V. XXII No 2, 3 - World Information Transfer

operation around the globe, and there’s about 103-104in the U.S. and some of the oldest ones happen to bebased in New England. One of the oldest nuclear powerplants in the country is about 30 miles north of hereon the Hudson River. It was built back in the 1960s,it started with one reactor which has been decommissionedquite a while back.That decommissioning process for this first reactorthat was built took about ten years. About a year agopart of the decommissioning process was to take all ofthe radioactive water that was still in the cooling pooland literally dump 800,000 gallons of this nuclear radioactivewater into the Hudson River with very littlefanfare.Out of the 103-104 reactors that are still operationalin the U.S. about 60% of them are leaking and that’sbecause all these cooling pools are made out of 5 feetthick concrete. Concrete ultimately gets porous, backthen the concrete also wasn’t very good. So these coolingpools are leaking because they are porous and thewater literally goes to the ground and one has to keepon putting more and more water into these coolingpools to keep these reactors cool.At the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, in NewYork at Indian Point, nuclear waste has literally beenleaking into the groundwater and sometimes it getspumped out. In Vermont the people were so outragedby the company that ran the reactor, (the company hadbeen lying for a long time about the extent of the leakage)that the legislature got together and 26 to 4 votedto shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plantdespite the protest of the NRC and Entergy which ownsthe facility. At Indian Point the same kind of leakageis taking place and the Department of EnvironmentalConservation in New York, voted not to renew the waterpermit for the plant until they build a new coolingsystem.The type of resistance, against the old nuclear powerplants being decommissioned, that has emerged is ingreat part due to people getting organized again. TheNRC started the re-licensing process for all the nuclearpower plants in 2000 and it had been going aroundfrom state to state, basically divide and conquer with alot of small citizen groups trying to fight their nuclearreactors on a regional/local level. The NRC has managedto rubber stamp all these old reactors. We’re nowat the point where it will not take much to prevent there-licensing of Indian Point, to prevent the re-licensingof Vermont Yankee and to get to where Karl wants toget to - a complete reanalysis and new debate over thefuture of nuclear power.I came from the fashion industry, my father was a famousphotographer and he co-created “Elle Magazine.”I was raised in the editorial offices of Elle. The fashionindustry in New York City is one of the most influentialindustries in the city. Rock the Reactors was created tobring fashion designers to influence the political decision-making process that would ultimately get the politiciansin the district where the nuclear power plant isin to work very hard to refuse a new license for the oldplant.Ms. Bahar ShahparNew York Fashion designerI work in fashion, I’ve worked in mainstream fashionfor over a decade and I was never an activist, bydefinition. When I started out I did a thesis on the historyof the American farm and really just researchedhow we got to where we are and it didn’t take us verylong. There was a time not long ago when systems werecleaner when life was simpler and that’s not to say thattechnology is a bad thing its just that we’ve allowed theconvenience of modern technology to overshadow thepotential destructive elements. Fashion and politicshave always been inextricably intertwined throughoutthe ages because people throughout history have allhave visual identifiers to portray their message.Clothing and the textile industry are two of the oldestindustries on the earth and in terms of agricultureand in terms of the manufacturing processing it affectsair, land, water, soil. Right now there is an incredibleamount of momentum behind green, behind environmentalactivism and a lot of what is being said here todayis because of the politics of the last 20-30 years. Theanti nuclear message has been quieted for more cheerfulenvironmental activism but one thing that I alwaystry to put out there is that it’s not all about politics. It’sabout a good life, it’s about a clean life, it’s about somethingthat every one of us has a right to and that is tonot be inundated with toxins.World Information Transfer22 World Ecology ReportSummer-Fall 2010