Chlorophyll

Dear Greens,

Both reactors at the Catawba nuclear station on Lake Wylie were shut down this past weekend without warning. The nuclear station not only generates electricity, it consumes it also. When access to electricity from the grid was broken the plant's diesel generators kicked in and shut the plant down in an orderly fashion.

A friend in Georgia wrote that the number of cancer deaths that would result from a catastrophic release from this particular plant would be about 25% greater, because of the unique fuel this nuclear plant uses. A mixture of designer grade plutonium waste and uranium, this stuff gets hotter than "normal" nuclear fuel, and is apparently a bit trickier to control.

As I understand such things, a nuclear reactor is in some ways like an air plane. The riskiest time is take off and landing, that is, start up and shut down. This unexpected shut down should give us reason to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to at least take the plutonium fuel out of the reactor to see what negative impact, if any, the reactor or fuel rods may have suffered over the last few months from this experimental fuel. At a minimum that would give the scientists an along-the-way example to compare to the results of similar future tests.

Does the automatic shut down itself render the results of the test questionable?

With all this in mind, I'd encourage you to visit the York Greens website at http://www.yorkgreens.com for the full text of the Charlotte Observer article.