Fwd: oyster creek watch meeting 9/7

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

The following announcement will give you an idea of where Norm is coming 
from when he posts questions / comments to radsafe.

Mike ... mcbaker@lanl.gov


>   Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 17:31:45 -0400
>    From: Norman & Karen Cohen <norco@bellatlantic.net>
>Subject: oyster creek watch meeting 9/7
>
>--
>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)
>
>
>   ----------
>
>                                         OYSTER CREEK NUCLEAR WATCH
>          draft                              321 Barr Ave., Linwood NJ 
> 08221               draft
>                                609-601-8583/601-8537; norco@bellatlantic.net
>
>08/11/00
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>AND COMMUNITY CALENDARS
>
>
>                 AREA ACTIVISTS PLAN TO RE-LAUNCH OYSTER CREEK WATCH NUKE 
> GROUP
>                                         MEETING WITH SPECIAL GUEST 
> SPEAKER SET FOR 9/7
>
>          Area activists opposed to the continue operation of the Oyster 
> Creek Nuclear Plant have scheduled a meeting on Thursday, September 7th, 
> 7:00 PM, at the public meeting room of the Berkeley Mental Health Center, 
> 160 route in, in Bayville. Following up on the recent protest at Oyster 
> Creek and the teach-in by members of the Citizens Awareness Network, as 
> well as the continued interest in the baby teeth collection efforts of 
> the Tooth Fairy Project, local activists have decided that it is 
> important that there be an organized group of citizens who's aims are to 
> close down the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant as soon as possible, and to act 
> as a safety watchdog group while the plant remains in operation. A 
> Temporary Steering Committee is in formation. Activists on or invited to 
> be on the Steering Committee include  Norm Cohen of Linwood, Edith Gbur 
> of Toms River, Ernest Zobian of Ocean Grove, Rena and Len  Amada of 
> Whiting, Alison Coyle of Brick, and Luanne Acevedo of Jackson. Additional 
> members will be elected at the re-organization meeting
>      This meeting will also feature a special guest speaker,  Ray Shadis, 
> Staff Technical Advisor for the New England Coalition on Nuclear 
> Pollution, and founder of Maine's Friends of the Coast, the group that 
> helped to shut down the Maine Yankee Nuclear Plant and is currently 
> working on decommissioning issues in Maine.
>      Shadis will talk to the group about how to go about shutting down a 
> nuclear plant, and about decommissioning issues that follow shutdown. He 
> is one of the most able and experienced anti-nuclear activists in the nation.
>        The New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution [NECNP],  founded 
> in 1972,  is one of the nation's oldest and experienced
>safe-energy advocacy organizations. In his position as Staff Technical 
>Advisor to NECNP, Ray  Shadis is responsible for tracking and addressing 
>nuclear safety and environmental issues at New England's nine nuclear 
>power stations. Four of these reactors are permanently shutdown and 
>undergoing decommissioning. Shadis' duties also include interacting with 
>the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC], other federal agencies, and 
>state regulators. His office also provides information and assistance to 
>activists and grassroots organizations across the United States. Shadis 
>reports handing nuclear information queries from as far afield as India 
>and Japan, and from a constituency that ranges from students to retired 
>nuclear engineers.
>      Shadis lives on a 100-acre coastal farm in Edgecomb, Maine. It lies 
> just one and one-half miles downwind of the now-defunct Maine Yankee 
> Atomic Power Station [Maine Yankee]. In 1979 Shadis and his wife, 
> Patricia, launched the nation's first initiative referendum campaign to 
> close an operating power reactor. The campaign drew more political 
> contributions than any initiative in the state's history. It also drew 
> world-wide media attention with the Shadis's appearing in New York and 
> Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun, and Newsweek as well as the foreign 
> press. Shadis appeared on numerous TV newscasts, including BBC 
> Television, Swedish Television, and Japanese Television. He appeared on 
> ABC's Good Morning America program to debate head of the New Hampshire 
> Republican Party, John Sunnunu, who later became Governor of New 
> Hampshire and White House Chief-of-Staff.  The campaign secured a record 
> number of voter signatures to put the question of nuclear power to the 
> voters in a special election held on September 23, 1980. In a record 
> turnout for a Maine special election, 41.9 percent of those voting chose 
> immediate closure of Maine Yankee. Activists have since forced two 
> additional votes on the fate of Maine Yankee.
>      In 1981, Shadis was hired by the citizen's group, Sensible Maine 
> Power, to coordinate technical information in an intervention before the 
> NRC. The group intervened to prevent enactment of a proposal for 
> increasing the density of spent fuel assemblies at Maine Yankee. The 
> intervention was successful; one of only a few citizen interventions 
> before the NRC to succeed.
>      It was also in 1981 that Shadis became a Trustee of the New England 
> Coalition on Nuclear Pollution; serving on the Coalition's Board until 
> February of 1998 when he was hired to serve as the Coalition's Staff 
> Technical Advisor. During his tenure as a Trustee, Shadis had served as a 
> consultant and information resource to safe energy groups, and other 
> entities as diverse as the US Office of Technology Assessment and the 
> Governor's Office of Georgia. Shadis participated in numerous nuclear 
> forums and guest speaking engagements including the Annual Meeting of the 
> Maine Society of Professional Engineers.  He provided testimony before a 
> Congressional Committee on Seabrook Nuclear Generating Station evacuation 
> plans and accompanied a Commissioner of the NRC on a tour of Seabrook 
> prior to its completion.
>      In 1995, Shadis founded the Maine environmental and nuclear-safety 
> group, Friends of the Coast- Opposing Nuclear Pollution. The organization 
> was successful in focusing regulatory, political, and media attention on 
> safety defects in the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station which led to its 
> permanent shutdown in December 1996 and the decision by the plant's 
> owners to go into decommissioning in August of 1997.  Friends of the 
> Coast is the only citizen's environmental organization actively engaged 
> in the Maine Yankee decommissioning. Shadis has served since 1997 on 
> Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company's Citizen Advisory Panel on Decommissioning.
>      In 1998 Friends of the Coast intervened in a Federal Energy 
> Commission rate case on funding Maine Yankee decommissioning. Shadis 
> represented the group pro se, that is, acting in place of an attorney. In 
> a settlement agreement, Maine Yankee not only agreed to pay the group's 
> expenses, but also agreed to fund independent environmental studies and 
> to donate a 200-acre saltwater farm and $200,000 for the start-up of a 
> center on environmental policy dialogue. The company also agreed that any 
> deed transferring ownership of the plant site would contain a prohibition 
> against redevelopment as a nuclear facility.
>      Recently Friends of the Coast forced an agreement with Maine Yankee 
> and changes in Maine law that require nuclear clean-up standards two and 
> one-half times more strict than those of the US Nuclear Regulatory 
> Commission. The measures also prohibit the disposal of radioactively 
> contaminated demolition debris, a practice that had earlier been part of 
> the company's plans.
>      Shadis has twice been invited to address a full-commission meeting 
> of the NRC. He was the only regional activist invited to address two 
> panels on regulatory change in NRC's Annual Regulatory Information 
> Conference. Shadis has participated in numerous NRC consulting meetings, 
> scoping sessions, technical issues meetings, and workshops. He recently 
> completed a series of NRC working sessions on spent nuclear fuel storage 
> hazards.
>      In 1999, Shadis was selected to participate in a Keystone Foundation 
> National Dialogue on Nuclear Power Plant Decommissioning.  (Also 
> participating in that dialogue was Jim Hildebrand of Oyster Creek Nuclear 
> Generating Station).
>      Shadis is a native of Livingston, NJ and attended public and 
> parochial schools in Livingston. He is an artist-sculptor and former 
> teacher. Shadis and his wife of 37 years, Patricia, have six grown 
> children and eleven grandchildren. Patricia is an attorney in general 
> practice and family law in Newcastle, Maine.
>      The re-launch meeting of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Watch is free and 
> open to the public, who are urged to attend. For more information, please 
> call Norm Cohen at 609-601-8583 or Luanne Acevado at 732-905-9370
>
>
>CONTACT: Norm Cohen 609-601-8583
>                     Luanne Acevdo: 732-905-9370
>                     Ernest Zobian: 732-869-0760
>                     Rena & Len Amada: 732-849-9050
>                     Alison Coyle:  732-477-4910
>                     Edith Gbur: 732-255-8044
>

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