Long Island homes. They blame it for a high incidence of cancer
> among children and adults in the region.
>
> Millstone has been investigated several times by the Nuclear Regulatory
> Commission. Northeast Utilities, its owner, was fined a record $10m last year
> for falsifying records of employees seeking nuclear plant operator licences.
> In 1997 it was fined $2.1m for design and safety faults and was briefly
> closed.
>
> Later this year its two remaining reactors - a third was shut down in 1996 -
> are to be auctioned. AmerGen, an American subsidiary of British Energy, is
> tipped as the most likely buyer.
>
> "We're trying to make sure that never happens," said Brinkley, 46, last week.
>
> The campaign group - known as Standing for Truth about Radiation - has
> commissioned several studies of levels of strontium-90, a radioactive
> element, around the plant. Its programme, the Tooth Fairy Project, has
> concentrated on measuring radioactivity in children's milk teeth - a good
> indicator of the background level.
>
> Evidence shows that the amount of strontium-90 in the teeth of those living
> near Millstone is close to that in America in the 1950s, when both it and the
> Soviet Union were testing nuclear weapons. Levels elsewhere have since
> dropped to almost zero.
>
> "Clearly the prime suspects are nuclear reactors," said Ernest Sternglass,
> professor of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh, who has
> worked on the project.
>
> "We are in the cross hairs of an unusual amount of radiation contamination,"
> said Baldwin, who lives on Long Island with Kim Basinger, his actress wife.
> "We are parents and in a position to help focus attention on this issue."
>
> Such high-profile intervention has been a boon for local activists. Among
> them is Marci Spellman, 35, who hopes people will now join a lawsuit she and
> others are planning against Northeast Utilities. Ten years ago her daughter
> Rachel, now 12, was found to be suffering from a rare form of leukaemia
> associated with exposure to radiation. "We don't expect her to get better,"
> said Spellman.
>
> Northeast Utilities denies responsibility for the cancers.
>

--
Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave., Linwood, NJ 08221; 609-601-8537 or 609-601-8583 (8583: fax, answer machine);  norco@bellatlantic.net;  UNPLUG SALEM WEBSITE:  http://www.unplugsalem.org/  COALITION FOR PEACE AND
JUSTICE WEBSITE:  http://members.bellatlantic.net/~norco/  ICQ# 54268619; The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of Peace Action.
“We have two lives, the one we’re given, and the other one we make” (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
“Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights...Get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight!” (Bob Marley)




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