A Nuclear-Free Lake Michigan?!
May 9, 2013 Dominion Nuclear permanently shut down its Kewaunee atomic reactor near Green Bay, WI on May 7th. Combined with the permanent shutdowns of Zion 1 & 2 in IL, and Big Rock Point in MI, in the late 1990s, we are halfway to a Nuclear-Free Lake Michigan! But this hopeful vision cannot happen soon enough, as Entergy's problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in MI just spilled 80 gallons of radioactive water into the Great Lake.
Beyond Nuclear shares U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton's (R-MI) outrage at Palisades' latest leak, and joins his call for complete replacement of Palisades' Safety Injection Refueling Water storage tank, which has now been leaking for more than two years, mostly through the ceiling of Palisades' safety-critical control room!
Lake Michigan is the headwaters of the Great Lakes: 20% of the world's surface fresh water; drinking water supply for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations; and the lifeblood for one of the world's single biggest regional economies.
In addition to Palisades, Point Beach 1 & 2 in WI, and Cook 1 & 2 in southwest MI, also still need to be permanently shut down, and their electricity replaced by efficiency and renewables such as wind and solar, in order to protect the safety, purity, and future of the irreplaceable Great Lakes.
But even if all the reactors operating immediately on Lake Michigan's shore are shutdown, there are still four GE BWR Mark Is in IL, and an additional two Mark IIs, that are located not far upwind. The four Mark Is at Dresden and Quad Cities, and the two Mark IIs at LaSalle, are listed in Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" pamphlet.
A large amount of the catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity at Fukushima Daiichi initially went into the air, were blown west to east downwind, and fell out over the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The prevailing winds in IL also blow from west to east, that is, from the Mark Is and IIs, toward Lake Michigan.