Word: vernon
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...Vernon-sized nuclear reactor requires about 1100 to 1200 cubic feet of water per second, all of which is heated to about 18 F above its original temperature. Although over 900 reactors are expected in the U. S. by the year 2000, just 120 of them would require more water than the total annual runoff from the continental U. S. Coastal power stations which use ocean water are being offered as a solution to this problem...
Critics of the reactor expect the presence of all this heat to create dense fogs during weather inversions. In the case of Vernon, such fogs are expected to be about 10 miles wide, 40 miles long and 400 feet thick and could occur on as many as 30 days of the year...
...will the Vernon reactor be cooled? It is expected that the winter temperature of the Connection River will be raised 10 F. To enable this stream to accommodate this and other such reactors the Army Corps of Engineers has planned a $4 billion project for the entire Connecticut River from the Canadian border to Long Island Sound, including over 205 dams, 84 of which are directly related to the Vernon plant...
...WATER reactor, like Vernon, has a fuel cycle of one year, which means that the spent-but highly radioactive-fuel is stored in the reactor for a year at a time. Such materials may accumulate to 1000 times the radioactivity of one Hiroshima-sized bomb. Although a reactor cannot sustain a nuclear explosion, the presence of many hundreds of tons of material which is one billion times more toxic than any known industrial substance is an unparalleled hazard, especially during fuel replacement. Such replacement is an extraordinarily delicate operation and, in the case of Con Edison's Indian Point...
When these dangerous materials are removed they are transported over highways or railroads to a reprocessing plant. By 1963, with only ten operating reactors, the AEC had reported 47 accidents in waste shipment, including 18 spills and 15 "severe impact accidents." Vernon's wastes would be taken to the Nuclear Fuel Services facility in West Valley, New York. This plant, run by the Getty oil interests, is notorious for its tendency to continue sending employees into high radiation areas until they have received the maximum legal dose. Of 80 employees on strike in late 1969, 70 had received more than...