Fermi 2 on the Lake Erie shore in Frenchtown Township, Monroe County, MIPat asked Beyond Nuclear to serve as her proxy at the G.E. annual shareholders meeting held at the Renaissance Center (GM's current HQ) in Detroit a year after Fukushima began. This enabled us to confront CEO Geoffrey Immelt -- at the shareholders' microphone -- about the nuclear catastrophe his reactor design had caused. The meeting took place on April 25th, 2012, the eve of Chernobyl's 26th annual commemoration.
We were joined that day by allies such as Michael Keegan of Don't Waste Michigan and Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes -- to whom Pat had also given shareholder proxy -- as well as Vic Macks of Michigan Stop the Bombs Campaign, in that effort.
Keegan's "cauldron of culpability" speech so rattled Immelt, that the G.E. CEO felt the need to end the meeting by saying "And for the record, we are not liable."
G.E. is not liable for Fukushima, nor for anything that goes wrong with G.E. reactor designs at Fermi, Immelt meant, responding to Keegan's allegation.
See the press release issued on April 26, 2012 (Chernobyl's 26th annual commemoration, the day after the G.E. shareholders meeting) by Beyond Nuclear and Pat Birnie of G.E. Stockholders Alliance, after the confrontation with Immelt.
Also see a backgrounder and press release issued on April 23, 2012, in the days leading up to the G.E. annual shareholders meeting, which focused on the dangerously old Fermi 2 reactor, 35 miles south of Detroit in Monroe County, MI, as well as the proposed new Fermi 3 reactor.
(Fermi's Unit 1 suffered a partial core meltdown on October 5, 1966, as documented in John G. Fuller's iconic 1975 book We Almost Lost Detroit, and a song by Gil Scott Heron of the same title.)
Fermi 2 is a GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor, identical in design to the melted down Fukushima reactors, only super-sized: Fermi 2 is nearly as large as Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 and 2 put together.
Fermi 3 would have been a G.E.-Hitachi "Economically Simplified" BWR, but Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste MI, and others, represented by attorney Terry Lodge of Toledo, OH, have fought it to a standstill. Ground has never been broken -- yet. Ongoing vigilance is required to make sure it never is.
July 18, 2020
