[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Article: In New Jersey, Nuclear Fears Have to Stand in Line
There are times when I am proud to say I am from NJ. We have a real grip on
reality, right Norm?
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
3050 Traymore Lane
Bowie, MD 20715-2024
E-mail: jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
-----Original Message-----
In New Jersey, Nuclear Fears Have to Stand in Line
July 17, 2002
By RICHARD LEZIN JONES
MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP, N.J., July 16 - The talk was of
terrorists and the possibility that they might strike 15
miles from here at Oyster Creek, the nation's oldest
operating commercial nuclear plant. But as she stood in
line last weekend to collect federally issued potassium
iodide tablets - a precaution in case of radiation exposure
- Marcie Ekelmann said that in the event of an attack, she
would most likely opt for something less medicinal, but
perhaps more soothing.
"Chances are it will be too late," she said, "so I'll just
grab a six-pack and head out onto my boat."
Sunglasses perched atop her head, Ms. Ekelmann, 36, said
she was collecting her handful of foil-covered pills mostly
to calm the fears of her three children. But for herself,
she waved away talk of any barleyfree precautions: "I think
there is a lot of worrying over nothing."
She might well have been speaking for much of the rest of
New Jersey. Residents of other communities in the New York
region that are near nuclear reactors - the Indian Point
plant in New York and Millstone in Connecticut - have been
moved to anxiety and activism by fears of terrorism. But
the response has been noticeably muted in New Jersey, which
has four nuclear plants.
Distributions of potassium iodide tablets here have drawn a
small fraction of the takers they have attracted elsewhere.
The public debate over other steps that might be taken to
prevent nuclear terrorism has been more subdued. And people
on all sides of the debate say there is a perceptible
nonchalance about potential dangers here that may be born
of such factors as income levels, the chemical hazards
common in New Jersey (insert your own toxic waste joke
here) and this state's somewhat cynical view of itself.
"Bad things are part of being in New Jersey," said Frank
Kasmer, 43, a maintenance worker in an Atlantic City casino
who lives about a mile from the Oyster Creek plant. "It's a
part of being everywhere. People in New Jersey have that
type of attitude - you have to take the good with the bad."
New Jerseyans are well acquainted with the painful toll of
terrorism: nearly one of every five people killed in the
World Trade Center attack was from the state. There is a
growing chorus of residents concerned about a possible
nuclear disaster, and state emergency officials remain at
their highest state of alert.
Still, the vague threat of calamity has left many here
unfazed.
"Perception is always worse than reality," said Dr. Barry
E. Truchil, a sociologist at Rider University. "If you look
at what New Jersey has faced - we've had anthrax scares,
chemical dumping in Toms River, the nuclear accident at
Three Mile Island, we have Superfund sites - New Jersey has
a lot of reality that they can use to put this risk into
context.
"It may be a false sense of security, but it also qualifies
why people may not react in a loud, scary way."
Their silence may also stem from the location of the
state's reactors, in small towns in South Jersey, far from
densely settled places like Westchester County, N.Y., where
Indian Point sits. The Oyster Creek reactor is in Forked
River, about 80 miles south of Manhattan on the Jersey
Shore. The Hope Creek and the Salem 1 and 2 generators are
clustered in Lower Alloways Creek Township, in the
southwesternmost corner of the state.
"This is a small town, and I don't think they've had
anything happen here yet," Dolores Aviles, a waitress at
the Forked River Diner, said of the threat of terrorism.
"You're closer to it in New York, so you're more likely to
be sensitive to it."
Consider the turnout for potassium iodide pills on Saturday
at Manchester High School, about 15 miles north of Oyster
Creek - one of five giveaways planned statewide during the
next few weeks.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has offered the pills to
everyone who lives or works within 10 miles of any of the
nation's 74 nuclear power plants, suggesting that the
tablets be ingested in the event of radiation exposure.
Officials say the pills prevent cancer-causing radioactive
iodines from invading the thyroid.
At Manchester High, residents took home only about 4,000 of
the 100,000 doses that Ocean County emergency officials had
on hand. Three times as many pills were distributed last
month during a similar handout in Rockland County, N.Y.,
across the Hudson River from Indian Point in Buchanan.
Rockland has about half the population of Ocean County, but
had stocked almost twice as many pills.
Likewise, there are more potassium iodide pills than people
in Westport, Conn., where town officials last month bought
50,000 doses - a figure roughly twice the town's
population. And Westport is not even within the 10-mile
radius in which the pills are recommended; Indian Point is
more than 40 miles away, and the Millstone plant is more
than 60 miles away, in Waterford, Conn.
Dr. Truchil wonders if the difference in the public
response can also be traced to economics. The median income
levels in Rockland and Westchester Counties are at least
$15,000 more than those in Ocean and Salem Counties.
"The higher up the social plane you are," he said, "the
more likely you are to have the wherewithal to deal with
governments, the more likely you are to know how to work
the system," he said.
In smaller, more remote communities, a power plant can also
be a major economic engine, a provider of jobs and money.
That is the case in Salem County, where an antinuclear
group, the Unplug Salem Campaign, has been urging since
September that all four New Jersey plants be closed because
of the terrorist threat and other potential hazards.
A similar campaign to close Indian Point has drawn hundreds
of supporters to rallies. But the response in South Jersey
has been disappointing, said Norm Cohen, a coordinator of
the campaign.
"Salem County is unfortunately an econmically depressed
area," he said. "People are looking at day-to-day realities
like putting food on the table."
The group has actually been more successful in marshalling
opposition the farther it gets from the Salem plant. But it
is still difficult to mobilize New Jerseyans over issues of
plant safety, advocates say.
"They don't seem concerned, but I think that people
certainly need to be concerned," said Joe Deckelnick, an
organizer with the New Jersey Environmental Federation,
which has tried to focus public attention on ecological
threats from the plants.
He attributes much of the indifference he has seen to a
belief that safeguards will prevent accidents like the one
in 1986 at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union.
But he said Sept. 11 had shown the dangers of such
assumptions.
"We're not talking about people who think the way we
think," he said of terrorists. "Certainly, if they could
fly a plane into the trade towers, they can fly a plane
into a nuclear plant."
Even if that were to occur, experts in nuclear power say
that a large-scale catastrophe is unlikely.
"The chances are just very, very small that you'll get a
large leaking of radiation," said Raymond W. Durante, a
Washington consultant on nuclear power issues.
Mr. Durante, a former official with Westinghouse Electric,
a manufacturer of nuclear plants, said the buildings
designed to contain nuclear reactors in the United States
were stronger than those in other countries. That, he said,
would prevent major radiation exposure.
He conceded that in an extreme case like Sept. 11 - heavily
fueled jets striking power plants at sensitive points and
starting hard-to-extinguish fires - "we'd see a lot of
serious damage, a lot of problems related to nonnuclear
equipment."
But even then, at least four layers of protective coverings
around the radioactive core must be destroyed before there
is any serious danger of extreme radiation exposure, Mr.
Durante said.
Emergency management officials have ordered extra security
measures outside the state's nuclear plants since
September. National Guard posts and loaded dump trucks in
front of entrances at Oyster Creek are just some of the
visible signs of the security changes. "Everything that can
be done is being done," said Capt. William A. Nally, deputy
coordinator of emergency management for Lacey Township,
which includes Forked River.
Many people here seem content to leave the worrying to
someone else. Even those who stopped by Manchester High for
potassium iodide pills seemed to do so more out of
curiosity than concern.
Carole Lake, 55, a software saleswoman from Bayville, a
town that was evacuated last month because of a fire in the
pinelands that ravaged 1,300 acres, said the blaze was a
reminder that some preparations can be pointless. "I have
plenty of bottled water and an evacuation route, if
necessary," she said, "but it'll be useless if we all get
vaporized anyway."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/17/nyregion/17NUKE.html?ex=1027911458&ei=1&en
=503cb9670db0b08f
---------------------------------
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
************************************************************************
You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,
send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the text "unsubscribe
radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.
You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/